Thursday, February 26, 2004
Greg’s ESL Café!!
School has started once again and I for one am looking forward to a fruitful and fun semester, but I know it can sometimes be stressful and frustrating. Being a new teacher in China (or anywhere for that matter) can come with more than its fair share of obstacles to overcome like language barriers, culture shock and Bird Flu. On top of all this external stress you are still expected to teach to your maximum capacity week after week and that can be taxing especially for the new teachers out there in the Middle Kingdom. I personally have spent more than one frantic Sunday evening pacing about my apartment screaming, “What am I going to teach tomorrow!”
Now we all know Dave’s ESL Café is completely useless (with the exception of the idea I submitted which rules ass.) So with the help of fellow teacher Jamie, we came up with, what we feel is, a more than adequate list of activities, lectures, debates and games you can use to aid you during your semester of teaching here in China. We sure hope it helps!!
The List:
1. Shoe not a shoe
2. Ready, Set, Pap Smear!
3. Disassemble the spy plane (a group game)
4. Holocaust, Schmolocaust (discussion)
5. Hide the pregnancy
6. Poop on Da Shan (urine is also acceptable)
7. Infected fowl scramble
8. The very, very Great Wall of China (fun with compound adjectives)
9. 20 Questions: Masseuse or Whore?
10. Find the Dissident (similar to Ostracize the Dissident and Beat the Dissident)
11. Name that sore
12. The Rape Myth: Women’s Rights in China
13. (Clap Clap) Who’s Got the Clap? (Clap Clap)
14. Verbally bitch slap North Korea
15. Ultra Fantastic Super Happy Abortion Fun Hour
16. Cane the Coolie
17. Let’s Eat Crackers!! (students love snacks)
18. Forty Million Reasons to be Gay (A.K.A. The One Child Policy Game)
19. “Name Parts of the Chicken You Won’t Eat….Go!”
20. Chairman Maopalooza
21. Invent a Sport
22. What Would You Do? (Good for rooting out the loose students)
23. Red Guard vs. Capitalist Highroader Gerund Throwdown
24. Places I’ve hacked up something gross and spit…
25. Fuck the WTO
26. Red Rover, Red Rover, send Capitalist Roaders Right Over (to teach English)
27. Lecture: Sweatshops? Who’s Sweatin’ It?
28. Discussion: Text Messaging as Olympic Event – since we already have ping pong wrapped up. (A.K.A. the Red Thumb Game)
29. She had it coming. (Debate on China’s Snuff Film Industry)
30. Dry hump and grab ass pronoun jumble (popular with male students)
31. Original Creative thought Call-Out (A.K.A. The Silence game)
32. Build a Bong Improv. Game
33. Fun with Gerunds
34. The Pinky Nail Pimp Game
35. Send a Man into Space Game (this game works great!!)
36. Stage a successful landing by manipulating the media outlets game
37. Things the Japanese do that piss me off…
38. U.S.A. A-Okay. (alternate title: Communism is for Retards)
39. Sideburn or Bitch Tassle?
40. Paisley and plaid with track pants and loafers (Fashion faux pas 101)
41. Who queefed?
42. Which bitch let my beer get warm? (a counting game)
43. Debate: The lesser of two evils: Da Shan vs. Hitler
44. Hangman (Parents will be billed for rope)
45. Debate: Chinese medicine vs. Chinese checkers
46. “Tone Deaf” An investigation into Karaoke
47. Discussion: “Has anyone seen my face? I lost it with my car keys.”
48. Counterstrike: Team Tactics and Strategy (this can last an entire semester)
49. Lecture: The Genius of Ass-less Infant Pants (to be followed directly with)
50. Lecture: Addressing China’s Public Shitting Pandemic
51. The Long March…of Dimes (bring your spare jiao)
52. Salmonella tastes like chicken (street vendor trivia)
53. Bribe the government official (without adjectives or Chunghuas)
54. Discussion: AIDS!? That’s Henan’s Problem
55. Defile Da Shan
56. Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom (expel complainers)
57. Block that Blog (and google while you’re at it)
58. Assemble these microprocessors
59. Your favorite boy band sucks ass. What are you going to do about it?
60. Arm wrestling/Tibetan leg wrestling (make sure they use English)
61. Dog: It’s what’s for dinner.
62. Lecture: In depth analysis of seasons one and two of The Shield
63. That’s not a Cold Sore! (Sexually Transmitted Disease education)
64. Let’s Hurl Feces at Adverbs!!
65. “Tibet’s Better Off” (Discussion: Tibet and the Dalai Lame-ass!)
