The Neverending Dog Days

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Our summer descended upon us with a great bought of sultry and soggy type of heat. Walking out on certain days you feel as if you are being coated with slimy grime and are careful while breathing, as it is as if you can bite the air - it's that thick. The refreshment of a newly showered body lasts an average of four minutes in this humidity, and if it is a day with no sun these are truly dismal surroundings. I can't complain too bitterly however, as there have been a smattering of exceptional weather (of course always while I'm working) where it's an incredible joy to gaze out at the crisp blue sky (and occasional fluffy cloud!) while wandering about dappled in real sunlight. It's a heady joy.

My "summer" has come to a close and we are gearing up to reopen the school again. I confess the month off passed in a blur, as my vacation was a total of four days, with the rest of my time well occupied with camps, filming and voice recording. Days and time being inconsequential when you are working around the clock has set me completely off schedule and I am still attempting to adjust back into the groove of things. My boss had a good laugh at me this afternoon as I was filling out the lunch order form for "tomorrow's work" (tomorrow is Saturday).

Experiencing "camp" in China was quite the ride. I ended up being requested back for a second session so was working in the outskirts of Beijing for 16 straight days. They have called this Listening and Speaking program the "Cool Camp" and are attempting to add some elements of fun into the scholastic regime... of course not TOO much fun, or the parents would never shell out the quais for their little darlings to waste the summer with playing. To be in a camp (or rather un-camp) environment was a bitter tease for me. I became so nostalgic for Keats and had to laugh at how greatly the realization of how much I love and believe in camps rekindled itself. Sure I hated their theme song and disagreed with much of how it was run, but still... I am a sucker for camp. Absolutely/headoverheels/100%!s(MISSING)mitten with camp. They were bizarrely obsessed with making the Chinese staff as "cool" as possible and had all the themes and events totally structured around the Chinese teachers, which I piped up as being ridiculous straight off. Understandably we are dealing with camps totaling 1500 students, but I believe that they needed to switch the focus onto the kids. I was actually involved with several meetings with the board of directors to brainstorm ways to improve the "fun" side of their course. I was really glad (though exhausted) to be able to participate in a second camp as I felt much more prepared the second go-around. I loved all my classes and students greatly and I suppose you've done your job right when they are all sobbing over the idea of leaving you. Many of them wrote me some lovely letters and one student (not mine) who I befriended at the dance, even drew me a beautiful picture of our first meeting. She rocked! My students were all quite low level English, but it was still an adjustment to retrain my brain from pre-school to high-school. I attempted to make the classes as interactive and engaging as possible... luckily I had accumulated an endless resource of games to pepper the lessons with, which went over exceptionally well. The top two lessons they liked best was learning about movies (where I got them to create scenes and gave them my wig collection to play with, then gave an impromptu musical performance for them, and the restaurant lesson where they were instructed to create a dining scenario and when they came to preform I surprised them by laying out a table cloth and lighting candles to be a "proper restaurant".) I really had a blast learning along with them and was delighted with the amount of creativity they were able to use with such limited language. We spent a lot of time laughing at each other in my class.

Another random source of employment was an audition call I received for KinderPower English who were needing a North American female to play the role of a pre-school teacher. They were blown away by how "natural" I was around the kids and my expression during the songs and fingerplays. I attempted to explain that it took no talent as I do these things EVERY DAY, but no... they were not to be swayed in their opinions that I was an exceptionally gifted actor. It was a long day of shooting under the hottest lights I've yet encountered and the amount of make-up they were continually forced to reapply was disgusting and took me a half hour to finally scrub off. I could barely keep a straight face when wardrobe and make-up were through with me, as their idea of a "teacher" is pink-pink clothes, hair scraped back into a bizarre high side bun, heinous amounts of purple eyeshadow and cute hair bows. Gracious me, I hope this video never leaves China.

