Yes, idioms and idiots have something in common: they make me scream! This is especially true when I am trying to teach them (the idioms not the idiots!). Today I tried to teach my students the lesson in the book we are using; it is supposedly about idioms. The passage they were required to read was short, but it was so full of idioms and unfamiliar phrases that they were not able to even attempt answering any of the comprehension questions. Of course this meant attempting to go through the passage chunk by chunk to get some meaning from it. No, we could not even go sentence by sentence as most of the sentences were too difficult! I knew this would be the case because when I read it, I had to read it slow and put some thought into it to make sure I knew what was going on. If I had to do that, how much more would someone whose grasp of English is not that good have to put into it?
Teaching aside, today and yesterday seemed to be relatively uneventful, yet quite nice. I did have to give the person who is paid to clean our house some money, but I guess that is how it works. It seems odd that I have to pay someone to clean the house when that is their job, and I am supposed to have the common areas cleaned for free according to my contract. I don't like him to go into my room to clean, but I did allow him to do so once (and he did it on his own a couple of other times, though I will start locking the door from now on), so I suppose he did earn the money, whether I had agreed to it or not.
I have also decided to attempt to do a little research on English and attempt to write a paper to see if I can present it at a conference. I have never really done this type of thing before, but I suppose now is a good time to start. It is great for professional development, and it gives me a productive way to spend time while trying not to sleep :)
Today during lunch, I spent time with two students who were making signs/posters for the sports day on Saturday. Many topics of discussion came up including the one not wanting to come back to university next year because it makes her tired, and the idea of dating, marriage and such. One was talking about how there are no boyfriend/girlfriends here because the father and brothers have to agree to whomever asks for the woman's hand in marriage; and they normally know each other because it is almost always family. This is odd to me, but I suppose that if that is what it must be, for now, so be it.
I did have a little bit of distress last night when trying to pay one of my bills. It seems that they locked my account, and I can't pay it. I called them on Skype(which here is hard to use) and thought I had fixed it, but when I attempted to log in, it wouldn't let me. I have to call them back again, but I would like to do so from a phone that I can communicate directly with. I do not want to have to wait, hear echoes, and listen to what they say twice. I also want to know that the person I am talking to is there. This is not always known when I use skype. I wish I had a better internet connection, but one cannot expect too much here.
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