66. Show Fletch
67. Strip Mahjong
68. Physics of Chicken Kicking
69. Pandas: National treasure or profitable organ banks? (debate)
70. Shoe not a shoe
Well there you have it, enough activities to get you through TWO semesters. We hope these ideas help you to become the best ESL teacher you can be. Good luck to all you teachers out there in the Middle Kingdom!
School has started once again and I for one am looking forward to a fruitful and fun semester, but I know it can sometimes be stressful and frustrating. Being a new teacher in China (or anywhere for that matter) can come with more than its fair share of obstacles to overcome like language barriers, culture shock and Bird Flu. On top of all this external stress you are still expected to teach to your maximum capacity week after week and that can be taxing especially for the new teachers out there in the Middle Kingdom. I personally have spent more than one frantic Sunday evening pacing about my apartment screaming, “What am I going to teach tomorrow!”
Now we all know Dave’s ESL Café is completely useless (with the exception of the idea I submitted which rules ass.) So with the help of fellow teacher Jamie, we came up with, what we feel is, a more than adequate list of activities, lectures, debates and games you can use to aid you during your semester of teaching here in China. We sure hope it helps!!
The List:
1. Shoe not a shoe
2. Ready, Set, Pap Smear!
3. Disassemble the spy plane (a group game)
4. Holocaust, Schmolocaust (discussion)
5. Hide the pregnancy
6. Poop on Da Shan (urine is also acceptable)
7. Infected fowl scramble
8. The very, very Great Wall of China (fun with compound adjectives)
9. 20 Questions: Masseuse or Whore?
10. Find the Dissident (similar to Ostracize the Dissident and Beat the Dissident)
11. Name that sore
12. The Rape Myth: Women’s Rights in China
13. (Clap Clap) Who’s Got the Clap? (Clap Clap)
14. Verbally bitch slap North Korea
15. Ultra Fantastic Super Happy Abortion Fun Hour
16. Cane the Coolie
17. Let’s Eat Crackers!! (students love snacks)
18. Forty Million Reasons to be Gay (A.K.A. The One Child Policy Game)
19. “Name Parts of the Chicken You Won’t Eat….Go!”
20. Chairman Maopalooza
21. Invent a Sport
22. What Would You Do? (Good for rooting out the loose students)
23. Red Guard vs. Capitalist Highroader Gerund Throwdown
24. Places I’ve hacked up something gross and spit…
25. Fuck the WTO
26. Red Rover, Red Rover, send Capitalist Roaders Right Over (to teach English)
27. Lecture: Sweatshops? Who’s Sweatin’ It?
28. Discussion: Text Messaging as Olympic Event – since we already have ping pong wrapped up. (A.K.A. the Red Thumb Game)
29. She had it coming. (Debate on China’s Snuff Film Industry)
30. Dry hump and grab ass pronoun jumble (popular with male students)
31. Original Creative thought Call-Out (A.K.A. The Silence game)
32. Build a Bong Improv. Game
33. Fun with Gerunds
34. The Pinky Nail Pimp Game
35. Send a Man into Space Game (this game works great!!)
36. Stage a successful landing by manipulating the media outlets game
37. Things the Japanese do that piss me off…
38. U.S.A. A-Okay. (alternate title: Communism is for Retards)
39. Sideburn or Bitch Tassle?
40. Paisley and plaid with track pants and loafers (Fashion faux pas 101)
41. Who queefed?
42. Which bitch let my beer get warm? (a counting game)
43. Debate: The lesser of two evils: Da Shan vs. Hitler
44. Hangman (Parents will be billed for rope)
45. Debate: Chinese medicine vs. Chinese checkers
46. “Tone Deaf” An investigation into Karaoke
47. Discussion: “Has anyone seen my face? I lost it with my car keys.”
48. Counterstrike: Team Tactics and Strategy (this can last an entire semester)
49. Lecture: The Genius of Ass-less Infant Pants (to be followed directly with)
50. Lecture: Addressing China’s Public Shitting Pandemic
51. The Long March…of Dimes (bring your spare jiao)
52. Salmonella tastes like chicken (street vendor trivia)
53. Bribe the government official (without adjectives or Chunghuas)
54. Discussion: AIDS!? That’s Henan’s Problem
55. Defile Da Shan
56. Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom (expel complainers)
