My First 'Saturday' since the Start of the School Year
I don’t know how common this is, but when I worked in Food Service before coming to China we use to talk about our own personal Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays mostly and to a lesser extent our own Hump Day Wednesdays and Thirsty Thursdays. And now I feel bad for Tuesday.
What that meant was (and especially when you work in food service) when you didn’t get weekends off the last day before your day off was Friday and so forth. If your days off were not next to each other we usually said that you had two Fridays, two Sundays, and two Mondays.
Well, since the beginning of last term I had been working for seven days a week. Admittedly some of those days I had only been working two hours and I still felt relatively relaxed and not stressed. But what I found out during Mid-Autumn Festival which was a Thursday was that I really needed a day off! So the way the week of Mid-Autumn Festival went was: Wednesday (Wednesday), Vacation Day (Thursday), Saturday (Friday), Sunday (Saturday), Friday (Sunday), Monday (Monday). That meant that I had Thursday off! And all plans of productivity went out the window as I slept in, lazed about, played video games, read, and watched TV and movies all day and topped it off with staying out late playing cards and being super tired for the class that I had the following morning at 08:00, which was usually my Saturday class and not Friday.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve had the vacations and the relaxation that I needed during National Holiday holiday and Spring Festival. But even if I had planned to bust out my Spring Festival stories before school had started back up and take advantage of decent internet (which it wasn’t, but I thought without students around it would have been) to upload photos to the internet. A part of me knew that even though I told Mr. He that I really liked having more than one class a day as long as I wasn’t running from one to the other that I would have classes seven days a week again.
I had been correct. But then Adam called me up and said I had too many classes: Reinout had 2 classes, Josh had 4 classes, and I had 6 classes; so two of my classes (the English majors) were given to Reinout. That way all of the foreign teachers had four classes at the college for the semester. And I got Thursday off! That automatically became laundry day, since with the exception of Tuesday all of my classes were in the morning. And I didn’t want to leave clothes in the machine for a whole two hour class period if I timed it wrong. So, in this semester I had a Friday (Wednesday), a Sunday (Thursday), and a Monday (Friday), which when I type it out, it just looks depressing.
Well the first time in ever, I got two different classrooms for listening classes within the same department: building 1, classroom 101 for the third years and across the hall in 102 for the second years. Room 101 I hated from the beginning the room has rows A through N that go at least a dozen seats back, but barely half of the monitors for students worked. There was one light that would blink, a hole in the floor that was barely covered, and sometimes there would be an ear splitting electronic whine that would last the whole period! The computer system was like in the rooms that I had the English Major classes in, so I was familiar with it. That being the system that if the volume was too high the whole thing would crash and the students’ screens would go blank. And the headphones didn’t work! So I couldn’t keep the volume low and use the headphones! The computer was a REALLY old Dell. Where when I plugged my USB drive into the front of the tower most of the time it wouldn’t read it (after a couple weeks I found the extension cord that went to the USB port at the back of the tower, which always read my USB first try). When the computer would finally read my USB if I double clicked on a MS Word document to open it, it wouldn’t open. I had to open a blank document and from there open the file I wanted my students to see. Same thing with media; I had to open the crap Chinese media player (that always stays on top) and drag and drop whatever I wanted to show into the player. This player also only played AVI and the same player in the other classroom also played MP3. When I had brought a MP4 once it wouldn’t play it. But when I looked at the file in the folder it showed me the Windows Media Player symbol-the MP4 also didn’t play with that! And to top it off no matter what I did it seemed that I couldn’t change the volume of the speakers-some classes they were super loud, and some days they were but a whisper; and this was the computer system in an official listening classroom for LISTENING classes!
Room 102 was better than 101. It had the same amount of monitors as 101 and the same amount of monitors that worked. It had the same system as the classroom I had for the Chinese majors the previous semester and the floor was solid. The volume in that room was so loud that I consistently played any media at 40-60% of the volume in the media player.
Needless to say I have been telling the third year students that we needed a new classroom since day one and they haven’t done anything and I notice that room 102 was free for one of my third year classes, the one on Monday, but not the other.
So the straw that broke the camel’s back came last Friday. None of the students were in their normal seats. They all sat in the first seven rows and most in the middle of the classroom. That day the students went to their normal seats and then moved. Most of the students were on the right side of the room and then I had two students right up front and centre and then the whole middle area was empty until the way back where there were another 6 students sitting, the left side of the room only had about a dozen more students. We were watching the last half of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (2012) in that class before we moved onto something else. I had never been happier for subtitles! The volume was so low that I couldn’t even hear it most of the time! And the next thing we were going to do had no subtitles at all! I confirmed that the back row really couldn’t hear anything and then I sent them away with the class period only half over!
