“What! Only three hours?” my Japanese students hollered in protest.
“Surely that’s enough time,” I replied. “Why on earth would you want to spend more time at the plaza?” 
I hate shopping. The only thing I hate more is waiting around while others do their shopping.

Whack. “Speak English!”
Whack. “Shush…please listen when someone else is talking.”
Whack. “Hurry up.”
Whack. It was the most effective way to get the students’ attention.
If only I’d discovered the leather fly swatter a week earlier.

“I imagine my husband will walk in one day and find a pile of ash on the floor where I’d been sitting.”
“I know what you mean,” said the other woman, “it’s like an intense heat that surges from your belly.”
“Yes,” they all agreed, “sometimes it feels like you’ll just go up in flames.”
“Well, that’s something to look forward to,” they wink at me, chuckling conspiratorially.
Surely, I thought, there’s a way to avoid spontaneous human combustion when I get to that age.