Curious incidents...?

This is a story from a few weeks ago that is simply just too good to not re-tell...

I'm just arriving home on a Friday night with a couple friends in tow. We're planning to enjoy a few sodas before embarking on a night out with a bunch of the new teachers. MM is at my apartment getting some things ready.

So MM notices this weird wet spot on the floor in my bedroom, and since we'd both been gone all day, this is strange. She decides to investigate. She sniffs it. She touches it. Neither of these sensory endeavours yield information. Still uncertain, she decides to lick her finger so to taste the substance making up the mysterious wet spot. She's still confused... she mentions the fact that there's a wet spot on my bedroom floor. I'm thinking that it may have rained during the day and it came in the window. We hang out for a couple of hours, then head out on the town. Because we're busy, we forget about it. Coming home later, I step in something wet but I'm too tired to deal with it. It's late, I'm exhausted.

In the morning, I wake up with a start, I hear a loud sound coming from outside. Nope... inside. It's not just any sound... it's barking. It was the sound of a dog barking. Like, 10 feet away from my bed, in the hallway. In my apartment. The dog is barking loud. I get scared, put on some pants, and investigate. No dog. I go out to the patio. No dog. Then, though, I see the girl next door on her patio. Her pet pug is on the patio with her. I go back inside. I see a puddle against/beside the hutch in my entrance.

I then realize one of the consequences of living on the top floor of an apartment building in China, where apartments have connected balconies. A dog had been using my apartment for a pee/playground when I left my patio door open. I also realize my girlfriend licked dog urine.

T

Year #4 and another long hiatus

As per usual, the time seems to disappear without notice. In a mere two days, October will be over. Just last week it was summer, but yesterday we got our first taste of the cool north wind funneling down from the hinterlands of Siberia. And somehow, barely after being able to remember the names of my new students, I'm hopping on a plane for my first holiday of the year.

My new job as Department Head has been, well, full. I'm the head of English 11, which has about 12 teachers between Intro to Lit and English 11 classes. I've got a full load of English courses myself that are keeping me plenty busy, and since we've already sent home our first round of report cards, the month of September was anything but quiet. Multiple meetings per week with my department, the admin, and our new English coordinator... regular and ongoing emails with department colleagues, coordinating teaching strategies with the other grade levels, and trying to keep up on my marking/planning. It's hard for me to believe that in just my fourth year here, I'm considered one of the "olds"... full of wisdom, knowledge and guidance. What is the school/world coming to?? 

My new assignment also brought me a change of venue over to the Girls' Campus. This has been a weird but fun adjustment. I find myself much more calm in the classroom and the constant spitting in the hallways and lack of interest in the classroom aren't nearly as evident. Whether it's because of the DH job or that my classes (including my homeroom) are all taught in the same classroom and I don't have to share with anyone else, I'm not exactly sure what the reason is, but I know that things feel much better this year. I even have a couple of my old middle school students from 3 years ago in my English class. My decorating talents pale in comparison to my Zhou Enlai homeroom (top students in the grade), but the girls just take care of everything and make it awesome. The girls can be loud and boisterous and they like to laugh. I'd come to assume that it'd be like pulling teeth to get them talking. Nope... definitely not the case. I even feel like I'm finally starting to figure out this teaching thing. Who knows? Maybe I'll make a run at being a decent teacher after all.

But enough about work. It's vacation time! The wonderful MM and I are leavin' on a jet plane for Kuala Lumpur and Singapore for the next week. It wasn't exactly a financially frugal trip, but the hope is that we'll come back with more potential for jobs for next year in much more tropical, much more beautiful locales. Your duty (for those few readers who read this nonsense), is to cross fingers, say prayers, or burn some incense to inspire some good luck to float our way.

I have a post from the summer that I'll post soon about my travels, and another one about an an unexpected incident of a mystery animal in the nighttime. Those will come soon (quite possibly during layovers en route to the tropics). Until then...

T