Monday and Movie

Emily and I stayed up late last night watching a movie. Wasn't all that intentional, we just thought, 'hey, we haven't watched a movie in a long time.' So we curled up on the bed and watched The Majestic. Decent little flick. I don't know what you think of Jim Carrey, but I like him. He does a lot of the same jokes and his style doesn't vary all that much, but he's fun. We weren't really watching the time though and didn't get to bed until 11:00pm... oops. :)

So we slept in just a bit.

Class at 10 today, come home and exercise, review/do homework, clean up living room (we made a mess sorting through old papers yesterday).

Tomorrow Emily has off because it's Children's Day (I have NO idea why they need a day to themselves, especially in China where EVERYDAY seems like Children's Day), so we're hoping I'll still have class and she can attend with me.

Nearly weekly for quite a while I have been the only one to show up for the HSK class at 8am, so Ye Laoshi (Teacher Ye) and I will talk about some topic she will think of. The last two times we've talked about American families. The first week was on teenager's experiences when they turn 18. She had read that they either get kicked out or have to pay their parents rent. That was interesting. The next week we talked about parenting and child discipline (a MUCH needed area of growth here for nearly all parents). That started out with a discussion of, 'should you hit your child or not'. The Chinese word is pretty vague, [da] just means 'hit', so I had to specify that I thought it was ok to da your child's pigu [pee-goo: rear end], but not your child's tou [toe: head]. The conversations usually start like this:

Ye: I read that in America when a child turns 18 they have to pay their parents to live at home. Is that true?

Me: Um, sometimes, but I think it's pretty rare.

Ye: But in our book this article said...

And we go from there.

But, today is just Comprehensive, and students usually show up to that class. We'll probably have a Dictation, where the teacher reads off words and we write furiously, or bang our heads on the desks trying to remember how to draw that particular character. I don't think I'm ready yet.