zixingche - bikey chinese lesson

i am nuts about chinesepod and can't help myself. yesterday's brand new intermediate lesson was all about fixing a bike. to listen:

	中级78 A Flat Bicycle Tire
	Visit ChinesePod.com

and some additional vocab from listeners:

brakes 刹车 (shāchē)
cable 刹车线 (shāchē xiàn), 闸线 (zhá xiàn)
pedal 踏板 (tàbǎn)
reflector 反光板 (fǎnguāng bǎn)
handle bars 龙头 (lóngtóu), 车头 (chētóu), 手把 (shǒubǎ)
bike parking shed 车棚 (chēpéng)
to have gotten rusty 生锈了 (shēngxiù le)
“The handle bars are crooked.” 车头歪了。 (chētou wāi le)
mountain bike 山地(自行)车 (shāndì (zìxíng)chē)
安全帽 (ānquánmào) and 头盔 (tóukuī)
坐墊 zuòdiàn seat
尾灯 wěidēng taillight
坐杆 zuògān seat post
坐杆夹 zuògānjiā seat post clamp
反光板 fǎnguāngbǎn reflector
飞轮 fēilún rear sprocket lit. “fly gear”
后轴 hòuzhóu rear axle
后拨 hòubō rear derailleur
链条链贴 liàntiáo/liàntiē chain
气嘴 qìzuǐ stem
前拨 qiánbō front derailleur
牙盘护盘 yápán/hùpán front gear
曲柄 qūbǐng cranks
申轴 zhōngzhóu middle axle
脚踏 jiǎotà pedal
水壶架 shuǐhújià water holder
车架 chējià frame
钢线 gāngxiàn spokes
车圈 chēquān rim
外胎 wàitāi tire
碟刹 diéshā disk brake
前轴 qiánzhóu front axle
把立 bǎlì stem
码表 mǎbiǎo odometer/spedometer lit. “number meter”
碗组 wǎnzŭ headset lit. “bowl group”
横把 héngbǎ handlebars
指拨 zhǐbō shifter
刹把 shābà brake handle
前叉 qiánchā front fork

linfield debut

friday was one heck of a crazy day! i woke up at about 5am, and Sparky and i snookered our way to downtown in just enough time to get hot water for Breakfast on the Bridges, voter registration cards, and signs made such as "exercise . . . your right to vote" and "are you registered to vote at your current address? reg. cards available here!". on the way to work, Sparky and i telepathized to finally name our lovely bambina trailer. so next time you see that three of us, kindly tell Minerva what a cute trailer she is. she likes that.
so anyway, we got to the bridge, broke out some hot water and plums that Joan our FABULOUS volunteer brought to the office, registered folks to vote, then busted away to prepare for Green Empowerment's Board of Director's meeting. five minutes before the meeting, i called Gwen Leonard to say that my voice still wasn't back (curses!), and she informed me that i was already on the program for the dedication to the Vivian Bull Music Building at linfield. this is my fault, as i didn't call her the day before. luckily, Gwen suggested that i could sing a little chinese ditty, which is about all my voice could handle.
just after the Board meeting, mom called and agreed to drive us to mcminnville. we arrived just in time for the earlier concert to hear the glorious personages of Brian Bartley and Joe Theissen sing (they're performing in ragtime until oct. 25th, and they are not to be missed). one person couldn't make it through the parking lot of dundee in time for the concert, so i pinch hit. it turned out much better than i was fearing! i asked for the audience's forgiveness and offered in trade an introduction to the songs in chinese. thankfully made it through "Yue Liang Dai Biao Wode Xin" and "Mai Tang Yuan" without too garish a passaggio.
everyone was there! it was a reunion of about an entire town that i had been missing! Wynn and others from the first baptist church, Donna Root, two Susans, Tiff, Tom Gressler and the Marshalls (sounds like a great band), a number of other professors, a lot of alumni with whom i share fond memories, they were all there. i think i hugged everyone on the planet. after the dedication and second concert, Gwen took any performers who could stay out to sushi. what a great conversation. what an utterly fantastic day! mom and i were glowing all the way home, and i couldn't stop gleaming all saturday.
more about saturday soon, but i don't want to bore my two readers any longer.

