Welcome, freshpeople!

Last night was the Freshman Orientation shindig for ELC. In honor of this, every year, we foreign teachers have to find a way to make fools of ourselves onstage. By Friday night, no one had come up with anything, though our fearless leader was under the impression we would be putting together some sort of Michael Jackson tribute, including the Thriller dance and moonwalking... I think she was being optimistic about our combined talents!

Yesterday, 3pm found a small contingent of foreign teachers in my apartment, bouncing around silly ideas, such as the Potter Puppet Pals (my personal preference... might try to include it in EF somehow), the Total Domination song with weird hand motions, a self-referential 'laowai are people too' skit, Old McDonald Had a Farm (complete with charades of animals), and many more. If nothing else, I think we learned that, as a group, we have unlimited potential for B.S. After much debate and dismissal of awesome yet impractical ideas, we landed on charades of animals, hobbies and famous monuments (preplanned and NOT involving getting students up on stage) and then a group performance of "Yellow Submarine". There would be silly acting, guitar music, shaking of pill bottles, air-trombones and trumpets and out-of-tune singing from the laowai... it couldn't fail to get the fresh(wo)men excited about English!

The actual Orientation had its ups and downs, as usual! The band was excessively loud, and I think I may have lost a fraction of my hearing. I got to see the ELC video for the 10th time, at least, and have now resolved to make a new one, provided I am still here Spring Semester. The students learned not to fear their English classes, but to dive in with enthusiasm, while we tested our pronunciation and understanding of Australian English and words like "chilly bin" and "esky"... don't ask! We were impressed by the "th"s of the students who volunteered to read tongue twisters onstage. We all introduced ourselves more or less creatively- there are a couple of ABCs who introduced themselves as such, prompting one of our not-so-Chinese American colleagues to quip "before anyone asks me, I am NOT Chinese-American". We gave pop culture and other references to help students situate where we came from ("I am from Maryland, close to DC where Obama lives", "I am from Washington State, NOT Washington DC. Obama does NOT live near my house... I do live nearish Bill Gates though", "I am from Alabama, where Forrest Gump is from"... it went on and on). Promises were made about classes being fun and/or tough and advice was given about how to tackle the next 4 years of their lives. It was quite inspirational... at least in parts!

Then, came our performance. Before the start, I'd had to round up a few more people to participate, and participate we all did. There were clucking, wing-flapping chickens, a kangaroo that hopped around the stage, a monkey that waved back and forth, scratched and beat his chest, a fish blowing bubbles, an elephant who was disappointed not to be able to use the cries he'd practiced all afternoon. We mimed reading, painting, swimming, running, basketball, baseball, ping pong. The Statue of Liberty was posed in front of by tourists taking each others' pictures (complete with 'peace sign' hand action) and then, for our charade finale, we joined forces and made The Great Wall. I'm pretty sure a few people ran away before we started our slightly tuneless, but not unenthusiastic rendition of Yellow Submarine, aided by a Powerpoint peppered with little submarine pictures. E and I rattled our Aleve and Vitamin C bottles, accompanied by M on the Altoid box. D guitared it up and E and I provided the funky echoing voices in the last verse. It was comical, if not actually good. I felt like we should have apologized to both the audience and the Beatles!

Good thing we didn't do Michael Jackson, also, because after we ridiculed ourselves, it was time for the extra-curriculars show. EL parodied their way through various song snippets to tell of the virtues of the Reading Room (Jingle Bells), the TV Room (Hakuna Matata) and the conversation room (I forget what that was). EC has many, many new programs that were also introduced in song, through rapping in tiny shorts while the couple presenting Cocktail Party chugged glasses of wine most efficiently. CEC's performance was quite strange, but seeing a student perform a very impressive Michael Jakson impression (complete with moonwalk- see below) was the highlight of the evening. Even the Debating Society (STUDS or EDS for short) couldn't surprise us more when they uttered the words "red hairy ass" as a reason why a pig was a better choice of mate than a monkey... again, don't ask!

It was great to see students I love up onstage impressing people with their English, though I could have done without the contributions of a few, including singers who may have rivaled the 'ELC gang' for awfulness!

Finishing the night with smoothies and wine just seemed right!
Today the freshpeople (one of the older students awkwardly called them that) take a placement test, and we grade it for the first half of the week... Oh, I can't wait for my very own 90 or so samples of "my fadder, my fadder, my my my, fadder, she she she... suppor me".