I am very proud of our students. They are doing more and more things on their own. Rocio wrote a blog to tell about the talent show. Today three Chinese students are telling about the exercises we will do next week. Bi Yu translated a Chinese hand exercise PowerPoint and presented to all of the classes today.
I love spring time. It brings out the best in everyone.
About a week ago, I downloaded and installed QQ. What ix QQ? QQ is a messenger program like MSN Messenger, Skype, or Yahoo Messenger. What is different about QQ? Almost all of the people use QQ are Chinese. I installed QQ because I thought it would help me learn more Chinese since almost everyone else who uses QQ is Chinese. I sent an e-mail to my Chinese friends after I installed QQ and I soon started receiving notices from friends that I had added them. One surprising thing about QQ is that some things are easier to do in QQ than in other programs. For example, if you want to send a picture of something that you can see on your computer, like a program you are working with, you can choose to copy it and just paste it into the window. Some friends share music with me by just sending a daily link.
Some things I don't like about QQ is that sometimes my whole keyboard freezes and I can't type anything. I need to restart my computer when that happens. A couple of times my computer has just crashed. QQ is the only program I have had that happen with since I started using Windows XP.
If you have QQ, my QQ number is 1094442675. Oh, in QQ, everyone has a number and not a name. That is another difficult thing about the programs. If you can't read people's Chinese names in Chinese characters (hanzi), you don't always know you are talking with. I think I have 35 friends in QQ, but I am only sure of about 12 of their names.
I have learned a little more Chinese since installing QQ, but most of the time, I just chat in English. I think it will help me learn Chinese, though, because my friends aer helping me more since I got QQ.
Sunday we had our family dinner. I stayed up late on Saturday making sweet and sour chicken and the noodles for Chinese chicken salad. I should have learned something from the experience. When I reheated the stirfry and the sweet and sour chicken, they turned mushy. Everyone said the food was good, but it was disappointing. The oli I used was too old so the flavors of the some of the food was not as good as it could have been. We ate earlier than usual so everyone left by about 6. One thing that happened was that my sister-in-law brought grape juice, ginger ale, and pineapple juice to make the punch that we always had when I was a child. However, after the meal my wife started having a headache which just got worse. She thinks it may have been a reaction to the grape skin abstract that was in the grape juice. She had a similar headache a year ago when she took a vivamin that had grape extract in it. She is thinking that she is sensitive to grape extract.
This coming weekend my brother Keith's wife Marilyn and my mother are coming to dinner at our house. I usually cook beef or chicken for the family dinner. You see, the second Sunday of each month, we invite our children, brothers, and other family members to come to our house for dinner.
Sometimes we have as many as fifteen people. It's one of the best things that we have done as a family. Now we have memories of our parents who have died but came to teh dinners.
The seasons are changing. The weather is getting cooler. In California, this is probably the best time to plant. The weather is cool enough so that plants don't dry out so quickly, but warm enough so that they still grow quickly. I worry about whether I will get everything done that I want to before the cold weather starts. A week ago I planted lettuce, carrots, bok choi, and other plants. Saturday I weeded my yard, went and bought some plants at the UC Davis Arboretum plant sale. However, the plants were more expensive than I had hoped they would be so I didn't buy as much as I might
My weekend was too short. I did a lot, but I wanted to do much more. Friday afternoon I drove to visit my mother in Livermore. The trip takes about 1 1/2 hours of driving to get there and then two hours to get back. My mom was doing OK and we had a good time talking. When I got home, my wife and I went out to eat. We were going to have Mexican food, but the restaurant was too crowded. Then we went to Mimi's Cafe. There was a 45 minute wait there, so we went to Pei Wei's. The restaurant was full so we ordered food to go and ate at home. I had orange peel shrimp.
Saturday I planted some seeds in my garden, went and got 10 bales of grassy alfalfa for my sheep and llamas, and then went to a Sunday school 50's and 60's party where we ate hot dogs and hamburgers and had root beer floats.
Sunday I went to church, planted more seeds and plants, and then I fixed three meals so that we would have food for the rest of the week for dinner. I made brown rice zucchini loaf, teriyaki chicken thighs, and chicken fajitas. And then I cleaned guinea pig cages. (My kitchen is a mess; I haven't had time to clean it yet!)
In the United States, we don’t have just one tradition for celebrating birthdays. I guess almost everyone has a cake with candles and ice cream. Sometimes there is a party for children with games and small prizes that children can take home. In my family, we usually followed the tradition of letting the “birthday boy/girl” choose their favorite food for dinner. We didn’t have money for lots of presents, but we usually got one medium size gift.
Some of my birthdays stand out in my mind. When I was ten years old, my father gave me a ring with my birthstone (the jewel for the month that I was born in). When I was twelve, my parents took me to an old fashioned movie theater which was very large and had Greek-style columns like it was a Greek temple. We watched the musical, “Music Man”. I can still see scenes from the movie in my mind.
Birthdays do mark landmarks in our lives. I felt very fortunate to celebrate my 60th birthday with friends in China. While I wish my wife had been able to be there too, I especially enjoyed the cake, the karaoke, and the great food with Chinese food and those memories of that celebration are going to stay with me for the rest of my life.
I have started to teach less each day. That's not exactly right...I teach from fewer books and I take more time before I move on. Today, though, the class tired of doing pronunciation after an hour and was ready to move on. Maybe teaching is like tai chi; the slower the better. I'm ont sure. I know it's hard to learn a language and it takes lots of time. I need to give my students more time to work and use the language. I think that's what I am learning now. Time will tell.
We've been doing tai chi in the morning. It's not the Chinese style; it's an American style. I enjoy the chance to be together with the other classes. I felt a bit foolish leading it this morning, but I don't really mind looking a bit foolish if it makes people laugh and we can enjoy ourselves.
