We went to see the big Buddha in Leshan today. It was a two hour drive followed by observing current PCV’s teaching at a teacher training institute. They were mostly doing student-centered activities, which is good, but not particularly useful to observe. After that, we had a tasty lunch.
The actual Big Buddha was slightly disappointing. It’s a…really big Buddha statue. I’m sure if you are a Buddha aficionado, it is a more meaningful experience, but it wasn’t a big (ahah) deal to me. The trip was salvaged by going to a teahouse after our boat ride and playing cards and majiang for a couple hours. That was great.
Finally, I leave you with some food funnies:
-I came home the other day to find a turtle swimming in a plastic aquarium in the living room, complete with fake trees. The family was cooing how cute it was and had named him WuWu. I thought we got a pet turtle to get go with the pet cats. Turns out he was dinner, and a very tasty one at that!
-Roasted or boiled eggs here are served in halves with the shell still on. Take note.
-Sichuan is famous for ma peppers which have roughly the same effect as novacaine. They're amazing at making your mouth all numb, but oh so tasty with green beans!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Hot Pot and Eclipse
I got to see a total solar eclipse! Well, I didn’t actually see it because it was quite cloudy, but we did get to go outside. It was three hours of sunset collapsed into two minutes, three minutes of cool darkness, and three minutes back to a sunny Wednesday morning. It was a creepy feeling to be standing in the dark at nine in the morning, and we talked about how terrifying it would have been for ancient peoples who didn’t know an eclipse was coming.
More classes and model school today- mostly same old, same old, but I’m having SO much fun with my students. They’re really great and especially enjoyed the (prepositions practice) game where they got to tell me what to do :0)
For dinner, my host family took me to a restaurant where we sat around a boiling pot of broth and chili oil. Sounds crazy, I know, but amazingly good. They bring out raw meat and veggies and you dip it in and cook it. Then , you plunk it in your personal bowl of sauce to cool it and eat it. We were all drenched with sweat but full when we left. It was the good, sauna feeling sweat that makes you feel purified and not the icky humid kind of sweat. So, now that I’m full and relaxed with clean pores, I’m off to finish planning tomorrow’s lesson (Friends and Roommates)!
Monday, July 20, 2009
First Day of Model School
I named someone today. What a bizarre feeling…
It was the first day of model school. Everything went off perfectly, almost too perfectly. It was glorious. The activities took an appropriate amount of time, the students moved around and participated well, and they laughed at all my jokes. I am so pleased it went well. The only bad thing was the heat it was 95 F with 85% humidity! Whew! Our classroom had neither air conditioner nor fan, though we are promised one for tomorrow. So, after teaching for ninety minutes in a shirt, skirt, and hose (what was I thinking?!), I looked like I had been swimming. However, as that’s a common look around here, it wasn’t so bad, and the students were just as hot.
The students themselves are great. They are generally 18-24 and intermediate level, with some exceptions to both items on each end. The activities for today worked out well, and now I have an idea of what to plan for tomorrow. I’m only teaching half the day so Rosstin gets a turn, too.
There’s been some swapping of the schedule since we found out today that one class is twenty-two 5-12 year olds. That’s quite the news item when were told to prepare for 15 university students. The people who got that class were troopers, but we’ve arranged a system where they will join another team of teachers to teach a normal class and we will all take turns teaching the kiddos on our days off. I mean, how hard can it be to teach 22 small and not so small children for 90 minutes? Famous last words.
Tomorrow will be great! We’re doing an apartment hunting game and then a lesson on prepositions in the context of household objects (the bed is next to the table, etc.)
It was the first day of model school. Everything went off perfectly, almost too perfectly. It was glorious. The activities took an appropriate amount of time, the students moved around and participated well, and they laughed at all my jokes. I am so pleased it went well. The only bad thing was the heat it was 95 F with 85% humidity! Whew! Our classroom had neither air conditioner nor fan, though we are promised one for tomorrow. So, after teaching for ninety minutes in a shirt, skirt, and hose (what was I thinking?!), I looked like I had been swimming. However, as that’s a common look around here, it wasn’t so bad, and the students were just as hot.
The students themselves are great. They are generally 18-24 and intermediate level, with some exceptions to both items on each end. The activities for today worked out well, and now I have an idea of what to plan for tomorrow. I’m only teaching half the day so Rosstin gets a turn, too.
There’s been some swapping of the schedule since we found out today that one class is twenty-two 5-12 year olds. That’s quite the news item when were told to prepare for 15 university students. The people who got that class were troopers, but we’ve arranged a system where they will join another team of teachers to teach a normal class and we will all take turns teaching the kiddos on our days off. I mean, how hard can it be to teach 22 small and not so small children for 90 minutes? Famous last words.
