Happy Thanksgiving! Of course I am sick today (this seems to be a Thanksgiving tradition for me).
I don't have much to write about. My teaching hours were reduced when I was promoted, with the consequence that this year has been depressingly devoid of horrifying student conversations, just a couple of mildly amusing ones:
This isn't technically a student conversation, but I'm counting it because I was in character for some reason, and because it was totally wasted on its audience:
Vladimir Petrovich*: You never do anything stupid?
Me: No, never.
V: I think it is okay to do mistakes sometimes.
M: Well, evidently.
Funny student:
Fyodor Pavlovich: Have you found a new boyfriend yet?
Me: It's been two weeks!
F: So, more than one.
I got tagged for a meme, but I don't know seven bloggers to re-tag (and, for the record, it really is bothering me that there aren't seven rules), so I'm just going to tell you seven weird things about myself:
1. I'm allergic to all fruit except citruses. I'm not allergic to cooked fruit at all, and salad dressing makes me less allergic to tomatoes. I haven't tried it on other fruits (and, honestly, have no intention of doing so). I'm less allergic to unripe fruit.
2. When I first came here, I was so self-conscious about my accent that I just wrote notes for everything I wanted at stores and restaurants. I was also self-conscious about my handwriting, so I often asked my boss to write notes for me.
3. I dressed up as a boy for the last Halloween party. I didn't condition my hair for a week, studied the way that guys move, borrowed clothes from a coworker (who was dressing up as me), padded my shoulders and waistline like crazy, gave myself a dreadful moustache using some mascara, and resolved to only drink beer all night. I was very proud of this costume. My coworker told me I looked like Hilary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry." "Is that a compliment?" I asked. "I...guess."
4. I haven't dyed my hair since 2006. I wanted to dye it gray for a while, but exactly nobody thought this was a good idea, and the amount of bleaching it would require made me give up entirely.
5. I eventually learned how to use chopsticks at age 17 because I was at a restaurant where they didn't give me a fork and I was too embarrassed to ask for one. Years later, I was in China and every time I walked into a restaurant people would watch me just to see whether I could eat with chopsticks. It would have been kind of embarrassing if I hadn't been able to.
6. I really really miss swiss orange and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Not together.
7. I think I remember conversations better than most people, to the point that I find myself pretending not to remember stories that I've been told before because it just makes the conversation easier.
* No, these are not real names, just really pretentious aliases. Please do not stalk my students.
If I weren't who's to say
15 years ago
6 comments:
Mmm..Swiss Orange. I haven't had that in a long time. However, I can do something about it.
Sorry you don't have more conversations to report, but the two you did recall were worth the wait.
Of course, we need to see a picture of you from Halloween, but more than that, we need to see the coworker who went as you.
How odd that no one thought dying your hair gray was a good idea. If you had, then it would be more believable when you pretend to not remember conversations.
I've just noticed that three of these are food-related, three have to do with a complete lack of social skills, and two are about making myself less conventionally attractive. I wonder what that's all about (okay, I can guess).
Yeah, sometimes I think my conversations sound like TV dialogue. My response to the student was that I had a boyfriend in every city in Russia and he said that explains why I travel so much.
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Sorry to distress everyone with my meme-tagging. I had been tagged twice and just lashed out accordingly. I found it a very odd meme: please, why not seven rules? It's not restricted enough to be anything but arbitrary. Maybe it's a psychological test to see what you mention.
I have only slightly embarrassed to admit I have never learned to use chopsticks. I'm just not that coordinated, and I might as well take advantage of being a doofus white boy. I've actually made my friend Shawn, who is a native speaker of Mandarin, ask for a fork for me in his native tongue at the more authentic Chinese restaurants. You can make your own forked tongue joke, if you are so inclined.
When you say you wanted to dye your hair gray -- do you actually mean gray, or do you mean silver?
The item about writing notes was very touching. I had a great aunt who refused to speak English because she didn't want to sound like a peasant. But it's pretty impressive that you could already write notes in Russian.
I suppose I actually mean silver. But now I'm at an age where people legitimately have gray hair, so it just wouldn't be as shocking as it would have been two years ago (when I first had the idea).
I wanted to dye my hair a couple months ago, but the first box of dye I picked up was an exact match for my natural color. I decided that my hair color probably wasn't the issue.
Well, I have cousins (the Irish side of the family) who were completely silver-haired by the time they were 30, so it can happen, and it can look pretty nice. As someone who spent a year and a half as a blonde, I can't argue against hair-dyeing -- I found it actually a fascinating experiment in perception. I should have gotten an NEA grant to pay for the dye.
Basically, I just want it all to stay up there. I don't care what color it becomes.
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