well, it's yet another 70 degree day of sunshine in macau. i'm starting to think my computer's thermometer is frozen. not even a 71 or a 69 -- just 70, every day. i had a moment this morning where i was in bed and just got the feeling that it was 30 degrees outside. it must just be the holiday season.
anyway, as part of the holiday season, my mother sent me a package this last week that included all of my sweaters, because i forgot them at home. i was thrilled. NOW, i can start feeling the holiday spirit. i got a chance to have a massive skype session with my family, who are down in Tejas for thanksgiving. it was really great to talk to them. what's even greater is that i'll be home now in 3 weeks. 3 WEEKS i say! can you tell i'm counting down? anyway, the funniest part of my skype sesh with the family was that my uncle said that he really liked my gargoyle sweater. he clearly meant argyle, but gargoyle was what came out. i found this quite amusing, but then i thought about it. how awesome would it be if it WAS a gargoyle sweater, like a sweater with a sweet menacing gargoyle magnificently stitched in. once you get past how nerdy it is, it could be really sweet. in theory anyway. i googled gargoyle sweaters to see if there were any already in existence. there were not. oh well.
anyway, i have been ripping on my school a lot these last couple weeks (deservedly so), so i should probably throw it a bone. in just about every high school in the US, there are young adolescents finding their ways around young love and relationships. i'm not talking about all of them though. there is a specific demographic of high school relationships i'm thoroughly pleased i don't have to regularly witness. these are the really awkward kids who have really awkward relationships with each other. NOT the popular kids. the popular kids and the school's IT couples have the process down. they wait until the weekend parties to loosen up and get scandalous. the students i'm referring to walk from class to class holding hands and then share this really uncomfortably long hug before one of them goes into class and the other strolls off to his/her class. sometimes it's a strange kiss, depending how in "love" they think they are at that age. you never really see them with any other students. MAYBE they've buddied up with an equally strange couple, but for the most part, these two students are each others' only friend it seems. i don't know why, but these relationships always bugged me. i mean, i guess it's nice that they have each other, but it just seems sad. so, thankfully adolescent PDA hasn't made it to china. there's borderline inappropriate touching between students here, but not in the romantic sense. more crotch punches than anything. the students just have little concept of personal space. but it doesn't seem to phase them. i guess it's just the norm.
so one of the things about china is that people have some ridiculous hairstyles. strange colors. strange cuts. it's just odd. if i saw these people in the US, i would mock them incessantly (not to their face of course; that's just rude). some things cannot go unsaid though. a few weeks ago, i saw a man sporting the mythical faux-mullet. faux hawk in the front, PARTY in the back. and not a high school party where you take turns taking pulls from mad dog/mad dog or a stolen bottle of gin. an OOM-TSS OOM-TSS rave where everybody's on E swinging glow sticks from old shoelaces. it was epic! ---side bar--- while i haven't fooled around with my hair at all, i did go the entire month of october and some of november without shaving. not by choice, but because my razor got shorted out. i manned up and got a new one a few weeks ago, but just to trim. it's no bobby guise beard; it's more kyle orton level. i'll be returning to the states with it, but will go clean a few days after. chinese people can't grow facial hair, so in comparison, it's the best beard ever.
lastly, this just in, for the english club christmas party, yours truly is in charge of teaching a group of students christmas songs. we're going with: we wish you a merry christmas, jingle bells, silent night, and hark the herald angels, because the students have heard of them, or at least some of them. we may have to ditch hark because it has the biggest range, and i still stand by my previous statement that chinese people don't sing very well. anyway, i'm very excited. in the next 2 weeks, i'll actually get to do some of the things i actually wanted to do with teaching, teach writing (i'm in charge of the school writing workshop next week to generate student writing for the english writing 80th anniversary book) and dabble in some singing stuff. i have high hopes for both. building the resume. building the resume.
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