I had a dream this morning about eating Mexican food.
In the dream, I was in Vail for some reason, doing orientation for a job overseas. I remember saying,
"So this was my train of thought: oh, we should have Mexican food every night, because we're leaving the country. But then I remembered, we're going to be *in* Mexico, so it'll be even better than being here. This is gonna be so great; whenever I feel down, I just have to go out and get some food and everything will be okay again."
And then, in the dream, my internal monologue kicked in: But wait, what city are we going to again? Is it in Oaxaca? Guadalajara? How come I don't know.... and then I woke up violently in bed, here, in Hong Kong, and felt kind of sad.
----
I think the dream came about because I'm getting into that first phase of homesickness. I miss a lot of people from back home/college, I'm feeling unenthused about the program, but I don't feel that comfortable wandering around HK alone, so it's hard to get away from stuff. Also, there is little, if any, Mexican food here, and I'm afraid to try it because it'll probably be just good enough to remind me of what I'm missing without actually being genuinely good.
However, I think it's just one of those things you have to wait out. We're in this really weird place right now where the orientation classes are done, but our schedules and workload haven't been set, so there's kind of too much free time, so everybody's getting anxious.
Optimistically: they're assigning me to a couple maths (sic: British usage) courses as sort of a language assistant/TA. Math teachers are supposed to receive 25% of their university instruction in English, and textbooks are in English, but obviously it's easier to teach people math in their first language. (by the way, thank you Szabo Csaba, for giving me a little bit of experience with learning math in a second language) So I'm still not quite sure what I'll be doing for them, but it won't be grading, and it will give me a chance to see how math is taught here. Kind of exciting, especially for that little bit of me that has always/will probably always like math, even though it's not where I see myself going.
In the dream, I was in Vail for some reason, doing orientation for a job overseas. I remember saying,
"So this was my train of thought: oh, we should have Mexican food every night, because we're leaving the country. But then I remembered, we're going to be *in* Mexico, so it'll be even better than being here. This is gonna be so great; whenever I feel down, I just have to go out and get some food and everything will be okay again."
And then, in the dream, my internal monologue kicked in: But wait, what city are we going to again? Is it in Oaxaca? Guadalajara? How come I don't know.... and then I woke up violently in bed, here, in Hong Kong, and felt kind of sad.
----
I think the dream came about because I'm getting into that first phase of homesickness. I miss a lot of people from back home/college, I'm feeling unenthused about the program, but I don't feel that comfortable wandering around HK alone, so it's hard to get away from stuff. Also, there is little, if any, Mexican food here, and I'm afraid to try it because it'll probably be just good enough to remind me of what I'm missing without actually being genuinely good.
However, I think it's just one of those things you have to wait out. We're in this really weird place right now where the orientation classes are done, but our schedules and workload haven't been set, so there's kind of too much free time, so everybody's getting anxious.
Optimistically: they're assigning me to a couple maths (sic: British usage) courses as sort of a language assistant/TA. Math teachers are supposed to receive 25% of their university instruction in English, and textbooks are in English, but obviously it's easier to teach people math in their first language. (by the way, thank you Szabo Csaba, for giving me a little bit of experience with learning math in a second language) So I'm still not quite sure what I'll be doing for them, but it won't be grading, and it will give me a chance to see how math is taught here. Kind of exciting, especially for that little bit of me that has always/will probably always like math, even though it's not where I see myself going.
posted by sam at
1:28 PM
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