57. Block that Blog (and google while you’re at it)
58. Assemble these microprocessors
59. Your favorite boy band sucks ass. What are you going to do about it?
60. Arm wrestling/Tibetan leg wrestling (make sure they use English)
61. Dog: It’s what’s for dinner.
62. Lecture: In depth analysis of seasons one and two of The Shield
63. That’s not a Cold Sore! (Sexually Transmitted Disease education)
64. Let’s Hurl Feces at Adverbs!!
65. “Tibet’s Better Off” (Discussion: Tibet and the Dalai Lame-ass!)
66. Show Fletch
67. Strip Mahjong
68. Physics of Chicken Kicking
69. Pandas: National treasure or profitable organ banks? (debate)
70. Shoe not a shoe
Well there you have it, enough activities to get you through TWO semesters. We hope these ideas help you to become the best ESL teacher you can be. Good luck to all you teachers out there in the Middle Kingdom!
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Greg’s Annotated Chinese Zodiac
In keeping with the spirit of the season, I thought I would take an email my wonderful sister sent me on the character of persons born on the year of the horse and separate the fact from the fiction in regards to my personality as it is from what my zodiac assumes it should be. (All my personal comments will be in parentheses.)
Year of the Horse-1978
Thank goodness for open spaces, because the Horse needs plenty of room to roam! (Provided a fresh outlet for pornography I’m quite content never getting off the couch.) Energetic (not really, unless we’re talking about masturbation than I’m like Mark Spitz on crank), good with money (I invested in Pets.com) and very fond of travel, Horses are the nomads (like a drifter I was born to walk alone) of the Chinese Zodiac, roaming from one place or project to the next (I actually came up with the ideas for the Pringles Doublestack and the state quarter map before anyone else.) All of this Sign's incessant activity (I kicked my coke habit in 2001, 2002, 2003 and look out 2004 I’ll get that monkey off my back again!) and searching may be to satisfy a deep-rooted desire to fit in (I’ve never fit in. Though I have a deep root…in my pants!!) Paradoxically, Horses feel a simultaneous yearning for independence and freedom (like when hookers don’t leave after you’ve…don’t judge me.)
Horses crave love and intimacy (and who doesn’t), which is a double-edged sword since it often leads them to feel trapped (no one’s roping down this stallion.) Love connections tend to come easily to Horses (if by easy you mean passing prison grade razor wire out your urethra), since they exude the kind of raw sex appeal that is a magnet to others (if my penis were a precious, noncorroding, metallic alloy used in jewelry it would be platinum.) This Sign tends to come on very strong in the beginning of the relationship (yeah, I come on strong like a clubbed baby seal) having an almost innate sense of romance and seduction (I’m a regular Don Juan…even I’m not buying that.) Horses are seducers in general; check out any A-list party and you're bound to find the Horse in attendance (it’s true, Charlie Sheen was born on the same day as me.) This Sign possesses a sharp wit (very true) and a scintillating presence (I like leather pants); it really knows how to work a crowd (when I’m drunk I can work about anything, which has lead to more than a few homoerotic liaisons.) Surprisingly, Horses tend to feel a bit inferior to their peers (it’s not that surprising), a misconception that causes them to drift from group to group out of an irrational fear of being exposed as a fraud (that’s a complete fabrication…everyone knows I’m a fraud.)
An impatient streak can lead Horses to be less than sensitive to others' needs (I hate homeless people and beggar children.) These colts would rather take a situation firmly in hand (like a hobo’s scalp) as opposed to waiting for others (the police) to weigh in or come to terms with it. The lone wolf inside the Horse (horses are herbivores, they don’t eat wolves…duh, even I knew that) can at times push others away, but this also makes this Sign stronger and is a key to its success (that’s just funny.) Horses are self-reliant and, though they might lose interest fast in a tedious, nine-to-five day job (work is for suckers), are willing to do the work necessary to get ahead (like murdering competitive co-workers.)
