Here’s the Brit Lit midterm I gave my students. Not very tough, really.
See how much you know….

Multiple Choice
(2 points each)
Circle the letter before the correct answer.

1. Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?

A. Jane Eyre
B. Jane Austen
C. Charlotte Bronte
D. Elizabeth Bennet

2. What language was the Canterbury Tales written in?
A. Old English
B. Middle English
C. Modern English
D. Latin

3. How many lines are in a Shakespearian sonnet?
A. 10
B. 8
C. 20
D. 14

4. Who wrote the Holy Sonnets?
A. William Shakespeare
B. John Milton
C. John Donne
D. John Keats

5. Which of these is a poet from the 17th Century?
A. Daniel Defoe
B. William Wordsworth
C. Jane Austen
D. John Milton

6. What is a rhyme scheme?
A. The pattern of syllables in a poem
B. The pattern of rhyming words
C. A trick that poets play on readers
D. The number of lines in a sonnet

7. What is the pseudonym of Charlotte Bronte?
A. Acton Bell
B. Currier Bell
C. Ellis Bell
D. pseudonym? What’s that?

8. Who did Elizabeth Bennet marry?
A. Mr. Darcy
B. Mr. Rochester
C. Mr. Bingly
D. Mr. Wickham

9. Who is the “madwoman in the attic”?
A. Blanche Ingram
B. Bessie
C. Bertha Mason
D. Mrs. Reed

10. A Gothic novel does NOT include which of the following:
A. Ghosts
B. A host of golden daffodils
C. Romance
D. Supernatural events

Fill in the Blank
(3 points each)
Write the missing information on the line.

1. John Keats wrote ________________________.

2. Romeo and Juliet was about a feud between ______________ and _____________.

3. ________________ wrote “She Walks in Beauty”.

4. _________________ was one of the Romantic Poets.

5. Emily, Anne, and _________________ were three sisters who were all writers.

6. Jane Eyre is a _________ novel.

7. William Shakespeare is famous for writing sonnets and ___________.

8. In Paradise Lost, the first man and woman created were named ________ and _______.

9. _____________ wrote many books about women and marriage.

10. A famous novel about Satan and the fall of man was written by ______________.

Essay
(25 points each)
Choose 2 of the following essays to answer. Make sure you clearly label which two you are answering. If you answer more than one, you do not get extra credit. I will only read the first two responses you write.
Write your response on the back of this paper. You may not write more than you can fit on the back. If you make a mistake, you may ask for a new piece of paper, but you may not write more than fits the back, so use your space wisely!
In your answers, please show me that you have done some outside research to find information that I haven’t given you in class.

1. What is feminism and how does it apply to any of the literature we’ve read?

2. Explain what is happening in the poem that we read by John Donne- “The Flea”. What is the poem about? How do you know that?

3. Explain the symbolism in Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”.
Where is the symbolism found? What does it represent?

I Wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

4. What are the rules for writing sonnets? How would you go about writing one?

5. Why is The Canterbury Tales an important piece of literature? Why do we still read it today?

For some reason these past two weeks have been terribly difficult on me.

Stress?
Lack of sleep?
Anxiety?

Perhaps none of these; perhaps all three.

I am frequently finding myself busy, which I quite enjoy, but this frustration comes in when I’m finding that this busyness is all in vain. It’s often unproductive, or in the worst cases, counterproductive.
Even the most basic wedding plans I’ve made are being questioned after I thought they were set. I’m a horrific decision maker, so it’s hard enough for me to make a decision once…if I have to make a decision again, I’m basically done for!
Planning for a Thanksgiving dinner (sans turkey, of course) and for the regional conference (the weekend after) really shouldn’t be all that complicated, but I’m finding both to be troublesome, since I’ve managed to screw up both.
How?
That’s the same question I keep asking myself. I have made it all too much work and then that makes me even angrier when it doesn’t work out.
I really should take the Chinese motto “mei guanxi!” (”It doesn’t matter!”) to heart and forget about it.
Well, I’ve tried. I really have, but things are just getting to me. Mostly my own mistakes, though.
Important people in Amity (much more important than me, at least) were here for a visit (Liu RuHong and Mick, for those of you who might know), and I think I made even that more stressful on myself. I had to clean my apartment (like they would look in the drawers and under the couch anyway!!!) and then they finally arrived Monday night and came over to meet with me from 9-10. The next day, I had four periods of class in the morning, library time and lunch with them, two more periods of class, and then more talking with them, then a banquet and more talking at Kate’s place again….until about 10 pm. I realized that I didn’t have a lesson plan for my Brit Lit class (this afternoon), so I set my alarm for 6 so I could work one out before getting ready and leaving for my morning class after 9.

