Paralympics, Parent's Night, Water

Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Are the networks broadcasting the Paralympics in the States? The venues here are all filled; the average citizen can afford a ticket. The Paralympics have become the people's Olympics. CCTV has one station that is doing a very thorough job of showing us as much as possible. Often I see a story about the athletes on the Chinese language station and later they same story is broadcast in English on the English language station. I have been watching swimming just now. The competitors are amazing, some of them in particular. The Chinese swimmer has no arms and his abdomen is badly mangled. He won the bronze medal. As the announcer said, he had to swim faster than the other swimmers; since he has no arms he had to touch the wall with his head. The race was won by Roy Perkins of the USA who has no hands or feet.

The women's 100 meter was won by Heather Fredricksen of Great Britain. Long of the USA took second, and Marian Vestbostad of Norway took 3rd. When they raised the three flags during the medal ceremony, I thought, “Wow! That's my heritage up there.” Heather was so excited to win gold, I could feel her emotions surging through me over the air waves.

Thursday September 11, 2008
The 7th anniversary of 9-11. Tonight is Parent's Night Open House at school. I sit near Aaron Kupchella, related to Rick Kupchella. Aaron is around 6’4” and looks a lot like Super Man. I think maybe he really is Super Man. Just once I want to get a good look under his shirt. Aaron is married to a Chinese woman and speaks unbelievable Chinese.

LuLu the Chinese music teacher is teaching the kids to sing Beijing Huan ying Ni, Beijing Welcomes You, one of the Olympics songs. She gave me a copy of the words in pinyin and characters. I can't stop singing it. The other Olympic song is One World, One Dream, both are very good songs.

It's really hot here. We have a 3 day weekend coming up for Mid-Autumn Festival. A bunch of us are going to Simaitai, a section of the Great Wall on Saturday; it should be an fun time and a chance to get to know each other. The library is desperately in need of organization and upper level books. Hope I can find time to tackle that in the middle of ESL and day-to-day running the library. I worked here until quite late last night and when I went back to my apartment I was really thirsty, so I stopped at the little store and bought a Coke…WOW…I haven't had caffeine in a lo-o-o-n-g time. Only drank half of it but was awake most of the night.

Friday, September 12, 2008
I'm in my apartment with no water again, no gas for cooking, and I have a splitting headache. It's hot and I'm really tired. Most of the teachers went out together after school, but I'm stuck here waiting for the "repair" and destroy man. Yesterday I had to rush home to meet the worker and show him what was broken. Today I have to be here so they can fix it. I had a burned out light bulb that was supposed to be replaced. So, Worker Man takes a good light bulb out of a different fixture, replaces the burned out light bulb with that, and voila, it's fixed! Meanwhile, I have no light in the entry. Fortunately, Agent Girl has her head screwed on right so she took the broken light to the store the today to buy a replacement which she brought tonight. Or, that is, I thought she knew what she was doing, but no, while I'm not looking she has the new worker man take the good bulb out and put the new bulb in its place. Now I have 2 good bulbs but only one working light, so as the worker is about to leave I grab him and point to the empty light socket. Surprise! Now, these are halogen lights in canisters and it actually takes some thought to put them together properly. After several unsuccessful attempts, he gently pushes the parts together, smiles and waves, and leaves. So, I get a chair and a few pillows, take it apart and do it right. My first experience with the way things get fixed here.

Oh, and the water? They say the meter is broken. They'll bring a new one tomorrow.