Tomorrow will be great! We’re doing an apartment hunting game and then a lesson on prepositions in the context of household objects (the bed is next to the table, etc.)
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Faux Pas
Also, I've just discovered that at the end of meals, I've been going around saying "Thanks, I'm delicious." instead of "Thanks, I'm full."
Oops.
Oops.
Bookstores and Lotus
This weekend, I got a lot of lesson planning done, including a nice polished one for tomorrow. The others are still rough because I still have no idea what my students’ level is. Tomorrow night will be a lot of planning for sure. Today, we went to the largest bookstore in Chengdu. I was hoping to pick up an English novel as a reward for a good first third of training, but all the English language books were very expensive, about 110 yuan. (For reference, lunch costs me 5-8 yuan.) I still had fun looking at the entire floor of GaoKao material and the language books. They have “Learn Chinese!” materials for native speakers of English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, and Russian. It was very impressive.
After a delicious lunch, we went to IKEA, which is exactly like the American ones, except they set the tables with chopsticks. They also had a good selection of woks, but they might have that in American IKEA, too. The rest of the kitchen items are geared for Western cooking. We had a good time exploring, and I told/mimed/described to my host family the functions of brownie pans, pizza cutters, egg slicers, muffin tins, apple corers, and the various types of pots and pans. In return, they told me how to pick out a good wok, something that might come in handy very soon.
Finally, we went to Flower Town, which consists of a giant pond/lake full of lotus and the area’s largest flower market. It was very pretty, and we got fresh veggies for dinner, but it was so very hot. We all came home and ate cold fruit, which is surprisingly refreshing!
After a delicious lunch, we went to IKEA, which is exactly like the American ones, except they set the tables with chopsticks. They also had a good selection of woks, but they might have that in American IKEA, too. The rest of the kitchen items are geared for Western cooking. We had a good time exploring, and I told/mimed/described to my host family the functions of brownie pans, pizza cutters, egg slicers, muffin tins, apple corers, and the various types of pots and pans. In return, they told me how to pick out a good wok, something that might come in handy very soon.
Finally, we went to Flower Town, which consists of a giant pond/lake full of lotus and the area’s largest flower market. It was very pretty, and we got fresh veggies for dinner, but it was so very hot. We all came home and ate cold fruit, which is surprisingly refreshing!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Week Three!
We’ve been with our host families a while now. It’s going pretty well! My family consists of a 25-year-old (my host “mother”) and her parents. She is married, but her husband is getting his doctorate in another city, so he’s not around much. They are really sweet and super accommodating. I have the master bedroom and my own bathroom with a western-style toilet and everything. The food is really good, and the house is comfortably cool against this crazy Sichuan heat. Last weekend, we went shopping in Tianfu Square and saw the giant Mao statue there. We also went to SW China’s largest indoor market, where they sell literally everything. One stall of buttons, one of zippers, one of purses, one of backpacks, and an entire street of baby clothes. We also went to Jinli Street, a “preserved ancient street.” It offers traditional handicrafts as well as restaurants, tea shops, and a Starbucks. (Be sure to check out the pictures!)
The 80 trainees who were all living in the hotel together have been split into four training sites. I like the people at my training site, and I’m looking forward to getting to know them better, but the people I’d been hanging out with are mostly at other sites. It’s a good chance to make new friends! We’re all together at least once a week, so that will be fun. I’m sure there will be some hanging out after those sessions.
Training marches on. It’s mostly more of the same. There have been some very helpful practical sessions from current and exiting volunteers telling us what activities have worked well in their actual classrooms of Chinese students. It’s also been good to hear first-hand about their very varied experiences with different types of students, different sizes of schools, and different locations in the countries.
Next week, we begin model school. They recruit Chinese students to take two weeks of English classes as guinea pigs for us to try out new lessons plans and to give the less experienced teachers time to get their feet wet. We are paired off into mentor/mentee pairs, so that the mentee can watch the mentor teach for a week before teaching his own week. Since my “mentee” has taught before, we may do some team teaching. Our theme is “Modern Life in New York,” and we’re doing sub-themes on apartment living/apartment hunting, roommates (aka personal description), and occupations. We plan to wrap it all up by having them invent a person who is moving to New York and present these facets of their lives in groups. Maybe they will have a poster or something, too. I’d better be off to finish up planning for my week now. Happy Friday/Saturday!
The 80 trainees who were all living in the hotel together have been split into four training sites. I like the people at my training site, and I’m looking forward to getting to know them better, but the people I’d been hanging out with are mostly at other sites. It’s a good chance to make new friends! We’re all together at least once a week, so that will be fun. I’m sure there will be some hanging out after those sessions.