I messed up the alarm and didn’t get up until after 8.
Of course.

Frantic scrambling, teaching, a co-teachers meeting, library time (during which my upset sophomores came in to talk about their exams), a late lunch, then 30 minutes before I had to head to class.

Honestly, the lesson worked out fine. The students were confused by the plot of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, so we spent the majority of the time going over it anyway.
No real need to freak out, but I did anyway. Now I’ve just got to figure out what to do tomorrow for that class!

Speaking of class, I gave a bunch of exams last week.
My sophomores did NOT perform the way that I expected them to. I was incredibly disappointed and largely very angry. It was a simple two minute speech! So many errors and so many who didn’t even reach the 1 minute 30 second mark. I was quite upset and told them so yesterday. So basically, it was a roomful of unhappy people after that. Tuesday was not my day.

I’ve still got to finish marking my Brit Lit exams. Fun. I did the multiple choice/fill-in-the-blank…. I just have to do the hard part now- the essays!

Anyway, so this is all to say that I’ve been terribly stressed about everything…money, the future, the present, food, clothes, my weight.
It needs to end at some point. I’m sure it will, but goodness. I might lose my mind before then.

Anyway, I’ve got to go. I have things to do!

I forgot to mention in the previous post…
When I was visiting Melinda at her teaching practice, I asked her when she was going to be home again and when I could visit my little kitten, Maeby.

She informed me of some terrible news.

Apparently Maeby went missing a couple of days ago.

I’m really quite sad about this. I know that she didn’t live in my apartment (not since the flea incident at least!), but I visited her at least once a week and it was really great to have my own little kitten to play with and to watch as she got bigger and bigger.
So if anyone in southern China sees a little calico cat with a red collar and a bell, please catch her!

I hope she comes back….

This past Sunday, Kate and I went and visited Lizzy, a student from the Chemistry Department, at her teaching practice.
Lizzy is particularly interested in English, so she spends a lot of time asking us questions and hanging out in the English library or cooking in Kate’s apartment.
During the last year of their education here, all of the students are required to go out for teaching practice for 5 weeks. It’s a bit like student teaching back in the States, although, to be honest, these students get a whole lot less practice in!
Lizzy had found a lot of students who are extremely interested in English and we went to a classroom to introduce ourselves to them. What followed afterwards was a flurry of photographs and “Hello”s.

After that, we walked around the city a bit, it’s Luo Cheng, a city that seems to be similar is size and development to Yizhou, but Lizzy told me that it’s actually considered to be a part of Yizhou. We saw a new building at the best middle school in town (not the one Lizzy’s teaching at). The classrooms looked really impressive (at least for schools in this area). We also saw some statues and the outside of what is apparently a museum. We didn’t go inside, but I thought it might have been interesting.

Monday morning, I met up with one of my former students, Melinda.
She took me over to XiaJian, an area of Yizhou that’s about 15 minutes from here if you take a bus. I got to see the school she’s at and meet some of the friendly teachers in the English Department. This school is significantly smaller than the one in Luo Cheng, but the surrounding area certainly is much more beautiful here.

After seeing the school, I got to see where the students who are doing their practice are living. They have rooms in an empty building where 4-6 of them sleep and live together in each room. I think Melinda said that there are 20 of them in the building. It doesn’t seem too bad, except that they only seem to have one working shower and Melinda said it doesn’t have any hot water! I don’t know how well I’d deal with that.

