Shorts

I am writing this post as I peel super glue off of my fingers. I bought the super glue to fix one of my cuff links. I bought the cuff links to match the bow ties that I have worn daily until the weather recently reached too uncomfortably high of a temperature and too dense of a barometric pressure--sweet sweet humidity. I even bought a set of cuff links to match the "Chinese-lucky-red" bow tie that I bought to match the lining of my custom made black suit which I wore to see Hilary Hahn and the English Chamber Orchestra at the Shenzhen Concert Hall.

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A few weeks ago, several friends and I motorbiked our way up one of the local mountains. At the peak, we casually ambled through a Buddhist temple that was adorned with bright pink Japanese maples and mist machines enshrouding a network of small canals that provided shelter for hundreds of turtles. Beyond the peak's fifty-foot-tall golden Buddha, an expansive valley stretched into the hazy distance of factory smog originating beyond the far-side-of-the-valley's mountains. A small locomotive (in the fashion of a Wild West coal train) chugged around the peaks' sides and stopped at a water park on a lake, at a garden with millions of flowers categorized by color and not species, at a golf course that climbed the side of a mountain (seems like a difficult obstacle), and at a few stations in a village of alpine-looking buildings constituting a secret neighborhood called "Interlaken."

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Test: 1-2-Sibalant

On occassion, the brightest students at my school select a French song to begin our semi-weekly (or bi-weekly) English broadcasts.

I do not so much "moderate" these broadcasts (otherwise called "English Time with Mr. Elie"--pronounced "Eh-ree") since a moderator would filter content in a way that I do not. Like any good producer, I am more of a curator guiding the general direction of the twenty-minute radio-show while allowing the students to choose music and movies.

Each week, I curate two twenty-minute long broadcasts over my school's P.A. system. There are about 36 students who are paired-off in couples of one older student and one younger one. I did not do the pairing, and I suppose "Chuckles" created the pairings with the intent of older students modeling behavior and diligence for the younger students; however, the younger students have not yet realized the lameness or the completely self-mocking nature of "English Time with Mr. Elie." This means that the younger students are, more so than the older students, conscientious about practicing their parts, about mastering new vocabulary, and about really infusing emotion into their lines. The older students tend to arrive barely on-time (if at all), and they often mispronounce words without a care for my soft-voiced corrections--soft-voiced so as not to be heard on the microphones.