Richard Böhm(e) & Ruiting Han: FarmTown, Poetry & English Teachers -- Week 2

Before I get to the feature presentation, I would like to share some news with everyone. This Saturday -- January 23 -- the Leon County Public Library is offering a tutoring tutorial at 10am for those who decided to tutor with the Literacy Program. The event lasts till 3pm but there's an hour-break for lunch. You should probably consider it (because I'm going) and how could you resist that face anyway! In fact, that regal hick demands your presence.

Now for what really matters:

Ruiting and I are bonding. This is good. I let him do most of the talking this time, so I allowed him to show me his QQ, which is somewhat equivalent to our Facebook (FYI: Facebook is banned in China). And speaking of that, I told him I was aware of it being banned there. He did not want to discuss it, and he did this by interrupting me halfway through my spiel by asking me if I wanted some tea. Basically, I understood it as something I should not discuss with him any further. Facebook is banned in China. This will from now on be the extent of my understanding.

Anyway, he showed me some pictures from his QQ account. Of one picture, Ruiting said, "This is my girlfriend."

My response: All of them?!

No, Ruiting only has one girlfriend, and he shows me specifically to whom he was referring. The other girl in this picture was his mother. WoW! Suffice to say I was way off, huh?

He then showed me this FarmTown application that's accessible through his QQ. As soon as he showed me his virtual pasture, he told me that somebody stole his goat... and his fruit. I'm not familiar with FarmTown, so I showed contempt for the person who stole his goods. Apparently, it was his best friend. And I thought it was some random hacker. I absolutely showed contempt, too, and it turned out to be a prank. Let me tell you, if it was my pasture...

Ruiting also showed me some pictures from his high school years. He expressed how bad his English teacher was. To quote him, "She was the baddest teacher I had." To me, this could mean either two things: (1) she was intense, but an excellent teacher, or (2) she really was the most evil human being to walk on the face of this earth. I asked him to tell me more about his English teacher, and I learned that she is the reason he came to the USA to learn English. So what kind of teacher was she? The Baddest One, but also, the one who inspired Ruiting. So choice (1) describes his teacher perfectly.

That's something we have in common, too. After all, I'm pursuing an English degree because of a most positive experience I had with my English teacher. It's refreshing to hear a similar story. Ruiting told me he was a bad student, but his English teacher changed his life. Again, to me, I'll assume he was bad in the sense that he was on the verge of failing his English class. Then again, he could have been a vigilante. Though I strongly doubt this. I wish I had asked him in what sense he was bad. It doesn't matter either way, but now I'm curious. I continue to suspect it was an issue with his education rather than a social problem. I mean, you have to look at the guy. There is no way he could have been a vigilante! But it's interesting how I interpreted this compared to what others might have interpreted it. What do you guys think? Is it a fair assumption?

In our talk about inspirational English teachers, I segued into my favorite topic: POETRY! He had no idea what I was talking about, although he had his pocket translator handy. He typed 'poetry' into his little device, pressed 'enter,' and the light-bulb turned on.

I swear, if pocket translators did more than that, I don't think we'd have jobs! Pocket translators are taking away those "click" moments from us. I say we go after the company and boycott pocket translators!

So back to poetry. Ruiting recited a Chinese poem to me from memory and I was very inspired by his reading. I also didn't know what he or the poem was saying, but I heard music, and I was dancing. So I returned the favor by reciting one of my favorite poems, one of which I myself forced to memory. I gave him a reading of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy."

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Apparently, I forgot her poem has a few German words and phrases in there, i.e. "Ach, du" and "Luftwaffe" ... and there's more. Thankfully, he understood nothing, and I didn't have to tell him the poem had German elements. That could have been confusing for him. But we ended our discussion on another poem, a short one by William Carlos Williams called "The Red Wheelbarrow:"

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens


That's the poem. He understood some words, and I helped him understand the poem's meaning altogether -- that we have to pay attention to our surroundings and understand that everything we see has some degree of beauty in it.

And we left it at that! I'll be meeting with him again on Friday. We had a good talk this time around. I think we're playing ping pong. Take a stab at who you think is going to win. I'll let you know on the next post.