last paddle hurrah in san fran

last weekend marked the final dragonboat competition of the year. held in san francisco, there were over 100 paddling teams that helped compose the weekend encampment on treasure island. i can't recall whether i've mentioned it before, but dragonboat competitions look not unlike a modern depiction of a medieval military campaign. there are a number of tents, each sporting its own banner and hosting its own distinctly-attired cadre bent on thwarting the other groups' dreams of victory by employing time-honored devices. races involve a closely-contained covey of odiferous folks who employ a lot of muscle and war cries to propel them to the finish line. the space between the finish line and a lot of expensive yachts was rather slender on treasure island, so we had to hold the boat quickly after crossing. i was in the 2nd bench for most of the races, so i had an intimate understanding of how imminently our potential rendezvous with yacht gunnels (and very possibly personal bankruptcy) was. a weekend of such close encounters rendered me unable to phonate as i repeatedly and loudly encouraged teammates to hold the boat. tee hee.

so that was the actual competition. now to san francisco. ahhh! Corey and i enjoyed beds in a chi-chi (sp?) hotel on market street secured by Debbye (thanks, Debbye!). Linda, Corey and i were hotel-mates for the weekend, and hilarity ensued. Corey got me a most humbling and treasured gift - travel scrabble. two of our three nights in san francisco were spent drinking wine and playing scrabble. it was delightful! a guilty squandering of a beautiful city's myriad opportunities, but we just couldn't help ourselves.
what did we do? we visited citylights books, walked around a lot, ate cheap pizza, walked around some more. the last day, i walked in the haight and golden gate park areas and returned to the waterfront to - you guessed it - walk around some more.
next to playing scrabble and paddling, the greatest pasttime was to be found in and around chinatown. it has been so long since i've spoken chinese with such wild abandon! most folks i met could speak mandarin, which is rare in portland (most speak cantonese). i shopped for cds that no one seemed to have. i continued my quest for portable chopsticks to replace mine, and no one had even heard of the idea before. i hunted for a restaurant with a chef from changchun or beijing to no avail. and i was unsuccesful every time, but completely in chinese which gave me the chance to speak mandarin some more with the next person or shop who didn't know or didn't have. it was fabulous!!! i went a few whole hours without speaking english. our last night in san fran, a group of castaways deigned to follow me in the winding route from our hotel to a restaurant that had been recommended by two different music store vendors, and we got to order a bunch off the menu (stir-fried eggplant and hot and spicy tofu . . . yumm). it was great! i have missed china, and san francisco is the nearest thing nearest to portland. what a find.

the only downside to the weekend was that i returned to portland with absolutely no voice (i will never yell that much again lest my voice leave and never return) and screaming muscles on the entire right side of my torso (i paddled all the races port-side, which will also never be repeated).

eledile eulogy

i am happy to announce that my time spent between bangkok and nakhon pathom, between the elephant training ground and the crocodile farm, have left me both alive and unscathed. there are worse occurrences in life than walking past baby elephants and their mothers on one's way to work and having dinner with a crocodile wrestler and his family.

yes, it's been a quite few months in sampran, my current hometown. i have to admit that children i have taught in thailand vary quite radically from their chinese counterparts. the first few days were an incredible shock. students were wrestling each other (and i'm talking wwf, not greco-roman) down to the floor, sliding under and over tables and talking like each individual had undergone surgery to insert a microphone next to his or her vocal chords. in short, i just didn't know where to begin. i began to relax a little with one class of 5th grade girls on the second day who sat politely in their chairs and raised their hands to answer questions. towards the end of class, i turned my back to one side of the class and collected papers from the other side. within 20 seconds, there was a shattering sound. i looked back to find that in 20 seconds two students had picked up a chair and begun playing with it . . . straight into three panes of glass. that was the first week.

by the end of the semester in march, most rebellions had been quelled and forces of nature diffused to resemble a low-grade hurricane. i had grown accustomed to the tempests and tumult which was my daily environment, and now i occasionally miss the chaotic amorpha (i hereby anoint "amorpha" a word by right of poetic license) created by cacophonous youths.

but on to new adventures! the end of february brought with it the end of term (summer in thailand is march and april). most teachers went home for the summer, and we bid adieu to the cantankerous youths, but a few teachers stayed to do textbook work and some tutoring. i was assigned to edit and create activities and dialogues for energy sources and recycling. did they know i was green? because i hope it didn't come as a shock when one of the activities designated to mathayom 3 studying coursework published by the archdiocese of bangkok during their english lesson was to write the energy policy council and express concern for thai dependence on oil and the need to encourage energy conservation. tee-hee!

it has also been my glorious treat during these summer months to tutor a young priest, father sahaporn, in preparation for his masters study in america. we have discussed the movie "the passion of christ", life as a seminarian, latin prefixes and roots, football (thumbs down manchester united, thumbs up arsenal) and anything else that comes into our heads. it has been delight incarnate! i have also had the sublime opportunity to spend time with four aspiring seminarians as they sachet down the garden path to bilingualism.

