Hi! I'm still n the US. I have recovered from the surgery I had in January and the complications in wound healing that followed it. However, it's too late for me to go back to my classes in China this term. Even worse, my university told me that they wouldn't rehire me for next term. Grrrrr. (That's a sound that means you are angry.) They have four teachers for next term but they only need three teachers. So they won't rehire me because I'm the oldest and because I missed this term. It's not fair, but sometimes life isn't fair! I'll really miss my students and teaching in a classroom. I have some ideas about what I'll do next, but I haven't quite decided yet. On the one hand, I hate losing my job, but on the other hand there are a lot of possibilities ahead of me.

Here is a podcast series from 2 1/2 years ago. I made these into YouTube videos and have used them in my classes. You can find them by going to YouTube and searching for Miss Buswell. I'm posting all of the "Gift of the Magi" podcast episodes tonight, since they are a series.

my website:http://www.missbuswell.com/

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LnR 077 The Gift of the Magi 1

http://www.online-literature.com/o_henry/1014/

The Gift of the Magi

by O. Henry, 1862-1910

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young." The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.