Interesting Games (4-3)

Friday I collected the first batch of longer essays. Previously, I had paragraphs, but these were 100-150 words. Since the next class would be after my holiday trip and I knew I’d probably be gone on Tuesday, my day with no classes, I decided I should read them all on the weekend. So Saturday I read one bunch of 25 and then took a long break for lunch and a walk with Megan. Then I read the next bunch, which made a total of 5.5 hours reading and correcting papers. My brain was fried. I took another walk, thinking I would do some planning when I returned. But I was so exhausted that I took a shower and read, having a really hard time staying awake until a good time to go to sleep. Then I slept for nine hours, which is rare. Sunday morning I read the last batch and was glad to have that process completed. It is wearing, which is one of the reasons I don’t like teaching writing.

My big weekend excitement was finding MS Office in English. When I was walking down a street Sunday afternoon, I noticed some DVDs on the counter of a shop and looked at them. And there was MS Office! I asked the man if he speaks English, and he does; so communicating was easy. He looked on his computer to see if he has it in English, and he did. He said it was in English and Chinese. I didn’t care what languages it was in as long as English was one of them. I returned later to have him put it on my USB. If it doesn’t work, it’s not a big deal, since my investment was 10 yuan (about $1.60), which is what I paid for it in Thailand.

Over the weekend there was a Fanta promotion along the walking street. Megan and I stopped by on Saturday to see what was going on. We were given a small Fanta and told that we had to play a game. They had a ping-pong table with a line of Fanta bottles as the net. The paddles were a small frying pan, a spatula, and a couple spoons. I made sure to grab the frying pan, as it’s larger and I need something big so I can hit the ball. It was fun for the several minutes that we played. Photos were taken, of course. Sunday I got another bottle of Fanta when I went past. Students were wearing the Fanta character costumes that day. I asked for one of the Fanta pens and was given one. My game that day was joining a couple girls who were throwing velco wrapped balls at another girl wearing a velco vest.

The excitement this week was on Tuesday when I made the trip to Chengdu to take my computer to the PC office so the technician’s friend could repair it. I took the city bus and then a taxi and arrived in 2.5 hours. The last half hour was walking from the west gate to the office near the east gate. The man tried to fix it in the office to avoid having Windows reinstalled, but he was not able to. So we went to a local noodle shop for lunch, which was nice. The noodles were good and I enjoyed chatting with him. Then he called his friend to pick up the computer later. The first surprise was when he said there would be no charge, as I was prepared to pay the man from outside the office. But it seems that he owed PC some service and I benefited from that. The next surprise was when the technician said he would install MS Office in English, as he had it at home. So he didn’t need my purchased copy. I was happy to have the repair job in progress.

Walking back from the bus stop along the river park that I enjoy, I came across a group of women exercising with rackets and balls—like hacky sacks. They have a racket like a badminton racket covered with rubber. They move it around keeping the ball on the racket. After I watched for a couple minutes, a man gave me his racket to use; so I joined in. I moved the racket to the music following the women. Then someone gave me a ball. Not an easy thing to keep it on the moving racket. A woman decided to teach me how to do it, and I got so I could keep the ball on the racket while making low arcs. I felt good about that and it was fun to try. 

When I got the camera out to take a couple photos, they got into that and posed for me.