Being So Well

I had mixed feeling about the last lesson. I am glad it’s finished, so I don’t need to spend my weekend time preparing for the class any more. It is a big relief for me, given that I do get pretty busy over the weekend time. On the other hand, I felt that I probably will miss the evenings that I spent in this college, the students, the moments standing there talking and sharing some fantastic experience with those who are interested, and teaching Chinese, the language which I am very proud of.

One of my student went to China and got back already. I didn’t see her but had a chat with her team mate who is my supervisor’s oldest son and went to China for the same occasion. The dragon boat team actually won the second place in the race of “绍江杯”（Shaojiang Cup), which was pretty impressive performance. He told me that my student taught other dragon boat team players how to say “hello”, “Thanks” and order a bottle of “beer” in Mandarin. He was amazed. Now he can even say those words himself. Isn’t this something that would make a teacher feel satisfied?

However, he also mentioned about the terrible translation in China which can be seen everywhere. Lots of translation can not be understood or gave them a big laugh. But he liked the scene that an old lady selling balloons and kids were so happy to see all the colorful balloons flying away to the sky. That was a beautiful moment to him.

Another student in the class has already booked the trip to China in September. I showed her how the Great Wall spreads out in different provinces and she said their second day will be going there to have a look themselves. She looked very excited!

So last class was quite casual. I asked people to think of the sentences that they wanted to learn the most and bring them up here. We told a football CEO how to ask “what’s the score” and how to say “3:3″; We taught a girl how to say “I have asthma” and what’s the word for “medication”; We gave a young guy, who never hid his intention of chasing young Asian girls, some idea about how to say “you are very pretty”; we also showed people how to ask to get a card with hotel’s address and contact details in Mandarin; and how to recognize the characters of “Gents”（男） & “Ladies”（女）……It was a two hours class full of information and questions. After I announced the class is dismissed, some of my students came over and said “thank you” as the farewell. I was very touched.

I am not sure if they could cope in China. From what I know, what they had mastered is way not enough to do so, but they learned something. They are now more confident, and they told me that they know the rules, know how to pronounce the words, organize the sentence, and if something comes up, they can find the rest of it from the dictionary, and they will be able to speak them out. I guess this is what we have been wanting to achieve via this course.

Good luck everybody, with your future Chinese adventure!!~:-)

Believe it or not, we do get some strange requests from our clients from time to time. We respect them, but after done the “serious talking” over the phone, sometimes I couldn’t help laughing at it in the other end of telephone line myself.

I wouldn’t call it “Making Respite Fun”, like the name of one training workshop suggested, because not all the strange ones are that funny. Some requests actually involved bitter side of sad stories of our carers. It took lot of courage of them to make a phone call to seek a help or even just talk through it with someone. Some of the stories were just unbelievable.

• Crazy Husband: A old gentleman rang and asked if he can get someone who can just sit with her dementia wife and listen to her talking “garbage” as what she has been doing had driven him crazy. He thought the best respite for him is to get away from this,even for only an hour, which will be really nice

• Dog Respite: Carer rang to ask if she can get financial assistance to help her to buy a little shuttle for her dog before she goes away for a period of time. The dog is not our client at all, but we did it, just to give the carer the peace in the mind.

• Kind Neighborer: A man rang to ask us do something about his neighbor who lives in the same block and actually is kind of a good mate of this old man. The caller hasn’t seen his neighborer for six months, and he worried that maybe he had already died in the house. He almost cried over the phone but strangely he didn’t want to go that far to call police himself. I called the police immediately and asked them to send someone in to check.

• Totally Lost and Emotional: Some people rang in and started to talk. Then they cried and completely turned to a moody, very very emotional and depressed. But you know what, if you ask, they actually don’t know what they need. They can’t even think of any specific things that we can do for them. After 30 or 40 minutes crying on the phone, they actually didn’t want to get us to work on anything. We, actually became counselors, very accidentally

• Wash Machine: A lady rang to ask us to buy a second hand wash machine for her. We did this sort of thing before as it was a very genuine request and the woman was caring for 3 children with disability and since the old wash machine died, she’s been hand washing kids’ clothes for about 3 months. We bought a new one for her. She was happy. But the recent one, it sounded just suspicious. Knocked it back!

• Suicide: the recent breaking news spreading around in this country is a carer threatened to kill herself, and then kill her son who has disability. She claimed that she didn’t get any care. The news was broadcast on the national radio and TV. Unfortunately this carer lives in the region that we cover. Nobody in this office really pressed the panic button after heard the news, as we all know she had got lots of care from us in the last financial year and we spent quite a fortune on her.