Horses tend not to look much at the big picture (completely untrue); instead they just follow their whims (ketchup is good on pierogies, let those oktoberfest purists rot), which can result in a trail of prematurely ended relationships (I’ve been kicked out of four oktoberfests), jobs (banned from T.G.I. Fridays), projects (Habitats for Humanity) and so on (Make a Wish Foundation.) This Sign really knows how to motivate others (torture), though, and get a lot accomplished. Once they find some peace within themselves (not bloody likely), they can curb their wandering tendencies (I’m a cowboy. On a steel horse I ride, and I’m wanted…dead or alive) and learn to appreciate what's in their own backyard (I live in an apartment next to a brick facory.)
The most compatible match for a Horse is the Dog or the Tiger (or better yet a jug of Maker’s Mark and a hogshead of laudnum.)
In keeping with the spirit of the season, I thought I would take an email my wonderful sister sent me on the character of persons born on the year of the horse and separate the fact from the fiction in regards to my personality as it is from what my zodiac assumes it should be. (All my personal comments will be in parentheses.)
Year of the Horse-1978
Thank goodness for open spaces, because the Horse needs plenty of room to roam! (Provided a fresh outlet for pornography I’m quite content never getting off the couch.) Energetic (not really, unless we’re talking about masturbation than I’m like Mark Spitz on crank), good with money (I invested in Pets.com) and very fond of travel, Horses are the nomads (like a drifter I was born to walk alone) of the Chinese Zodiac, roaming from one place or project to the next (I actually came up with the ideas for the Pringles Doublestack and the state quarter map before anyone else.) All of this Sign's incessant activity (I kicked my coke habit in 2001, 2002, 2003 and look out 2004 I’ll get that monkey off my back again!) and searching may be to satisfy a deep-rooted desire to fit in (I’ve never fit in. Though I have a deep root…in my pants!!) Paradoxically, Horses feel a simultaneous yearning for independence and freedom (like when hookers don’t leave after you’ve…don’t judge me.)
Horses crave love and intimacy (and who doesn’t), which is a double-edged sword since it often leads them to feel trapped (no one’s roping down this stallion.) Love connections tend to come easily to Horses (if by easy you mean passing prison grade razor wire out your urethra), since they exude the kind of raw sex appeal that is a magnet to others (if my penis were a precious, noncorroding, metallic alloy used in jewelry it would be platinum.) This Sign tends to come on very strong in the beginning of the relationship (yeah, I come on strong like a clubbed baby seal) having an almost innate sense of romance and seduction (I’m a regular Don Juan…even I’m not buying that.) Horses are seducers in general; check out any A-list party and you're bound to find the Horse in attendance (it’s true, Charlie Sheen was born on the same day as me.) This Sign possesses a sharp wit (very true) and a scintillating presence (I like leather pants); it really knows how to work a crowd (when I’m drunk I can work about anything, which has lead to more than a few homoerotic liaisons.) Surprisingly, Horses tend to feel a bit inferior to their peers (it’s not that surprising), a misconception that causes them to drift from group to group out of an irrational fear of being exposed as a fraud (that’s a complete fabrication…everyone knows I’m a fraud.)
An impatient streak can lead Horses to be less than sensitive to others' needs (I hate homeless people and beggar children.) These colts would rather take a situation firmly in hand (like a hobo’s scalp) as opposed to waiting for others (the police) to weigh in or come to terms with it. The lone wolf inside the Horse (horses are herbivores, they don’t eat wolves…duh, even I knew that) can at times push others away, but this also makes this Sign stronger and is a key to its success (that’s just funny.) Horses are self-reliant and, though they might lose interest fast in a tedious, nine-to-five day job (work is for suckers), are willing to do the work necessary to get ahead (like murdering competitive co-workers.)
Horses tend not to look much at the big picture (completely untrue); instead they just follow their whims (ketchup is good on pierogies, let those oktoberfest purists rot), which can result in a trail of prematurely ended relationships (I’ve been kicked out of four oktoberfests), jobs (banned from T.G.I. Fridays), projects (Habitats for Humanity) and so on (Make a Wish Foundation.) This Sign really knows how to motivate others (torture), though, and get a lot accomplished. Once they find some peace within themselves (not bloody likely), they can curb their wandering tendencies (I’m a cowboy. On a steel horse I ride, and I’m wanted…dead or alive) and learn to appreciate what's in their own backyard (I live in an apartment next to a brick facory.)
The most compatible match for a Horse is the Dog or the Tiger (or better yet a jug of Maker’s Mark and a hogshead of laudnum.)
