Ginsen tea is good for the brains... I want to EAT it.

I don't post as often as I would like because I haven't had time for that. And this really pisses me off. It was a disaster having hired another teacher to help me out here at the school. It didn't work out. Just like that. My former students reported to the principal that the new teacher hadn't been lecturing well and the consequence was: they're not my former students anymore. Good grief... so now I've been working more than ever. Even though my work load has doubled, I keep on boxing and taking Chinese. These two activities are my way-out from stress. I am glad I can manage doing all these things.

On top of that, I am looking for a good book to read. These are some titles from my list: A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, Marketable Depression, by Lauren White, or Guerras do Bastardos, by Ana Paula Maia. Or I should re-read The Metamorphosis. "Dunno." I ended up going to a bookstore this Sunday to buy Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, and Dolores Clairbone, by Stephen King.

I just know that my girls' night plan didn't happen last week. It got cold, damp, crazy humid with the lowest temperatures. This winter has been way chilly. The funny thing is that it hadn't been the weather which blew up our plans. By 'our' I mean: my and my students' plans. Our ride was going to be Taísa, and, she had lost her grandfather in the previous week. Her boss got fired too. Yay! So many good reasons to celebrate, actually. But she didn't think so. Of course that I didn't say that to her. Although I wanted, I could not.

Well. Life can't be that hard in a general sense. I do crack myself up with little weird things I see people going through. I easily laugh... I laugh when I go shopping and forget the shopping list at home. I laugh when I mispronounce or switch students' names. I laugh at this... so... I "cry" when I remember this story. What I mean is that I make tea on Saturday mornings for those kids who study on that odd day. Since I started taking Chinese, I've been trying to improve in that cultural matter. And last Saturday, I made them a special mixture with APPLE, LEMON, VANILLA, CINNAMON, and CLOVES... Crazy? Not really. I thought those ingredients really matched. Everybody made fun of me because I fixed a TEA SALAD...

Later, I realized that I had forgotten to add GINSEN. The students got crazy with that comment: "What?! Were you going to add more flavor to that?". Yeah. I was. Man, you should have been in that class last week. It was way hilarious!!! At least, to me... Then, nobody knew no beans about ginsen. I explained all I knew about the thing, and, I even went to the school kitchen to grab some and show the roots to them.

While showing the GINSEN roots to my students, one of the girls, who is from Bolivia, recognized what GINSEN was and she said: "Wow... You've got that? Where did you buy it? This root tea is quite good for the brains..." Then, another student, who happens to be cucko said: "Oh I really need to EAT this tea!" No one could hold it. Everybody else in the classroom started laughing their asses off... LOL. Eating GINSEN tea? Yeah, riiiiight. She's got to do something for her brains. And today, Louis - one of my best students - asked me if I had made GINSEN tea this morning. But I hadn't. I had made CIDREIRA with VANILLA, which was very good, but with no ginsen!

"Everyone is pretty normal after meetin' you, Laila!" This is what I am reading right now on my message board at my Orkut page. This person has got concrete reasons to have written that. I am going out to dinner at a very fancy place tonight, and for that, I bought a new pair of All Stars yesterday. I did. I showed them to my students this morning. They are white, leather made and... oh well, I've looked up a photo on the web to post in this blogspot. That's the one right above. I literally got those sneakers to go to this sophisticated dinner - it is a business anniversary dinner and all -. She said that people are expected to show up wearing something more formal than ALL STARS sneakers. And I was asked if I had been going nuts. And again: "Dunno."

I'll leave my own questions to this very person: "WHO'S PAYING FOR THIS DINNER? WHO PAID FOR MY NEW ALL STARS? WHY SHOULD I CARE?"

Where's my ginsen tea?