I called Adam explained the problem with the classroom and asked him to ask the Chinese Department Head to find me a new classroom. The Chinese Department Head said it would take him some time to find a new classroom. I had class in that room on Monday! But Monday was the day that room 102 was free. So I went and found out when room 102 was free and asked the Friday class if they were free any of those times.
The original plan was to move Friday’s class to Tuesday at 08:00. When I showed up to class on Monday the students were standing between the classrooms and asked me which one that they should go to. So after I confirmed that it was cool with the Chinese Department Head we went to room 102. So I went to confirm with a student in Friday’s class about Tuesday, but then they asked me if they could just go on Monday at 10:00 with the other class, and I agreed. So now I have a listening class of 67 students on Monday.
Due to the Qing Ming (Tomb Sweeping Day) Festival Monday’s class had been cancelled the week that Friday’s class had all the issues (and it was legit cancelled for the festival this time). So they were behind a class, so since I needed to combine the classes I got to cancel the Friday class so that they would be even on the Monday after Easter.
Meaning that I now have two whole days off in a week! My week now starts on a Saturday and it means that the big nights to go out and party or whatever (Friday and Saturday) are still no good to me because I have class at 08:00 on Saturday and Sunday. But I now have my very own Saturday (Thursday)!
This made me extra excited and I made mad plans, as I am participating in Camp NaNoWriMo playing catch up with all of my unfinished projects that need to get done. I was sick the previous week with food poisoning and so was Feniq and I have been distracted by trying to drill into his head that the crap that people throw on the ground is bad and got him sick to begin with. And the video game I may have downloaded. All of which has put me drastically behind in word count. But that was all going to change for MY very first full ‘weekend’ of the school year. Sadly, like every other time I got an extra day off I have been practically unproductive! I did do laundry, but I may have played video games and read the morning away and then a good part of the afternoon instead of writing.
I am not stupid enough to promise anything for Friday, but that is partially why I am writing this on my first ‘Saturday’, instead of writing part of the scary story: The Adventures of Daniel II: The Rhyme and the Reason - Part 2 for my Saturday students-to get me pumped and in the mind set for an epic write Friday and to rock out Saturday and Sunday after class and hopefully get back on track! The plan is to go to bed early so I can wake up early to write. And since I should start taking allergy meds-for spring time pollen is all through the air right now, and my eyes itch-I have set an alarm for 19:00 to take the allergy meds and it can also serve as a ‘minder to go to bed! And I think I have even narrowed down my spring time allergy: Wisteria, which is all I can smell around campus right now!
As far as ‘Saturdays’ go, this one has been pretty good and I think I’ll have a pretty rocking ‘Sunday’ and ‘Monday’ too! How many people can say that?
What that meant was (and especially when you work in food service) when you didn’t get weekends off the last day before your day off was Friday and so forth. If your days off were not next to each other we usually said that you had two Fridays, two Sundays, and two Mondays.
Well, since the beginning of last term I had been working for seven days a week. Admittedly some of those days I had only been working two hours and I still felt relatively relaxed and not stressed. But what I found out during Mid-Autumn Festival which was a Thursday was that I really needed a day off! So the way the week of Mid-Autumn Festival went was: Wednesday (Wednesday), Vacation Day (Thursday), Saturday (Friday), Sunday (Saturday), Friday (Sunday), Monday (Monday). That meant that I had Thursday off! And all plans of productivity went out the window as I slept in, lazed about, played video games, read, and watched TV and movies all day and topped it off with staying out late playing cards and being super tired for the class that I had the following morning at 08:00, which was usually my Saturday class and not Friday.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve had the vacations and the relaxation that I needed during National Holiday holiday and Spring Festival. But even if I had planned to bust out my Spring Festival stories before school had started back up and take advantage of decent internet (which it wasn’t, but I thought without students around it would have been) to upload photos to the internet. A part of me knew that even though I told Mr. He that I really liked having more than one class a day as long as I wasn’t running from one to the other that I would have classes seven days a week again.
I had been correct. But then Adam called me up and said I had too many classes: Reinout had 2 classes, Josh had 4 classes, and I had 6 classes; so two of my classes (the English majors) were given to Reinout. That way all of the foreign teachers had four classes at the college for the semester. And I got Thursday off! That automatically became laundry day, since with the exception of Tuesday all of my classes were in the morning. And I didn’t want to leave clothes in the machine for a whole two hour class period if I timed it wrong. So, in this semester I had a Friday (Wednesday), a Sunday (Thursday), and a Monday (Friday), which when I type it out, it just looks depressing.
