1.) My computer, Petey. (Yes, I named him. Moving on.) Being a laptop, and so quite logically resting on my lap, I'm heatedly regretting all the work I've asked him to do lately. I mean, really, emptying my several-hundred-photos full camera chip, sorting through and editing said photos, and finally, uploading them to Facebook...it's a lot to do, especially when I force him to simultaneously provide me with fantastic Seattleite music via Click 98.9 live streaming (,a favorite memory of home I can revive at will).
"Be kind to me," my computer screams, "what do you have to gain if I overheat and die?"
The answer is, of course, nothing. But sometimes, you've just gotta battle through, even though you're hopelessly behind in uploading so that, next time, you won't be so hopelessly behind as to make it seem utterly impossible. So, I'm sorry, Petey, but you're overheating days are far from over.
On the upside (for human friends, that is), here's the public link to pictures of all my in-class Halloween festivities!
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| And also this. |
2.) My brain. I had Chinese class today, so this entry pretty much writes itself. But, in addition to the typical strain put on it by our biweekly marathon Chinese lessons, after class today, I went to the gym. And at the gym, Phoebe, who happens to be one of my favorite people here in Kaohsiung and who works at the gym, asked me to show her what I had learned.
On the plus side, my brain didn't completely empty out, as it did last month when Chialing asked me the same thing. I remembered that we had learned about making phone calls and arranging plans, and I told her this. So she 'called' me to test it out. And then my brain went blank. We made it about 3 sentences into the 'conversation,' which consisted of me fumbling through a few ways of saying "It's me, Bekah," and then combining two ways of saying "Do you have free time Monday?" into some weird amalgamation which promptly made Phoebe and the other employees standing nearby burst out laughing.
"It's cute!" Phoebe said when I asked how terribly I had done, then ran up the stairs for the comparatively less embarrassing feat of actually working out. Maybe one of these days my brain will accept the need to actually use the patterns I learn in class on an immediate basis, but that's just something I'll have to work on, for now.
3.) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Yes, I know that it makes little to no sense to say that a story is overheating; in this case the more accurate word would be "fried," and even then, it would once again apply to my perception of the story, but who cares. The point is, over the past two days, I've read a shortened version of this story 6 times. Monday, I'll get to read it another 5 times. And that, my friends, is far too many times.
It's my own fault, of course: I suggested we read a Halloween story as part of our lesson, and of course whenever I make a suggestion like that for "us" to do, I'm fully cognizant that it means me. Actually, in this case, that's not even true--poor Maggie and Alison are stuck translating the whole story after me, line by line, because the kids' version of the story that I found online, cut by about half, and then simplified, still needs to be translated for most of the kids to catch the nuances of the story. It's pretty complicated, when you think about it!
I am very grateful that tomorrow and Friday, though still Halloween-themed and still requiring my massive bags of candy and my pirate costume, will be Sleepy Hollow-free. Another inherent advantage of having an actual, fully-equipped English classroom at Qingshan is that we can show video clips for this sort of thing!
Anyway, with all that said and done, I'm off now to give my computer, brain, and story-telling abilities a rest. Time to sleep, before the rest of me starts overheating, too.
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