alfy, as many of you know, has been living in nakhon si thammarat in southern thailand, and the commute between bangkok and nakhon has been a difficult row to hoe at times. i began looking for a theatre teaching job in february and finally found one a few weeks ago in nearby suratthani! i will be teaching m1-m2 students (7th and 8th grade in america) drama tempered with a touch of english literature from may onward.

this (finally) brings me to the present day. i am currently in suratthani doing orientation for my new job. the other teachers are absolutely lovely, and i look forward to spending time with every single one of them. the fact that i get to see more of alfy AND get to teach theatre in the meantime is certainly more good fortune than i can credit to merit. and i am going to get a bicycle! most residents of thailand opt for a moped or motorbike as their flavor of transportation, but a few of us here at suratthani school are taking the sweaty route and going for a pedal-pusher. so i was on the lookout for a bicycle shop, a walking tour which took me all over the face of my new fair city. my journey ended at a bike shop near the river which was run by a lovely woman. i asked her how much a few bikes were, and she invited me to look at her bike catalog. lo and behold there was chinese written in pen next to each description! next thing i know we were speaking chinese and meeting her daughter who is learning english and chinese and who has lived on the west coast and southern china! i found a bicycle, new friends, and a thai-english language exchange partner all in one go. who needs fred meyer's? this is one-stop shopping! now all i need is a place to stay and life is golden.

next week is songkran, so i will be sure to write an account of the most festive time in thailand as it comes to pass.

hope all is well with you and that you are either still awake after reading my update or have had a restful sleep. as a very wise woman often says: work hard, be happy, make friends. cheers.

greetings from the grave

somewhere between the western and chinese new years, i heard a voice that reminded me of my journal's neglect. that voice sounded a lot like sandy malter's, and to ignore a suggestion from a wise source would be paramount to abject folly.

it's too late for christmas and too early for the chinese new year, so please consider this (my devoted two readers) a post-holiday card without the pomp or postage.

as mentioned in the last entry from another time and place, i returned from a wonderful romp across china with my mother and her linfield students. i spent one more month at bai da wei school in changchun before heading in a southerly direction to dalian, china. why would one meander from one northern chinese city to another? one might well ask. the answer is a teaching position in dalian, the coastal town that boasts both the occasional beach and a glorious coffee shop. the workload at sea rich sino-british college was far more involved than my previous esl (e.nglish as a s.econd l.anguage) foray with bai da wei. although this cut into swimming and exploring time, it also provided an excuse to spend an inordinate amount of time with my fellow co-workers. michelle murray, another bai da wei teaching veteran, was one such colleague who made a similar relocation from changchun to dalian, via america. we became roommates as well as reunited colleagues in one of the most enviable apartments ever. i did not deserve such palatial quarters, and i know that i will never enjoy such domestic luxuriance again. this knowledge only leads me to cherish the time spent all the more, as well as the time spent learning how to cook chinese food with yang shifu.
i found the college students at sea rich to be taller than the 4-year-old tots in changchun. there are, of course, upsides to the additional height and worldly experience of one's students. together my post-adolescent students and i suffered through bibliographies and academic writing,yes, but we also enjoyed discussing "the truman show" and "the shawshank redemption." the chaucers of china, my first esl drama class, was a group formed by six talented students. talented and tall.
the jewel of dalian, of course, is not from dalian but from tianjin. she is the alpha and omega of chinese instruction, and many sea rich foreign-language teachers became foreign-language students after that annoying sea rich bell rang at the end of the day. where are you, dear rebecca, because my tones have gone to hell in a handbasket!

and then it was time to spend time with dad in thailand. an outsider might think that i hated my father, given what i put that unquellable spirit through. i strapped a heavy tank on his back and encouraged him to dive into shark-infested waters. i practically walked his feet off by showing him the backpacker's thailand (the only way to travel). i made him do hard time on a hard seat from nakhon sii thammarat to bangkok. and through all that he still found a way to say "i love you." what a guy.

the holidays were spent in portland and new york, and i am afraid that i would bore everyone with my potentially lengthy account tagged onto an already scandalously-long entry. let's just say they will be visits eagerly redone.

and now i'm in thailand, one hour from bangkok by bus and 2 minutes from an elephant training ground and a crocodile farm. if i don't get squashed or devoured, i will recount life here and try to do it justice.

hope all is well with you in whatever climate you find yourselves in!