Today, Cora had me help her with a piece about/selection from the Da Vinci Code for one of her classes. Somehow this meant me explaining the meaning and pronunciation of Satanism, the KKK, and ghoulish aura. It's always an adventure, aye?
Other adventures today included helping Alice out with her cover letter, meeting about the new Business School program I've proposed, meeting about classes next semester, grading, and other things you probably don't want to read about...on to the interesting stuff!
I was back at it in Cantonese class tonight. We learned about dates (not the walk on the beach, but November 29th). She told us that in Chinese culture before Western influence and birth certificates, the parents would never tell the children the time (ex. 8:49am) they were born. Fortune tellers believed that your future was predestined based on the time and day you were born and that knowing the time was bad luck (perhaps because it meant you could/would try to change your destiny?). Also, Chinese time was traditionally represented by 12 characters. Anything in Chinese time telling consists of 12. Since there were only 12 characters, that meant that time was told in 2 hour blocks. So noon was from 11-1. I don't know if I mentioned in a previous blog, but locals in Macau will only tell time rounded to the nearest number on the clock. For example, 2:43 would be said literally as "2 time 9" because the 9 on the clock represents 45 minutes. Fun fun fun, huh!? We're all about accuracy here ;) Of course, since I work with English speakers and many foreigners, Cantonese class was the first time I experienced this.
The pictures today are from an art exhibit currently on display at work. I cannot post all of the pictures due to limited space on the blog, but here are a few of my favorites:
front of piece
back of same piece
This was one of a set of 4 pieces. Each one had a famous Macau building. This one is of one of the famous churches in Macau...the name of which currently escapes me.
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