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Brunette girl to blond girl on Michigan State campus:

“My family is from Bulgaria, but it’s still, like, all white.”

I keep doing things wrong, not noticing things, etc.  Today I finished commenting on someone else’s vocab. notebook (it’s a long story what that is, so I won’t explain), and sent it off to the teacher.  I was wondering where one particular part of it was, and I thought the person just forgot to include it.  Well, the document was on Excel, and I didn’t notice that it had two pages!  The second part was on another page!  I didn’t know until the teacher wrote me an e-mail about it.

I know I can’t do everything right, but I do feel embarrassed and upset whenever I make these sort of mistakes.

Here is his buddy, who had a wordier sign.

It’s been raining like mad all day, so I haven’t gone outside at all.  As a result, I’m getting stir-crazy, and I haven’t gotten as much done as I maybe would have liked to.  I did do one vocabulary notebook assignment and finished one reading, but that’s it.  I’m setting my sights on finishing one more reading, at least, tonight.

It’s from The Onion’s American Voices section:

Kim Jong Il May Have Had Stroke

I like the first comment.

Yesterday I misread “0 grams of fat” as “orgasms of fat”!

As I was getting ready for work the other day, I stumbled upon this video on Univision.  It was by a band I’d never heard of, Calle 13.  Visually, it was weird enough to amuse me, and I also liked the part where the guy was singing from his bicycle.  I think my favorite part was when he said something “looked like a” and then there were at least four seconds of silence because whatever he had said was so dirty it couldn’t be put on television.  I probably couldn’t have understood what he was saying anyway, but the fact that this guy was producing some sort of long, super-dirty Spanish word string amused me.

Atrevete-Te  (Does this mean something like “lift it up,” or “hitch it up”?)

Phew!  I finally got Internet service in my apartment.  I kind of splashed out and got a basic cable package too.  I don’t want to waste money, or waste time watching TV, but relaxing my mind from time to time will be good for my mental health.

The most important thing is getting Internet service.  I’m having this problem.  The old tenant did not cancel her subscription, which mean that although I can enjoy free cable TV, I can’t get on the Internet.  I’ve been hearing that it is possible if I get on through a cable, but I don’t know what kind of cable that would be (if it is the same kind as for the TV, how/where would it go into my computer?  Once I manage to get online I’ll post more, and put more pictures on Flickr.

Here is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to Sherry:

On the first day we had to meet with students, there were these crazy evangelists with huge signs ringing hand bells and yelling about eternal damnation!  They were frightening the foreign students during the pizza party, so this one professor asked them to please move away.  Then this one guy came over, pointed at a group of students from Libya, and said, “I’ll go away, but I want to tell you just one more thing.  You Muslims are going to Hell!”  Luckily the guys didn’t understand English very well.

Hello Kitty Vibrator

Probably not a good idea to look at this at work, although I am typing this at work!

Attacks, praise stretch truth at the GOP convention

From the Associated Press.

A new anime, from Japan.  As much as I am loath to defile my blog by even mentioning zombies, I have to say I think this will be worth watching.

WWII Anime

(Originally found on Japan Probe.)

It’ll be my first full week of classes tomorrow, and I’m pretty worried.  In fact, maybe I shouldn’t be sitting here writing this, but I just wanted to get an update and a little complaining done.  I have to prepare eight different one-hour classes per week.  Imagine that!  I think it’s really too much!  I had thought the situation would have been more like in China, where you prepare one class and present it multiple times.

Things here have been pretty chaotic.  I’ve had my first three days of teaching, and am faced with making a basic course description for my students by next week.  I’m pretty overwhelmed.  So far, what I’ve been doing is a bit simple.  I’ve got to ratchet it up a bit to make it useful for them.  I’m really exhausted too, because unfortunately, my classes are at 8:00 am, and I have to take the bus into school  because I don’t have a bike yet — I haven’t had time to buy one.  I have a few class assignments too, which I haven’t worked on enough.

Here is the dream I had a couple days ago, the one I wanted to post about:

I had a really cinematic dream last night, the kind that makes sleeping worthwhile. 

It was all about a young man who was a brilliant actor, but because of a combination of mental illness and epilepsy, he eventually had to be hospitalized.  He either escaped or was released too early, and ended up homeless, living in the subway tunnels, going from one train to another, like he was an animal patrolling its territory.  He had no consciousness of any other existence and was at one with the subway system.  He eventually started protecting a girl that was hiding down there, and got involved in exposing a criminal gang that was involved in assassinations in the subway.  He had witnessed what they were doing, and started communicating with the police, bit by bit, sending them messages.  These messaged enabled cops to strike against the gang in an operation that took place underground in a subway station.  During this, I guess one of the cops saw and recognized the man (who had been living down there for several years by this point, and was now in his 30’s or so).  He was caught, taken to the doctor, given therapy and medication, and then reunited with his family.  At this point, the dream changed a bit, and I was a member of the family, the fourth child out of five, I think, the second youngest girl.  It turns out the young man was from a brilliant family.  His father was a man with white hair and a beard, who might have been a composer, and his mom was a very refined woman.  The oldest sister was a musician, like a cellist, there was the second brother who was brilliant at something – maybe an architect, the third brother, the focus of the story, and then there was me.  There was a big gap in age between us.  He was in his thirties, maybe, and I was about eleven, or maybe thirteen.  I was a genius of some kind, just really smart, although I had not distinguished myself yet.  There was a younger sister too.  I was really excited to have my brother back, and leaned against him, embracing him for a long time on the first day he came back to our house.  Our house was on the beach, a very long, open house from which you could see the waves and shore.  There were big, long windows along the back of the house, just covered with thin white curtains, which waved with the wind.  The wind could blow through freely, people could come and go freely.  That’s the kind of family we were.  It gave our family a kind of transparency, because anyone could look in and see us, and according to the family philosophy, that was just fine.  I did become disturbed, though, because my father started replacing the sheer white curtains with thicker, heavy grayish ones.  I felt like it was because he wanted to enclose us, protect us, and try to prevent my brother from running away again.  (At times, my brother felt the lure of the tunnels, traveling from train to train, and felt an urge to go back again.)  I knew he wanted to protect us, but this “locking in” of our family went against everything we stood for, and would hurt us in the end. 

At that point, I woke up.  I hope when I go to sleep tonight, I can continue with this dream, so I can see what happens.

Grammar police punished for “fixing” rare sign

I think the usage police would have something to say about the use of “rare” in this sentence too.  It’s strange.  Perhaps “historic” or “distinctive,” or even “unique.”

Last night I went to buy a bunch of stuff, including a vacuum cleaner, but came home early because I remembered I had left my window open.  That’s a non-interesting tidbit for all of you.

The really interesting thing lately is a great dream I had two nights ago.  I haven’t posted it yet because I’ve been sending stuff from the office, and it seemed too personal writing about that.   But this weekend I’ll find a place with wireless and put it up.

I continue to settle in here and have had the pleasure of listening to NPR.  Things in East Lansing are a bit more expensive than I had hoped — maybe I screwed up a little.  I decided to get a cell phone instead of a land line, but I actually have to pay like $43 a month for it.  I also have to get my own Internet service, which might be like $35.  I was thinking what with making like $1,300 a month I’d be living like a king, but what with my rent and these expenses, maybe I can’t.