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!