Day to day ramblings of Tammy Wang
A surprise gift from Gordo of his trip.
He stayed in my highly-recommended hotel in Xiamen (Crowne Plaza)
Me over the phone:”How’s the hotel?”
G:”Good. The manager must be Chinese.”
Me:”How do you know?”
G:”Cause they play Christmas songs in April.”
Apart from “jingle bells” early in the morning everything is fine.
Afternoon I simulated a class in a yoga center in Clifford. (This yoga center also offers Bellydance class).
What I hope is to teach some workshop class in my spare time in my condo to spread the joy while doing my own exercise.
Took 2 important advice from my friend who’s been teaching for almost 2 years: dress well and teach slowly.
Pretty useful advice–by dressing well and looking good makes your students wanna be like you and this boosts their interest somehow. Teaching slowly–break down movements are extremely important to beginners and you don’t want to discouraged a beginner by pulling some stunts that she thinks she could not achieve. One has to believe she can do it and find the joy to go on.
It was pretty quiet afternoon. There was no Yoga class. I actually just gave lesson to the Yoga teacher and the girl at the reception. I’d prepared pretty much including a full choreo dance but in the end I just ended up explaining 2 movements-hip slide and hip lift-and-drop. We did this over and over again and it was quite enough to have the two girls sweat all over.
I don’t think I’ve taught too well…Over these years I’ve been screwing up my languages so much that I found quite inadequate to express myself sometimes.(You can say that I am multi-lingual but the truth is, my mandarin is no better than my English, Cantonese’s worse, and chaoshanese is worst. Let’s not mention the other two foreign ones.)
I had some positive comments on the class from the girls(“I would have signed a contract with you instead of this current one if you had appeared earlier.”), but really think I should have done better.
My warm-up session was too long and my stretching time was too short, and the music I prepared was not exciting.
Right now I am just waiting for next month to see if they can admit enough students for a beginner’s class.
Wow I got this fantastic Cds from HMV today in HK…
Cd1 traditional &cabaret, Cd2 drum solo&tribal, Cd3 fusion…seems like its true..the best thing you get when you least expect it.
My last great Cds were purchased in some little store in Yun’nan and it turns out to be famous work–Passion of Percussion from Mega Muzik. My instructor had to bring hers all the way from turkey and said it couldnt be found in China. Guess what..:P It was also the yield from a random browse.
Anyways…woke up really early in the morning, traveled a lot but ended up too excited to sleep.
Monday I had a periodic exam–I made a 2 minutes choreography and simulated a class.
Today I went to see the construction site of a new club–Impressive!
This is going to be the most professional BD base around!
Made myself a Jagerbomb tonight.
I miss a good barbecue.
Spinned all morning, then went off without lunch.
Expected to finally present the docs necessary and get things done, but instead had to spend the whole afternoon dealing with Foshan Bureaucratic crap without achieving anything substantial. Talk about waste of time.
If I explain it , it’d be like re-living the misery.
After a few days of really hot weather I finally was bold enough to wear a lighter jacket ( Believe it or not,I am a conservative dresser, rather overdress than under-do it)but like a conspiracy, it suddenly turned cold and rainy. I had to take the ride home in the car and abandoned my donkey at the gate, which means tomorrow when I go out I have to take public bus.
Gordo said I am like an old Cantonese woman–nothing is good, always complaining.
Well, I AM Cantonese, and I ain’t getting any younger. No?