Saturday, March 31, 2012

How today is Saturday, Thursday, and Monday

We have a Chinese holiday coming up on Wednesday (Qing Ming Festival -- Tomb Sweeping Day).  Our department sent us this e-mail to let us know the holiday schedule:
hey everyone,
the upcoming Qingming festival is arranged as follows:
teachers get three days off from April 4th - 6th. We are on duty on Mar 31st(Saturday) and Apil1st(Sunday). On Mar 31st(Saturday), the university will be implementing the schedule of Thursday's; on Apil 1st(Sunday),schedule of Friday's.

As you can see (right?), we have three days "off" in the form of one day off (Wednesday) and two weekdays rescheduled to a weekend.  This is standard practice here.  Therefore today (Saturday) is Thursday and tomorrow (Sunday) is Friday.

So this morning, I was teaching my 8:00 a.m. oral English class when I got a text message from my Chinese teacher at another university.  She was apologizing that we would not have Chinese class today because she has "something" to do.  (This kind of excuse is also standard procedure; you never have to say specifically what "something" is.)

I was confused.  I have Chinese class on Mondays.  Today is Saturday.  Or Thursday.  I had never had any plans to attend Chinese class today.

Then I realized that today is Monday at her university.  Their holiday is Monday through Wednesday, not Wednesday through Friday.

Ay yi yi.

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