A few weeks ago, I was treated to my first China Movie experience. I went and saw the Hobbit in 3D with some fellow American friends. It was in English with Chinese subtitles, and I had a blast!
In America, I love going to the movies. So naturally, when my Chinese friend Kate, invited me to the movies to celebrate our friend Doris' birthday, I was excited. Movie time with friends is something I always did in high school and college.
The movie we were going to go see was Jack the Giant Killer! It was a movie that has been on my "to watch list" for quite some time. I had to teach two classes and an English corner today, so movie night with my friends was a great motivation to keep up the cheerful spirit. Our little movie-going party consisted of Kate and Doris (Chinese students) Andrew, Sydney and myself (American teachers.). We were all really excited about getting to go see a movie with friends. We got to the theater and grabbed our tickets.
Cool thing about Chinese theaters: they assign you seats, kind of. When you purchase your tickets, you get to choose what seat number you want. American theaters really should do this! No more jockeying to get the first spot in line for midnight showings or showings of any kind.
Anyways, we got our tickets and sat down. Though, right away Doris, Kate and I scurried off to use the ladies room before the film started. Another cool thing about Chinese movie theaters is that there is no promo film reel. It just starts the movie at the time it says on your ticket! This is slightly bad though, because I am used to America where I can run and use the bathroom during the promo reels and not worry about missing anything.
Us girls actually ran to the restroom and ran back to the theater, much to the amusement of the workers there. We entered the theater, donned our 3D glasses and sat down. We had only missed maybe two minutes of the film. It took me a few seconds, maybe only one and then it hit me. What the people's mouths were saying was not matching up with what I was hearing. The movie Jack the Giant Killer, an American movie, was not in English. It was dubbed over in Chinese!
Sydney, who had not gone to the restroom and had figured this out already, looked at my face and laughed! Kate, the poor dear, looked horrified. She had swore that it was going to be in English because, when she bought the tickets online, it said so. Some seat re-arranging was done so that Kate and Doris were positioned to translate for us.
Now, I had two options in front of me. Get upset that I couldn't understand what was being said, or have fun. We all chose to have fun. At first, Sydney and I made up what they were saying, dubbing it ourselves. But then, Kate and Doris after switching seats, began giving us the basics of what was being said which helped a lot. What also helped a lot was a little known skill that I have.
Some of you may know, I took American Sign Language for two years in high school and four semesters in college. (Mrs. Swank and Professr Donah, thank you so much!) When you sign, a lot of times you lip what you are signing, and I got pretty good at lip reading. So when the shots were showing the actor's mouths, I could 90% of the time correctly surmise or quote what they were saying. This was much to the amusement of Kate and Doris. What also was funny was being able to recognize the handful of Chinese words that I knew. Andrew knows more Chinese than Sydney and I do, so he was able to play the "recognize the Chinese word" game better than us.
The movie was great! I don't ever remember having that much fun at the movies. Was was really nice is that the Chinese people around us did not mind us talking, because a lot of them were talking also.
I really enjoyed the movie. It was funny, clean and left a good feeling in our hearts. I would love to see it again! Though, perhaps next time in English.
I am praising the Father for giving us all a spirit of joy and love and for friendship in these crazy adventures.
Oh China, thank you for these wonderful adventures!
<3 Hilary
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Crazy Laughter
The first week of classes is almost at an end. I had quite forgotten how much teaching takes out of me. Tuesday night, I actually went to bed at 9pm. That is shockingly early for me. Again this semester, I have a day off! Which this means I can stay up late the night before and sleep in the next day. Whoo!
My schedule this semester is pretty nice. I teach Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. I teach an 8am class, a 1pm class and a 3pm class on Mondays and Tuesdays and then the same for Friday, but no 3pm class. Wednesdays are meetings and office hours and Thursdays, my glorious Thursdays are my clean house, grocery shopping and writing days.
Enough about my schedule, for I have some pretty funny tales to tell about my first week of school.
I love my students so much. It was pretty funny, looking back on my first day of teaching in August and comparing it to my first day of teaching this week. In August I was a bundle of nerves, worrying about what if I forgot something, what if I ran out of things to say, yadda yadda yadda. This semester, I was blessed with confidence because I knew these kids, they were mine and they knew me already. I was also blessed that I get to start my week off with my favorite class! I know, I know, I am not supposed to have favorites, but, I do. I actually have 2 favorite classes. They are the same major, just two different sections because there are so many of them. It was in this class, the second section on Tuesday, that our story takes place.