Well the first time in ever, I got two different classrooms for listening classes within the same department: building 1, classroom 101 for the third years and across the hall in 102 for the second years. Room 101 I hated from the beginning the room has rows A through N that go at least a dozen seats back, but barely half of the monitors for students worked. There was one light that would blink, a hole in the floor that was barely covered, and sometimes there would be an ear splitting electronic whine that would last the whole period! The computer system was like in the rooms that I had the English Major classes in, so I was familiar with it. That being the system that if the volume was too high the whole thing would crash and the students’ screens would go blank. And the headphones didn’t work! So I couldn’t keep the volume low and use the headphones! The computer was a REALLY old Dell. Where when I plugged my USB drive into the front of the tower most of the time it wouldn’t read it (after a couple weeks I found the extension cord that went to the USB port at the back of the tower, which always read my USB first try). When the computer would finally read my USB if I double clicked on a MS Word document to open it, it wouldn’t open. I had to open a blank document and from there open the file I wanted my students to see. Same thing with media; I had to open the crap Chinese media player (that always stays on top) and drag and drop whatever I wanted to show into the player. This player also only played AVI and the same player in the other classroom also played MP3. When I had brought a MP4 once it wouldn’t play it. But when I looked at the file in the folder it showed me the Windows Media Player symbol-the MP4 also didn’t play with that! And to top it off no matter what I did it seemed that I couldn’t change the volume of the speakers-some classes they were super loud, and some days they were but a whisper; and this was the computer system in an official listening classroom for LISTENING classes!
Room 102 was better than 101. It had the same amount of monitors as 101 and the same amount of monitors that worked. It had the same system as the classroom I had for the Chinese majors the previous semester and the floor was solid. The volume in that room was so loud that I consistently played any media at 40-60% of the volume in the media player.
Needless to say I have been telling the third year students that we needed a new classroom since day one and they haven’t done anything and I notice that room 102 was free for one of my third year classes, the one on Monday, but not the other.
So the straw that broke the camel’s back came last Friday. None of the students were in their normal seats. They all sat in the first seven rows and most in the middle of the classroom. That day the students went to their normal seats and then moved. Most of the students were on the right side of the room and then I had two students right up front and centre and then the whole middle area was empty until the way back where there were another 6 students sitting, the left side of the room only had about a dozen more students. We were watching the last half of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (2012) in that class before we moved onto something else. I had never been happier for subtitles! The volume was so low that I couldn’t even hear it most of the time! And the next thing we were going to do had no subtitles at all! I confirmed that the back row really couldn’t hear anything and then I sent them away with the class period only half over!
I called Adam explained the problem with the classroom and asked him to ask the Chinese Department Head to find me a new classroom. The Chinese Department Head said it would take him some time to find a new classroom. I had class in that room on Monday! But Monday was the day that room 102 was free. So I went and found out when room 102 was free and asked the Friday class if they were free any of those times.
The original plan was to move Friday’s class to Tuesday at 08:00. When I showed up to class on Monday the students were standing between the classrooms and asked me which one that they should go to. So after I confirmed that it was cool with the Chinese Department Head we went to room 102. So I went to confirm with a student in Friday’s class about Tuesday, but then they asked me if they could just go on Monday at 10:00 with the other class, and I agreed. So now I have a listening class of 67 students on Monday.
Due to the Qing Ming (Tomb Sweeping Day) Festival Monday’s class had been cancelled the week that Friday’s class had all the issues (and it was legit cancelled for the festival this time). So they were behind a class, so since I needed to combine the classes I got to cancel the Friday class so that they would be even on the Monday after Easter.
Meaning that I now have two whole days off in a week! My week now starts on a Saturday and it means that the big nights to go out and party or whatever (Friday and Saturday) are still no good to me because I have class at 08:00 on Saturday and Sunday. But I now have my very own Saturday (Thursday)!
This made me extra excited and I made mad plans, as I am participating in Camp NaNoWriMo playing catch up with all of my unfinished projects that need to get done. I was sick the previous week with food poisoning and so was Feniq and I have been distracted by trying to drill into his head that the crap that people throw on the ground is bad and got him sick to begin with. And the video game I may have downloaded. All of which has put me drastically behind in word count. But that was all going to change for MY very first full ‘weekend’ of the school year. Sadly, like every other time I got an extra day off I have been practically unproductive! I did do laundry, but I may have played video games and read the morning away and then a good part of the afternoon instead of writing.
I am not stupid enough to promise anything for Friday, but that is partially why I am writing this on my first ‘Saturday’, instead of writing part of the scary story: The Adventures of Daniel II: The Rhyme and the Reason - Part 2 for my Saturday students-to get me pumped and in the mind set for an epic write Friday and to rock out Saturday and Sunday after class and hopefully get back on track! The plan is to go to bed early so I can wake up early to write. And since I should start taking allergy meds-for spring time pollen is all through the air right now, and my eyes itch-I have set an alarm for 19:00 to take the allergy meds and it can also serve as a ‘minder to go to bed! And I think I have even narrowed down my spring time allergy: Wisteria, which is all I can smell around campus right now!
As far as ‘Saturdays’ go, this one has been pretty good and I think I’ll have a pretty rocking ‘Sunday’ and ‘Monday’ too! How many people can say that?