Training marches on. It’s mostly more of the same. There have been some very helpful practical sessions from current and exiting volunteers telling us what activities have worked well in their actual classrooms of Chinese students. It’s also been good to hear first-hand about their very varied experiences with different types of students, different sizes of schools, and different locations in the countries.
Next week, we begin model school. They recruit Chinese students to take two weeks of English classes as guinea pigs for us to try out new lessons plans and to give the less experienced teachers time to get their feet wet. We are paired off into mentor/mentee pairs, so that the mentee can watch the mentor teach for a week before teaching his own week. Since my “mentee” has taught before, we may do some team teaching. Our theme is “Modern Life in New York,” and we’re doing sub-themes on apartment living/apartment hunting, roommates (aka personal description), and occupations. We plan to wrap it all up by having them invent a person who is moving to New York and present these facets of their lives in groups. Maybe they will have a poster or something, too. I’d better be off to finish up planning for my week now. Happy Friday/Saturday!
Weeks One and Two
We finally rolled up to our hotel around 10 pm after a 12 hour flight to Beijing, a layover, then short two and a half hour jaunt to Chengdu. The airport in Beijing is spectacular. It dwarfs the massive Atlanta airport and has this really cool orange lattice-work ceiling. The staging staff warned us that officials would board the plane to check everyone’s temperature, and sure enough they did. They have stopped wearing the spacesuits-style haz mat gear they favored in the first stages of the outbreak and now settle for gloves and the plastic full face contagion screens. They also have the coolest thermometers ever. They look rather like bulky penlights and fit easily into a shirt pocket. To take a temperature, you just focus a beam of light on the person’s forehead, and it somehow reads the temperature. Nifty, huh?
No one had a fever, so we were allowed to disembark and begin to trek through the terminal. There was another “temperature gate” that uses infrared cameras to screen passerby. If you appear to be warmer than normal, they scoot you into a curtained area and slap a mask on you and take your temperature again. Several of our group, yours truly included, was afforded this extra hospitality, but we all came up clean. We even got to keep the masks as souvenirs!
The rest of the airport and flying was fairly uneventful, and we were all glad to get to our hotel. I pretty much crashed straight away. The next day, we began pre-service training (PST) in earnest. We would normally only stay in the hotel three days, but since we could be quarantined anytime in the next seven days, we will stay here a week. We don’t want to exposure our host families to contagion and possible quarantine. Also, our wonderful medical staff will be taking our temperature daily. They are going to know our foreheads SO well.
Training quickly settled into a routine. Multiple hours of Mandarin a day mixed in with TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) training and safety and health briefings. Most of the training is great, and I can tell that my Mandarin is improving rapidly. The people have been great to help us. In general, I think most of the merchants and vendors here are nicer to us than many Americans are to immigrants with flawed English. It’s been very pleasant.
Just down the street from our hotel, there is a TrustMart, the Chinese rebranding of Walmart (Walmart does actually own it.) It is surreal to go there because everything looks the same…but it isn’t. The store itself is much more compact and multi-level, but they sell everything! Notebooks, chopsticks, snacks, snake meat, you want it, they got it! The goods that look the same (paper, coffee, socks) are somehow just the tiniest bit different- enough to give you that Twilight Zone feeling. That being said, the store is fun and hectic and very useful.
We also got to make a trip to the American Consulate, something I’d never done before. They staff was welcoming and provided a surprisingly (and welcome) discussion of their perspective on expat life in China. They also invited us to speak at their English corner when we are around Chengdu. That could be fun.
Finally, I just need to say that our hotel is great. They seem a little baffled by the descent of 80 westerners with matching name tags, but they have been most accommodating and always answer our questions. The breakfast here is amazing and varied, including fried peanuts, potatoes, spinach with peppers, dried tofu and peanut scramble (very tasty!), and tomato and egg on a rotating basis. Everyday they have rice porridge, yogurt, steamed bread, tea, instant coffee, and milk. Not a bad way to start the morning! On Thursday we will move in with our host families. I’m not sure what the internet situation will be, so I will update when able.
No one had a fever, so we were allowed to disembark and begin to trek through the terminal. There was another “temperature gate” that uses infrared cameras to screen passerby. If you appear to be warmer than normal, they scoot you into a curtained area and slap a mask on you and take your temperature again. Several of our group, yours truly included, was afforded this extra hospitality, but we all came up clean. We even got to keep the masks as souvenirs!
The rest of the airport and flying was fairly uneventful, and we were all glad to get to our hotel. I pretty much crashed straight away. The next day, we began pre-service training (PST) in earnest. We would normally only stay in the hotel three days, but since we could be quarantined anytime in the next seven days, we will stay here a week. We don’t want to exposure our host families to contagion and possible quarantine. Also, our wonderful medical staff will be taking our temperature daily. They are going to know our foreheads SO well.
