College Campus

Teaching English to Chinese students is more difficult than I thought. For my first day of English Writing on Wednesday, I walked in and all of the students were chatting and buzzing about the classroom. Then, they all stopped and stared at me, quickly taking their seats. I asked them to write down five questions they had about me or about America and five things they wanted to tell me about themselves. The students diligently got to work and took great care in their questions and handwriting that it took almost 30 minutes for everyone to complete the assignment. I spent the rest of class answering their questions. I couldn’t tell if they understood me or not as some students just stared, others chatted to each other in hushed voices and a few appeared to be sleeping. However, occasionally I said something of interest, which aroused a chorus of “ooooooh.” Some of my favorite questions:

Why do you looks Chinese?
Do you like to eat fried chicken?
Your earrings is beautiful, but I want to know is it pain?
Do you know the superstar Kobe Bryant?
I think you are beautiful, do you have boyfriend?
How much does our school pay you?
Do you think you are tall?
Are you a half-breed?

Next week we start teaching additional classes. There are 12 groups of students and eight weeks of classes, with four categories for each group. In other words, we have two weeks of one subject with each group. Because there’s only one class per week and one full class is a performance test, we have only 1.5 hours to teach the students the subject. Confused? Me too.

I am teaching American Culture and Etiquette. Scott is teaching Western Cooking and Etiquette. We have a multimedia classroom, so I think I’ll create a PowerPoint presentation for each. Scott won’t have a kitchen to work with, so he’s diligently downloading Julia Childes episodes.

Additionally, this week we have been coaching two students to prepare for an English speech competition. The final is tomorrow and includes students from around the Yunnan province. If they place in the top three, they get to fly to Beijing for the semi-finals and the finals will be broadcast on the CCTV (Central China Television) English channel. We’re hoping the students (Tina and Paul – most Chinese choose English names) qualify as it means that we’ll get to accompany them to Beijing as their coaches!

We finally received our meal cards – allowing us to eat in the many cafeterias on campus. The largest cafeteria has two levels. The bottom level you can get a big scoop of rice for .60 yuan (10 cents) and scoops of numerous dishes for 1 – 2 yuan (15 – 25 cents). Upstairs is made-to-order specialties like noodle soups with meat or tofu, dumplings, hot pots, omelets, etc. all for around 3 yuan (35 cents). It’s a great deal and the food is quite tasty, though our stomachs are still having some issues as we take turns getting “sick” if you know what I mean.

Scott has gotten in contact with a local hockey team that practices on Monday nights, and he may be involved with coaching some youth. So as you can see – we’re starting to get the hang of this China thing. Hopefully this coming week we’ll also begin our Chinese lessons. Tonight we’re off to an art gallery opening and out to dinner with our American friends Dan and Donna.

Below are some pictures of our campus and the flowers are perennials found around our campus – I’m interested to see what different kinds bloom throughout the year in this spring city.

Our apartment building or "Overseas International Business School Dormatory"


The Recreation Facility


The Library


Classrooms


One of the many basketball courts - Chinese are crazy about basketball


The shopping street alongside our campus where you can find just about anything


Just a few of the many garden oasis spots around campus