Thursday, January 14, 2010

Thank God it's your Friday!

It ain't mine!
Today is AKIC Tuesday!
 
Portrait Painter
We have hired a new part-time trainer.  Richard is from Australia and married to a Chinese girl.  One of his hobbies is painting -- portrait painting that is.  I am envious of people who have that drawing skill.  But I do have an appreciation of the faces you can see in China.  Some of them are magnificent.  You see these weather-chiseled faces or stern solid faces that make you wonder.  What have they seen?  What have they done?
 
No Relations
Talking to the students about the Haiti Earthquake, I learned that the country does not have diplomatic relations with the PRC.  Haiti is one of the few countries in the world to recognize T.  So most of the students, it seems, had little to say about the catastrophe. 
 
I have also read that a country close to Haiti, Cuba, hasn't had much aid to offer.
 
Daddy home?
I received a strange phone call from Jenny while I was at work last night.  She told me that Tony was convinced that I was outside the apartment door trying to come in and so he was unlocking and opening the door to let me in.  Jenny wanted him to hear the sound of my voice on the phone to get the notion out of his head.  Apparently, this tactic worked because he threw the phone to the ground, angrily, when he heard me.

One month till the Spring Festival
As of Friday, there is less than a month till the Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival, as the locals call it.  The students told me thought that it didn't mean the Spring Festival shopping season had begun. (I had told them about the Christmas shopping season lasting for six weeks.)

Pagan Worship at Wuxiguide.net
Check it out!  Registration may be required.

How is your Chinese?
It is awful still.  But I do make the effort to open a book and study.  This morning, I pulled out my dictionary and was using its' radical chart and index to decipher the meanings of signs.  As I have said before, I made a big mistake in choosing to not study Chinese writing.
 

1 comment:

Magnus said...

No Relations? I had heard that there was a virtual army of Chinese "Peace keeping" soldiers in Haiti. They are there apparently harvesting some sort of thing that is useful for something in China... no official relations but there is a Chinese presence.

Also, ask your students about the amount that China gave to Haiti. 1 million. That's it. Amazing.