On the plus side, they are very close to the Liu San Jie Resort, a place that I think is quite beautiful. If I didn’t live in Yizhou, I’d love to spend a night there. The rooms look really comfortable and the grounds are gorgeous. It’s really quiet and peaceful. Over here, in the bustling bit of the city, we don’t get that kind of peace. Well, the best I get is climbing up the little mountain/hill at White Dragon Park near my apartment. However, I can still here the cars, loud music, and pig squeals from up there.

A few weeks ago, I was giving some students advice on improving vocabulary and pushing them past their basic English skills. I told them to read the world news and to give them an example, I opened up www.cnn.com and clicked on the first article that was related to China.
This is what came up:

An Article on Pollution and Cancer in China

After reading it, one of the students gasped in astonishment and then said “That’s the river that runs through my hometown! It’s very close to my home!”

I guess that was a good lesson on why people should keep up to date on the news.

So I finished writing my Brit Lit midterm. I’ll post it here after I give it this week. I don’t think any of my students know about my blog at all, but it would be a terrible thing if one of them happened to run across it and I had posted a copy of the exam!

This weekend was the English Department sports meeting.
Kate and I hung around in the morning on Saturday and watched some of the students compete. I went around and took some photos and talked to several students. It was fun to watch them win, but I must admit…it was a bit chilly and it started to drizzle and that took a lot of the enjoyment out of it. We stayed around for pretty much the whole morning bit, but we decided to stay at home and bake brownies instead of going back in the afternoon.

In the evening, we went out with some teachers to a restaurant out the front of the school gate…the menu had a lot of animal guts and some things with blood and parts of frogs. It certainly made our choice of dishes pretty simple! We had a good time talking with our colleagues though. It’s nice to get off campus, even if it’s not far at all.

Today Kate and I went to Luo cheng, a city about an hour from Yizhou. Actually, I was informed that it is technically a part of Yizhou. I don’t quite understand how these Chinese cities work!
We went to visit a school where some students are doing their teaching practice. I’ll post some more and some photos about that tomorrow.

In bad news, I bought a big mirror today- I have only had a tiny mirror the whole time so far, so I was really excited about this one! Well, before I even got to use it, it fell on the floor and shattered. I know it’s just a mirror, and in US dollars it cost me very little, but I was actually quite sad/disappointed/upset about it. Alas. I was kind of excited.
However, in order to put the mirror up, I had to take down a poster I bought at church. I thought about a sermon the pastor gave not long ago about how we shouldn’t be vain. I thought it was kind of amusing that I was taking down a Christian poster to put up a mirror. I guess the shattering of the mirror is a sign that I should work harder not to be vain.

I don’t usually believe in bad luck from silly things like breaking mirrors, but just a little bit ago, I tripped over my computer cord and nearly broke the bit that attaches to the computer. I think I got it back together okay, but to be quite honest, I’m not sure how long it’ll hold out now. I’ve already got to replace the battery on this thing asap (well, with a price of something crazy like $100, it might be a long time) but if the cord goes, I’m completely done for. Well, I’ll just use the library computer, which means I’ll be online for something like 30 minutes a day.
Maybe it would do me good to spend less time at a computer anyway…..
maybe.

Winter is coming to Yizhou! It has gotten cold and rainy in the past week. I’m actually wearing a cozy red American Apparel jacket from home. Makes me think of autumn and apples. I adore this weather. I’m not a fan of getting out of a warm shower into cold air I can’t escape, but I do love drinking hot tea and wearing layers. That’s more my style.
The real cold will be here next month though, probably, and that’s the rough part. There’s no escape from the bitter cold since we don’t really have heat here! Well, not quite true. In my bedroom I have a heater/air con unit, but it really can only heat my bedroom, so I guess that makes my bedroom an escape from the cold.

This weekend is the English Department’s sports meeting, so that should be interesting. I missed it last year- I think it was the same weekend as Kyle’s birthday, so I was gone.

