the typical wanderings of a monday

on sunday night, i stayed up just a bit too late watching episodes of glee that topherlicious got for me, wherein i was so cold because now it is the cold season (?) in cambodia and i had to take a real euro shower wherein i take as little time as possible, turn off the water to soap up, and then do the shimmy as i cleanse myself. and then when i exited the bathroom, i did NOT stand in front of the fan to air dry because i was in fact COLD being that it is now in the low seventies in the evenings and it's INSANE.

which is all meant to say that i went to bed late and therefore the morning came a bit too quickly for my liking, and my dream's liking, as i was totally singing total eclipse of the heart better than lea michelle, and then i had to hasten to dress and bike and show up in my lovely, but dusty classroom to teach my trainees about nothing better than....

handwriting and simple cursive!

in which, after my long lesson teaching not actual cursive but 'simple cursive' so that my trainees could, in turn, teach their future-anon students the virtues of simple cursive, or 'joined up letters' wherein you join 'th' and 'nt' and 'et', a student had the thought to ask:

but why even do our students need to learn cursive?

to which i wanted to say:

'because i had to in second grade and if i had to endure the torture that is a cursive 'z' (what IS that?!), so do you and your students!'

but what i really did say:

'because just like in khmer, english has many forms, some fancier than others, and things like cursive are used in places where our students might need to read and comprehend (like, for example, in signs or notes from a superior or such) just like here in cambodia we use fancy, scripty capital letters for ALL signage and important documents such that hopeless little khmer learners like myself are completely baffled by all important information signage, despite memorizing a whole FIVE consonants and FIVE vowels.'

which is mainly a true account of mostly what i said, except the first/real time it was a bit less bitter?! i think.

and then after class, all i wanted was an ice cold coca cola classic but the tela mart did not have it for the second week running!

and thusly i had to settle for...PEPSI. i know.  

so i drank that, cold because it was, with some little harry potter (the british paperback version) on the side and it was simply wonderful, minus the fact that is was pepsi.

i also ate some chocolate wafers that absolutely lack any real substance of chocolate in them, but they are still somewhat chocolate-ish so i purchase them.  because, honestly, you take what you can get when the world is out of coca cola and the coca-light is another mart away and twice the price of coca classic.

and then topher came to join me, and we were going to work a bit at our new library, but it was closed for reasons unknown, so we decided to seek in search of the best thing we know sometimes, which is...

this pork dish that we don't know the name of that our market sometimes has in a big pot for sale.

needless to say, the market didn't have it today, so we bought other food for cookings, but decided instead of making lunch today, instead we'd go ahead and seek out some diarrhea in the form of cold noodles from who-knows-how-long-made and are-they-washed-i-don't-know vegetables with a mystery meat on top and some wonderful brown juice that is poured on top.

it was quite delicious, and i actually didn't get diarrhea but topher and i did slap fives and say:

'cheers to giving up the pork thing we wanted for diarrhea instead! worth it!'

because we didn't have to cook, you know?

and then after lunch i had to turn all 'super-disappointed-teacher' on my trainees because they were just golly darn rude while their peer did a practice lesson in the afternoon (that we do each afternoon lesson) and so i had to stand on up there, give him feedback and THEN, write on the board (to avoid deep miscommunication across two languages):

'it is rude to talk with your friends, read, text, or do other work while your friend is teaching.'

and then they were rightfully abashed, agreed wholeheartedly and the second hour of practice teaching went far more smoothly, which i'd like to credit to my shaming them as i've shamed many a students back in ye-olde-america.

and then finally, i discovered the lost joys of the word golly and all the phrases that do come with it.

like 'good golly!', or 'golly me!' or 'by golly!'

and today, i used all three quite proudly.

how was your monday?

also, is this not what you wanted when you said a typical day?

and, tell me, what is your favorite, long lost forgotten turn of phrase that could replace an expletive in our modern meanderings?