Training quickly settled into a routine. Multiple hours of Mandarin a day mixed in with TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) training and safety and health briefings. Most of the training is great, and I can tell that my Mandarin is improving rapidly. The people have been great to help us. In general, I think most of the merchants and vendors here are nicer to us than many Americans are to immigrants with flawed English. It’s been very pleasant.
Just down the street from our hotel, there is a TrustMart, the Chinese rebranding of Walmart (Walmart does actually own it.) It is surreal to go there because everything looks the same…but it isn’t. The store itself is much more compact and multi-level, but they sell everything! Notebooks, chopsticks, snacks, snake meat, you want it, they got it! The goods that look the same (paper, coffee, socks) are somehow just the tiniest bit different- enough to give you that Twilight Zone feeling. That being said, the store is fun and hectic and very useful.
We also got to make a trip to the American Consulate, something I’d never done before. They staff was welcoming and provided a surprisingly (and welcome) discussion of their perspective on expat life in China. They also invited us to speak at their English corner when we are around Chengdu. That could be fun.
Finally, I just need to say that our hotel is great. They seem a little baffled by the descent of 80 westerners with matching name tags, but they have been most accommodating and always answer our questions. The breakfast here is amazing and varied, including fried peanuts, potatoes, spinach with peppers, dried tofu and peanut scramble (very tasty!), and tomato and egg on a rotating basis. Everyday they have rice porridge, yogurt, steamed bread, tea, instant coffee, and milk. Not a bad way to start the morning! On Thursday we will move in with our host families. I’m not sure what the internet situation will be, so I will update when able.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
From the air above Siberia...
Eight hours and 4150 miles into the flight, and Beijing is now within sight on our flight tracker. Hooray! I may regret saying this, but so far the twelve hour flight is much easier to handle than the five hour one. I think it's easier to sort of settle in for the long haul across the world and pace your energy, food, and activities than to sit tapping your foot and eating Biscoff as you go across the US.
I managed to sleep about four hours when we first got on the plane, so now I'm staying awake
until we reach our hotel in...ten hours. Not so bad. I have a half-baked notion that following China time on the plane will help with the jet lag. We shall see.
The PC folks in China ("post") are still concerned about H1N1--not that it is a threat to our health, but that some of us will be quarantined and miss the first week of training. We have no control over it, since even though none of us is sick, if we are within three rows on the plane of someone who is quarantined, we may be quarantined too. Fortunately, with their usual equanimity, post has a contigency plan. One of the staff will meet us in Beijing this year to help deal with any issues. They've also apparently prepared self-study packets for any unfortunate quarantinees (Is that a word?) to begin training on their own. Oh well. As they put it in our staging materials, it's just one week out of two years, and it would give us time to get over jet lag and get rested. Way to think positive!
I managed to sleep about four hours when we first got on the plane, so now I'm staying awake
until we reach our hotel in...ten hours. Not so bad. I have a half-baked notion that following China time on the plane will help with the jet lag. We shall see.
The PC folks in China ("post") are still concerned about H1N1--not that it is a threat to our health, but that some of us will be quarantined and miss the first week of training. We have no control over it, since even though none of us is sick, if we are within three rows on the plane of someone who is quarantined, we may be quarantined too. Fortunately, with their usual equanimity, post has a contigency plan. One of the staff will meet us in Beijing this year to help deal with any issues. They've also apparently prepared self-study packets for any unfortunate quarantinees (Is that a word?) to begin training on their own. Oh well. As they put it in our staging materials, it's just one week out of two years, and it would give us time to get over jet lag and get rested. Way to think positive!
Staging
Staging went wonderfully well. I was afraid that it would pass very slowly, but they did a good job of making the rather dull but necessary policies and procedures interesting through
interactive activities.
More interestingly, the people are fantastic. Everyone seems friendly and smart and personable without having to try too hard. Introductions were easy and not forced, and just about everyone has something inteesting to talk about.
We're staying in a Japanese themed hotel, so I'm going to go try the Japanese soaking tub in the bathroom. First, though, I need to rig some towels to cover the glass door. Don't need my roommate to walk by that :-)
interactive activities.
More interestingly, the people are fantastic. Everyone seems friendly and smart and personable without having to try too hard. Introductions were easy and not forced, and just about everyone has something inteesting to talk about.
We're staying in a Japanese themed hotel, so I'm going to go try the Japanese soaking tub in the bathroom. First, though, I need to rig some towels to cover the glass door. Don't need my roommate to walk by that :-)
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