My freshmen students are really excited, the sophomores less so, and the students in the 3+2 program were totally uninterested (they’re hoping for rain). However, they seemed at least a bit thrilled once I taught them the “Let’s go, let’s go- L-E-T-S-G-O!” cheer. They’re required to go and cheer on their classmates, so I guess that’ll come in handy.

As for me, it’s weird to have a weekend when I don’t have to go somewhere or Kyle isn’t visiting. We saw each other every weekend starting at the October holiday which was the end of September. That’s unusual, but it was pretty nice, I must say.
I’ve got to give two midterm exams next week (more about that later), so I have to prepare everything for that this weekend, I’ve decided to clean out my drawers (most of them) and my wardrobe (what a pain!), Kate and I are going to visit Lizzy where she is doing her teaching practice on Sunday, and tomorrow we have to attend this sports meeting and have dinner with a couple of colleagues.

As for the exam thing…ha. Well, I wasn’t thinking. I was intending to give my sophomore spoken English students their exam next week and give my Brit Lit exam the week after. I guess I got carried away and I told my Lit students all about the exam they’ll have next week. Now I can’t back out, so I’ve just got to tough it up and write the exam this weekend. I really have got to stop and organize things in my head sometimes! I have a schedule all set up on my computer, but I just forget to look at it.

Anyway, I’ve got to go work on some more cleaning… I’m supposed to go climb the “hill”/”mountain” (karst formation?) with Weilinling in an hour.

Well, it’s Halloween once again. It’s shocking how fast time goes by sometimes.
This year, we had the typical fun- carving watermelons (pumpkins in the right shape are tough to find), making masks, eating candy, telling scary stories, and all that.
I dressed up as someone in the American military. That was the scariest thing I could think of! Ha.

Some of the students really went crazy with the costumes. It was a lot of fun. We stood around and talked about scary story, some from films, some from books, and some that were (supposedly) true. It was one of the best English Corners we’ve had in a long time, if you ask me.

In other news, this past weekend I was in Longzhou. On Saturday Kate came down as well and we attended the famous “Delicious Food Street” at Kyle’s school. It was crazy! The place was packed, but there certainly was good food all over the place.
Mmmm… I always enjoy my visits to Longzhou, but this one was particularly good.

So my mother sent a package full of wedding planning stuff and things to make a Thanksgiving dinner. Obviously, it’s a bit hard to find any kind of wedding magazines or books in English over here. I bought one in Chinese, but it’s not particularly helpful. It’s nice to have a load of stuff, but I really wish there was a bookstore near by to find more. I think that’s something I’m already getting excited about for when I get home- bookstores! I’ve still got something like 9 months left though, so maybe I shouldn’t get too excited.

She also sent a box of Little Debbie’s Oatmeal Cream Pies….for Kyle. If you know me, you know how much it is killing me not to eat them. Seriously. I love those things. They’re not the least bit healthy, I know. Somehow, things like that are so much more exciting when you can’t seem to get them, or even see them, on a regular basis. It’s not like home where I can see them at the store and choose whether or not to buy them. They’re just not here to buy.
Kate and I were discussing these Oatmeal Cream Pies though. One major reason why I shouldn’t eat them (other than the fact that they’re supposed to be for Kyle, not me) is that I should probably, since I’m planning on having a wedding next summer, try to lose some weight. However, Kate pointed out that if I eat the whole box all in one go, my body can’t possibly handle all of that sugar/fat/etc, so it can’t have a lasting affect on my weight. It’ll probably make me sick and just pass through me anyway.
So I was considering that….seems like a good idea.

Speaking of trying to lose weight in China….
It seems rather difficult given the amount of fried food that I eat. Most of our food options here are fried, so that’s what I’m stuck with. If I cook for myself, it would probably end up being fried as well. There’s not a whole lot I can bake. Well, once I get some more ingredients, perhaps, but for now, I’m stuck with fried food.
Well, the other week I was talking with Jane about dieting things in China. I was really looking for something like SlimFast or a similar deal. She took me to the drug store near campus. The woman pulled out two bottles and claimed that these are the best two and you don’t gain the weight back too quickly. One she described as a meal supplement that will help me loose weight over several weeks. She said it’s not bad for your body. I took a look at the bottle and found a label in English: Colon Clean.
So I decided not to go for that. I asked about the second one and she said that it’s not very good for your body. She said that it does some bad things to your health. Yikes.
So much for finding something like SlimFast, I guess!