This summer has certainly provided little down time, and I can only attribute this spike in employment to my recently lightened locks. Oh yes... I am on the journey back to my natural state of blond. Being fairly impulsive at the best of times I stupidly responded to the dare my friend made that I would never have the guts to go back to blond... stubborn idiot that I am, I marched straight off to Tony & Guy and requested the change - but adamantly stating by no means should anything remotely resembling orange touch my hair!
... when they had finished it looked as if I had dyed my hair in a vat of Tang. Not cool. My one regret is I had no camera at the salon as the effect was truly awful and such disasters should be shared. Ah well. They covered it with a light brown and sent me on my way. Of course the brown quickly took on the orange/yellow hue beneath and I continued to sport this awful shade until I met a stylist who (horrified with my "look") promised to fix everything. I need to go back one more time as there are still some sections that are too yellow, but it is a great improvement. Still not sure how I feel as a blond. It's been over six years and is taking some adjusting. The attention garnered has greatly increased - dangerously in fact. A man was riding his moped with his neck craned backwards when I was walking though the outskirts of the city (few foreigners) and he plowed into a van turning left and totaled his bike. He seemed to be fine, but I was traumatized.

I lost my cool and was escorted out of a bank a couple days ago. It's mortifying to even write down such awful behavior, but I truly was temporarily rendered insane. The bank machines here don't spit out your ATM card unless you request it on the screen, so of course it was only a matter of time until I lost my card. The weekend was the golden moment, but I didn't notice until Monday as I never look for it until I run out of cash. When I went in I was informed that the copy of my passport wasn't enough and that I needed to bring in my actual passport (which my agent had) to access my account. This was bitter news as I was broke, Simon is away on business and I wasn't sure if my visa had been processed. However I sucked up my bad attitude, found that my visa was indeed ready and made plans to pick it up the following day. So Tuesday I find myself passport in hand, ready to sort out this card nonsense. I inform the teller that I have lost my card, would like a new one, and need to withdraw some money to pay rent. I am told that I can get a new card in two weeks and that until then my account will be frozen and I am not allowed access to it. (Keep in mind that I have no cash, Simon is gone, rent is due, and there is no food in my apartment). I try to calmly resolve the situation, I present my account number, original passport, inform her of the last withdrawal and deposit, but nothing sways her. "It's their policy". We go on and on like this with the desperation steadily building inside of me until the point where I snap. Literally lose my shit... all over the bank. I was a raving lunatic ready to take them all at gunpoint. I scared myself. It would have been a great moment to be a fly on the wall to observe me ranting and raving and smacking the glass barrier with both fists before finally being swooped down upon by the security guards and dragged kicking and screaming away from the bemused stares of the general Chinese public ("crazy laowai") and dumped unceremoniously outside the branch doors. Yes, not my finest hour... I'm actually lucky that I wasn't arrested. I then hopped onto my bike and pedaled furiously around the city, trying to recall what branch I had frequented that fateful day. Lady Luck was kind and I did reclaim my card and caused another scene by clapping gleefully, bursting into tears and hugging everyone around me. I am a horrifying creature at times.

Looking forward I can only hope for a decrease in drama. My days are moving quietly as I begin to set up and organize my classroom for the new semester. I tend to think of September as being a better time to make resolutions and believe mine should be attempting to take a break. I haven't had any form of relaxation for over a year and believe my mental health (haha) requires lying on the beach and doing NOTHING. I hope to arrange a trip to Thailand for the October National holiday. Cross fingers it works, or you may be seeing me on the cover of National papers for some ridiculous public disturbance. Sigh.

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Photos

Rosita's Drawing
What she wrote:
I love you Lindsie!! Day 7: I meet my first dance partner - Lindsie, in the path (in adult party). She is beautiful. She said "hello" to me.

Love Note from Superman
... ok so he spells "Surperman" but still! Got to love a kid that names himself after a comic book hero. He was a big hit in class because he had a girlfriend. Whooooooo!!!

Step One: Light Brown
Okay so this is post orange horror... but still yucky color.

Comments

[Josevich]

hog wild in a bank
haha thats a new low