99% of the time i am incredibly happy, buoyant, flail my arms a lot and talk about two octaves louder than necessary. but occasionally when i'm either alone for too long or get stressed out it takes about two seconds for me to sink into a depressed mood, skulking sullenly around my apartment and drowning my sorrows in a cup of tea and woe is me text messages. earlier i texted a chinese friend in terrible hanyu saying i was feeling gloomy, and his response was actually really cool and a bit of a lesson in chinese for me:
"你要开心我也开心"
i'm a little unclear as to exactly what he was saying but badly translated it means "you want(? or must, or need?) to feel happy, i too feel happy". i'm assuming this was very sweet but the coolest part is the 开心, which literally means 'open heart', the first character being kai1 [to open] and the second being xin1 [heart]. i had to look it up to find out what it means and kai xin is the verb 'to feel happy'! i just think it's ridiculously cute. open heart = feeling happy. how practical and poetic.
i did my first english corner at a big english training chain school here in hangzhou on wednesday. it was terrifying speaking to a room full of adults as they don't shriek or randomly start dancing, but nonetheless the class went really well. i did it on movies, talking about genres, and focusing mostly on the language associated with discussing components of movies. it went over pretty well, lots of good discussion and a few laughs too. example - i was talking about setting/background, asked them to pick a movie they'd seen, then directed the where/when question at them. one guy's movie was Lost in Beijing, an allegedly sexy movie about a foot massage girl in...Beijing.
me: where does the movie take place?
student: IN THE BED!
amazing. anyway, tomorrow i'm repeating the lesson at the second school that the training centre has in the city so we'll see if that one goes just as well or flops miserably. it's only twice a week, an hour each time, but the money i get from it is covering the cost of my private chinese lessons (also twice a week) so it's a pretty sweet dealio.
between mandarin lessons, the english corners, my regular teaching job, AND the occasional freelance design work - on top of the ol social life - i am feeling pretty busy but it's definitely good for me. significant steps have also been forcing myself to cook and trying to take buses instead of taxis. i'm also attempting to learn the names of my a hundred and something students and actually plan lessons so yeah, hectic, weird, but made of awesome.
am feeling about 50 times better right now as per usual by the end of my posts, this time no t.i. but the sounds of traffic, the constant ding of received texts about open hearts and dinner parties, and the therapy that only masala chai can bring are good enough for now. zaijian!
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