So I haven’t written for a while, but I swear I have excuses!
For one, I was sick for a while there.

The enteritis came back. I’ve been sick quite a bit in China, which is terribly frustrating.
What I think happened, though, for one, is that I got some kind of bacteria in my small intestine. Since it was never treated properly, every time I ate, I would feel terrible, or at least nearly every time I ate. It was not fun, let me tell you.
Finally, in the summer, I got terribly sick and ended up spending a day at the hospital getting blood tests, ultrasounds, and an IV for several hours. Never fun, but particulary not so when you can’t understand what’s going on.
I was given some medicine and then told to eat basically only bland food for the next several months. If anyone can tell me how on earth to do that in south China without having a diet of only rice (and therefore nothing of any nutritional value), that would be great because I couldn’t pull it off.
So I felt better for a while, but then it started coming back. A little bit and first, and then slowly worse and worse….
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore! Any food or drink that went into my system was going straight through. How I managed not to loose a single pound, I’m not quite sure.

I was trying to go to the clinic or the hospital, but it just so happened that when I had free time, they were closed for the day or for lunch. Kate then brought over some meds that her doctor in the UK has prescribed to her, just in case she needed them. I called my doctor and home and it turns out that that was just what I needed!
So I went to a Chinese medicine shop, armed with the scientific name, and I managed to get myself enough pills for the recommended minimum of seven days.

I started taking it in the morning, and by the evening, I had developed a swollen, sore throat. What a coincidence, I thought!
My throat kept getting worse and worse. It hurt to swallow my own saliva, and breathing to go up the stairs was a killer! (For those of you who don’t know, I live on the 8th floor of a building with no elevator)
I continued to take the medicine, thinking I was getting a terrible cold. Finally, by the seventh day, I finished. Within 24 hours of finishing, my sore, swollen throat was gone and completely back to normal.
I have to say that I am wondering if that was some kind of allergic reaction. I don’t really know enough about health to say for sure.

Also, lately Kyle has been visiting quite a bit and I’ve been going there quite a bit and that uses up free time pretty fast. At the beginning of the month, we also had our National Day holiday where we traveled for a week. Fantastic! (except for the fact that I was sick that whole time) Kate, Kyle, and I went to Guangzhou and Macao! Had a great time. I’ve posted photos on Flickr if you’re interested.

Well, I have to head out of here and get to class in five minutes, so I should probably go and finish getting ready. Before I do that, though, just a couple more notes.

A funny story- I was walking back into my campus last week, and I happened to see a student get on his bike, start biking down the road in the campus, then bike straight into the shrubbery that boarders the road! I was a bit worried…was he okay? Was his bike broken?
He got off the crashed bike, reached into his bag, pulled out his glasses, put them on, got on the bike and headed back down the street.
Students really do hate to wear glasses. It’s a bit amusing sometimes.

The other story, I was telling some students in the library yesterday about the importance of keeping up with the news. I went online to CNN.com to see what it said about China. Right away, we found this article: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/23/pip.china.pollution/index.html
It’s about a “cancer village” in south China where the river is so polluted it’s giving lots of people cancer, specifically in one village. However, the government is claiming the river is safe.
Two of the students I was talking to got shocked looks on their faces as we read it.
“That river goes through our hometowns!” One of them finally cried out.

I guess they really should keep up with the news more than they do.
They had no idea.

I really love teaching British Literature.
Sometimes I think that I could probably teach this kind of thing for the rest of my life and be fairly content.
(I generally do not feel this way at all about spoken English classes)

I enjoy most of my students in all of my classes, but topics in my lit class are just infinitely more interesting to me, so I’m much happier after finishing one of those lessons that any other.

Granted, I have only taught them for a month now….8 lessons, so things could change, but so far, I’m loving it.