So, because I have not seen my kiddos for over 2 months and vica verca, we played a game where we shared our stories from our holiday. But, since this is an oral class, I wanted them to do more of the talking. So what I did was, I wrote on the board the names of the cities I visited, split them into groups, and had them make up stories about what they thought I did during my holiday. They were allowed to ask me questions to get ideas, but for the most part, they had to make it up. The best story came from the third group and it went like this:
So one day, our teacher, Miss Hilary went to Xi'an and visited the Terracotta Warriors. When she was there, she met the dead Emperor and he came to life. She took him with her to Chengdu and they ate hotpot together. But, the Emperor was allergic to spicy food, so he died. And Hilary was very sad. So she took a panda from a zoo with her to Kunming because she was lonely. But, in Kunming it rained every day and the panda caught a fever, and died. And Hilary was very sad. So she borrowed an elephant and rode it across a river into Thailand where she met many pretty people and had fun. The End.
As you all know, I love to laugh, and this story had me in stitches. I always try to keep my composure in class and be professional; but with certain classes, I just cannot help it. I do think though, by me laughing with them, they become more comfortable around me. So, laughter has definitely brought me closer to my students and I cannot wait to continue speaking into their lives.
Another quick funny story has to do with Hilary being a klutz. I was walking to my office the other day, minding my own business, slowly picking my way across the ice, when one minute I was standing and the next I was on the ground. Yep, major wipe out on my right side of my body. My poor right elbow, this is the third time I have landed on it and I now have a nice little bump on it and a small bruise. Needless to say, yes I was laughing my head off because it honestly was funny. My main concern was not for my body, but for my huge Tervis Owl cup my parents had sent me for Christmas. I had been holding it in my right hand and it had hit the ground pretty hard. Once I saw that it was perfectly fine, I began to laugh and whimper a little about the pain I was in. I promise, I am fine, just a little sore today from the whiplash of falling so suddenly.
So while my internet is still behaving I am going to post this and run.
Keep on laughing!
Hil
My schedule this semester is pretty nice. I teach Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. I teach an 8am class, a 1pm class and a 3pm class on Mondays and Tuesdays and then the same for Friday, but no 3pm class. Wednesdays are meetings and office hours and Thursdays, my glorious Thursdays are my clean house, grocery shopping and writing days.
Enough about my schedule, for I have some pretty funny tales to tell about my first week of school.
I love my students so much. It was pretty funny, looking back on my first day of teaching in August and comparing it to my first day of teaching this week. In August I was a bundle of nerves, worrying about what if I forgot something, what if I ran out of things to say, yadda yadda yadda. This semester, I was blessed with confidence because I knew these kids, they were mine and they knew me already. I was also blessed that I get to start my week off with my favorite class! I know, I know, I am not supposed to have favorites, but, I do. I actually have 2 favorite classes. They are the same major, just two different sections because there are so many of them. It was in this class, the second section on Tuesday, that our story takes place.
So, because I have not seen my kiddos for over 2 months and vica verca, we played a game where we shared our stories from our holiday. But, since this is an oral class, I wanted them to do more of the talking. So what I did was, I wrote on the board the names of the cities I visited, split them into groups, and had them make up stories about what they thought I did during my holiday. They were allowed to ask me questions to get ideas, but for the most part, they had to make it up. The best story came from the third group and it went like this:
So one day, our teacher, Miss Hilary went to Xi'an and visited the Terracotta Warriors. When she was there, she met the dead Emperor and he came to life. She took him with her to Chengdu and they ate hotpot together. But, the Emperor was allergic to spicy food, so he died. And Hilary was very sad. So she took a panda from a zoo with her to Kunming because she was lonely. But, in Kunming it rained every day and the panda caught a fever, and died. And Hilary was very sad. So she borrowed an elephant and rode it across a river into Thailand where she met many pretty people and had fun. The End.
As you all know, I love to laugh, and this story had me in stitches. I always try to keep my composure in class and be professional; but with certain classes, I just cannot help it. I do think though, by me laughing with them, they become more comfortable around me. So, laughter has definitely brought me closer to my students and I cannot wait to continue speaking into their lives.
Another quick funny story has to do with Hilary being a klutz. I was walking to my office the other day, minding my own business, slowly picking my way across the ice, when one minute I was standing and the next I was on the ground. Yep, major wipe out on my right side of my body. My poor right elbow, this is the third time I have landed on it and I now have a nice little bump on it and a small bruise. Needless to say, yes I was laughing my head off because it honestly was funny. My main concern was not for my body, but for my huge Tervis Owl cup my parents had sent me for Christmas. I had been holding it in my right hand and it had hit the ground pretty hard. Once I saw that it was perfectly fine, I began to laugh and whimper a little about the pain I was in. I promise, I am fine, just a little sore today from the whiplash of falling so suddenly.
So while my internet is still behaving I am going to post this and run.
Keep on laughing!
Hil
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)