Magores cleaned house today

In order to try to make up for my lack of postings recently, I thought I would describe a typical day off for me in Beijing.

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Today is Monday. This is my "Saturday".

7:00am - Woke up. (This is late for me. Usually up by 6am.)
7:45am - Woke up again. (I loved this extra 45 minutes.)
8:30am - Got out of bed.
8:31 - 10:30 - Did a little research into advanced English grammar. I have to make a test for the English teachers of Chinese descent (from hereon out called EToCD). I was encouragaed to make it as hard as possible. It's harder than it sounds. As a native English speaker, who was not an English major, I have forgotten alot of the details. I just talk, I just write. I don't "think" about it.

Consider this... You can probably remember how to conjugate a verb in the basic forms.
-I ran (yesterday).
-I am running (right now).
-I run (everyday).
-I will run (tomorrow).

But, if you were asked to use the verb "write" in the "past perfect" or "past perfect progressive" tense, could you do it? The only I can, is because I teach this stuff. A year ago? No way.

We all speak in the past progressive and past perect progressive. We just don't know that that's what it's called.

But, my co-workers... The EToCD are expected to know this stuff off the top of their heads. Even though they are teaching children from 2 -6 years old.

Kinda crazy if you ask me.

(If you're curious, I'll conjugate "write" at the end of this post.)

10:30am - 12:30pm - Puttered around the house. A little cleaning. A little dancing in my underwear Risky Business style. You know... The basic puttering stuff.

12:30 - 1:30 - Went our for lunch from the street vendor, and the video store.

I forget what its called, but lunch was: Two bread things, with an egg cooked inside of each, smothered in spicy bean paste, and a piece of lettuce in the middle. This is good food.

Good food =
"hao3 chi1" - official pronunciation guide (Pinyin)
"how chrrr" - my very unoffical pronunciation guide for people that don't know pinyin

After food, went to the video store. Bought 3 things...
- A fantasy dungeons and dragons type movie - Watched it. Horrible
- An old kung fu flick (chop-socky). Haven't watched yet.
- Elvis CD - I plan on teaching an "American Song" to the 5 year old I work with M-F.
--I'm thinking "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis might be good. (Probably not, but I like it, and I'm the teacher so...)
--Also tempted to teach "Ob-la-di-ob-la-da" by the Beatles. (Good pronunciation practice in that one.)
--"All together now" by the Beatles would be another good one.
--"Can't buy me love" would be good, except its too fast for 5 year old Chinese kids.
--"Voulez-vous" by Abba is another option. (I love this song., but "Name of the Game " is better.

1:30pm - 4:30pm - Watched the crappy movie, cleaned house. Those of you that have lived with me know that I'm not the tidiest person in the world. In fact, I can be a down-right slob at times. But, believe it or not, I'm the cleanest person in this house.

Sure, I leave my backpack on the couch. My jacket is on the arm of the chair, rather than on the coatrack. And, The Girls mop the floor.

BUT... I scrub the corners of the bathroom/kitchen on my hands and knees. The Girls do that? Nope. I (capital/bold "I") do the toilet brush thing.

Beijing is a very dusty place. THe wind blows the sand from the (Gobi?) desert into town.

I don't mind "stuff" laying around, but "dirt" and "dust"? Nope. Not my version of clean.

Speaking of cleaning...

4:30pm - 7:30 - Typed this. And, The Girls just got home from work. So, its a good time to wrap up.

(In their defense, "The Girls" work 6 days a week minimum, and they do at least 11 hours a day. Part of their job is cleaning stuff. I might not want to scrub stuff at home, if I did it at work. But, I don't. So, I do.)


Anyway..... There's a fairly typical day off for me.
-Wake up
-Work
-Clean
-Veg