Yesterday I had my Cultural Criticisms and Analysis class. It is going to be so great!! It puts literature in the context of the time it was written and uses the styles of great minds of the time to analyze it, super fascinating. The next best part, slides in English and professor dictates them in Chinese, so I listen to Chinese and read the English (yes!!). The text book was kind of expensive, but not too bad. I get to do a project on Carl Jung, he’s a psychologist who discovered universal archtypes for legend and folklore, *sigh <3 <3* (we’re supposed to talk about the era so Freud too *shoves his pages under table*).
After that I had to go to the English Corner where I will work the rest of the semester. I had orientation with a Professor out of the English Department named Donovan. He’s British I think, there’s an accent but he’s lived in Taiwan for a while so it’s a little fuddled and a lot of his textbooks for teaching English are in British English. He was great, he gave us a lot of material to get started (games, puzzles, books, techniques). Also he’s a graphic novel fan, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore…etc. I knew it XD. He told me that Taiwan doesn’t have western comics in Chinese… no Batman, X-men, Sandman, V for Vendetta, From Hell, Strangers in Paradise none of it in their native language… they have to buy them for high prices in English from an international bookstore in Taipei… What is this?! Stan Lee, Jim Lee what are you doing with yourselves (my mom was like, “Lorin, its your true calling…” lol)?! Donovan offered some of his graphic novels to share with my English Corner students if I promised to take care of them (*is super touched*).
So today was another day of Chinese. It was great per usual, even if a little review. My professor is very particular about pronunciation and it can difficult at time, but that’s good. She should be harder on us that have had some Chinese already. I realized how bad my listening skills were today, we had to dictate tones… my tones were off on a few… If my professor at SVSU saw that sheet… *que tears*. I like it though, I want to be sure I’m understood and my fellow students here at Shih Hsin just tell me how wonderful and cute my Chinese is. We had homework to write our numbers one to one hundred… that was a bit grueling just because it took a while. I’m going to listen the CD some and practice on critical listening… maybe even ask my Taiwanese friends on campus to say random numbers and words for me to dictate.
First full day of work was a little awkward. I sort of expected it, I was just getting to know the students. I also wasn’t as prepared as I could have been, but my students were surprisingly talkative. I just would start slow and introduce myself and maybe even throw in a little Chinese and they’d loosen up pretty quick. My first students were late and so embarrassed. We just made sure that they knew the time for next week (no worries really). My second pair asked the tough questions. They wanted to know about American partying. I was pretty plain, there are students that do. There are some who do it safely and on the weekend and are semi-responsible. There are also crazy parties like in the movies, but those students get bad grades and aren’t successful (students reaction: O,O!). That was my opinion on the subject, I won’t lie but I won’t condone it either. They asked about holidays too. That was fun to talk about and really interesting. I learned about the moon festival that happens next week (they barbecue and watch the moon and eat moon-cakes and have family get togethers). My last students were English majors and had some pretty tough classes (history of western civilization in English?!). I told them to go ahead and bring their homework if they needed help to which they were really grateful. Though I think Greek and Roman mythology should be taught (and the text read) in Chinese, that way the students can really appreciate and enjoy it, instead of spending the class worrying about just understanding it because understanding culture is just as important as learning the language *knowing nod*. It was so sad when they told me that mythology is hard and boring (I wanted to cry).
It was a good start, I think. I just tried to get them relaxed and talking. Many of them felt better after I told them that it was fine that their English was bad, because “我的中文是不好” (my Chinese is bad). Also knowing that I brought a dictionary for them to look up words and that they could try and use Chinese to communicate a little so I could tell them the word in English. Jordan assigned his students homework already, a collage about themselves XD. Kaitlin and Blake seemed to be having a good time too.
I can’t wait for the Halloween Party (can we just skip the welcome party and do that? Just kidding). Kaitlin is going to pumpkin carving. I have talked to students on campus (I still need to talk to Lily, our boss, about it)… I brought a deck of my tarot cards with me… many of them are really interested in this western form of fortune telling. I want to do like a witch costume or something and do tarot readings for students. It would be so fun! I could even talk about the history a little.
My homework is beginning to pile already. I can feel it *sideways glance*. I have a dictation test in Chinese on Thursday. I have definitions to memorize for pop culture on Friday. Translation is going to be super tough. I am going to start having readings for Cultural crit. and presentations in that and pop culture pretty quick.
I tried to translate some of the Liar Game comic I bought…. and it didn’t go very well… I had to look up characters by radical and stroke order and it took forever! I realized that picking the easier of the books I bought wouldn’t be as important as picking the one I really wanted to work on. It will take me all semester to do one. I really want to translate Night Fangs (previously miss titled in my last entry as Fang Bloods, herp derp), since it’s a novel unlike anything in the US. I’ve watched the live action TV show for Liar Game and I know a bit about Sherlock Holmes. So I think the vote is for Night Fangs (besides there’s little character bios and extras I can translate in it too).
