Dream

---

I had a really odd dream this morning. Camillo was about to do some sort of huge stunt and while he was going up this huge platform to do it instead of watching him I went up myself on a huge ramp almost with a lot of snow on it. I kept climbing and climbing till I got to the top. At the top I realized it was a huge skiing area and I had no skiis or poles. Fortunately they had skiis there and as they yelled into some window that was for whatever reason really close to us a woman came to the window and brought me some poles. The skiis weren't by any stretch of the imagination normal and someone had to help me put them on as I was standing. I was surrounded by girls from some sort of skiing team. After I got my skiis on we went down together and it was relatively easy. In fact there were parts where there wasn't even any snow at all. I asked them why they continued working throughout the summer like this and didn't really get a full answer from them.

Yesterday was pretty fun. I taught my four new classes (as I will do from now on on Tuesdays - making for a pretty full day). Fortunately the teacher that I thought it would be true hell to work with (Diana) turned out to be really cool with everything and very helpful when I needed her to be. I think everything will work out just great with her. In our class we only have four students, three of whom I'm currently teaching in other classes (K6, K7, and K8) and only one of whom I don't know very well. They're all boys which is good because they can handle a small class of four but they're also for the most part good kids so the discipline will be good and games will work pretty well. We had a lot of fun together and I'm looking forward to our next couple of classes. I am also teaching a K3.5, K4.5 and K2.5 (in that order). Yesterday being the first day we really just reviewed on some stuff that they already knew (Hello. How are you?) and only added one thing to it so I got to repeat a lot of the things I was teaching for all of the classes. I only have 2 kids for K3.5 so that should be interesting. For some reason yesterday I had a weak K3 student in there with a pretty sharp one so the one really slowed the other down but the other was pretty patient (fortunately). I have five kids in my K2.5 class (one of whom is my Teddy who I've taught before) two of them are Korean kids who don't really understand much Chinese and obviously don't understand much English either. It's really forcing me to teach on a completely new level - more with hand and body language than relying on the translating. It's really frustrating Lucy a lot and there's another Korean kid in the class whose Chinese is really great so she's just relying on that kid. I'm trying not to do that. This kid is also the only girl in the class so you can already see Lucy picking favorites a bit. I'll have to try and wean her off that a bit. Teddy's a really bright kid and I really saw quite a change in his attitude as I went from review to new things. He went from "uh, I don't want to do this" to really motivated and focused. It was a nice transition and now I understand where he's coming from on the discipline problems at least. It's good to see into a kid and understand more of where they're coming from. Now I can see how to deal with him next time I have a discipline issue with him. This is what happened with Peter - my K7 kid who used to make me despise teaching K6.

After I finished teaching class yesterday I went over to get the boys to do my hair. We ended up hanging out for a little bit. Since it was Kast's day off and Camillo and Alex were in Shenyang Hui was gone and there was no one there to cut hair except Yenson and Eason so the place was absolutely dead. They got some random customers every now and again but it was nothing like I'm used to seeing it. It was also a Tuesday so that added to it a bit (most of their work is on the weekends). I ate some dinner and then sat around with Eason until Cat called and surprised me by walking into the Salon. She invited me out to dinner with her boyfriend and his three roommates. I ended up biking over there after I finished getting my hair done. Raphael's roommates are so freaking cool - Kendra and Genie are a lesbian couple of six years that have the engagement bands and Michael is in his 60s and still traveling like he was young. I really enjoyed hanging out with them a lot. Kendra and I got into some religious debates (although I mostly agreed with her so we weren't really debating). She was talking about how she believes in science much more than religion and how Christianity doesn't make much sense to her especially since she's a good environmental friendly, love-all kind of person who is going to hell simply because she loves Genie and there are people in the world who are devil worshippers who murder millions of people but just because they accept Jesus in the end means they are going to heaven. (I have to say it doesn't make much sense to me either.) Surprisingly enough she's from Raleigh, NC and used to live just off of Franklin so she knows my neck of the woods quite well. She was telling me how she had a really bad time with Southern churches in NC and I told her that the only time I really went to church myself was in a very liberal church in Ohio and that was quite a different experience than it would have been going to a church in Raleigh. They are really cute together although I definitely like Kendra more than Genie. They are really in love so much so that they look like sisters - same hair-dos and both have tattoos. They're really cute.

It was kind of funny at one point I was explaining to Kendra how Camillo is a bit feminine and she said "That's alright. I've always loved guys that are slightly feminine. I was never really clear as to why." Genie leaned over to playfully tease her, "yeah I wonder why" she commented. I think they may be right. That might be one of the reasons why I like Camillo, after all the number of people that have called Camillo feminine or a girl are fairly large. Maybe that's what makes him so sexy to me.

I ended up having dinner and going over to the bar with them to have a drink and then I went over to meet Eason to teach him some English, not knowing that Camillo and Alex had already gotten home. Camillo and Eason wanted to go out and meet Kendra and Genie because I was telling them how cool they were. We got over to the bar and got to hang out with them for a little bit but then they left. Camillo was in quite a strange mood before we were at the bar and while we were at the bar so I ended up joining the waiter at the bar and chilling for a bit (as well as calling Ishani). Camillo was in an "I don't want to speak Mandarin or English, I just want to mess with Darby" mode. Fortunately he snapped out of it and we ended up going over to play pool - Cam, Eason and I. Cam kept telling me I was fat. I told him if he had said that to girls where I come from he would have been decked in the nose and that I don't consider myself fat but if he keeps telling me that I may actually start to believe it. After a bit he told me "I don't mean it like that. Hui tells me it's nice to tell girls they have baby fat. They like it" to which I responded "And Hui knows more about foreign girls than I do, right ..." In the end we ended up back at our normal selves playing around with each other as usual. He stole a bunch of my CDs (which I'm going to have to get back from him tonight only because most of them are Russell's).

Turns out the boys are moving even closer to me than they are now (about a block from me). So that shall be an interesting change.

---