Teaching!

Tuesday was a bit hectic after coming home from Hong Kong, but the rest of the week has been fun. Wednesday evening us girls we invited to an English Corner dinner through the school. We taught them western manners and food vocabulary. We made them sing songs(although this isn't really American, they seem to think it is because it's in all their text books) (videos will come later, it's taking too long)...

Then we taught them food vocabulary:

After that came the food demonstrate, which was a huge highlight for the kids I think. The restaurant cooked the steak out in the open so that the kids could watch. However as we later learned, they cooked all 50 steaks on these two little pans and didn't actually fully cook them either- problem, haha. 

steak demo

Then came the best part, watching the kids eat! I assumed that they had used a knife and fork before and it's just a silly rumor that Chinese people don't know how to use them, but it's totally true. There's a great scene in Anna and the King when they're preparing for dinner with the British and are learning how to use forks and knives- watch it. That's exactly what it was like. Most of them resorted to putting their face on the plates and slurping the food up. Some sandwiched the food between the fork and knife, like chopsticks. And other used the two to scoop things into their mouths. 

girl using the scooping method with her fork and knife

The food was not very western in fact. The food was served on a hot plate, like you would serve with fajitas, and on it was a steak, some overcooked noodles with ambiguous red sauce, and an egg that was being fried by the plate. Quite strange. Then there was "salad" on the table, which was fruit with some yogurty-mayonnaisey sauce and some french fries. Very interesting...

our steak dinner

the group at dinner

From Left: Orange, Margaux, Sophie, Me, Candy, Colleen, Martha, and Ricki (it should be obivous who's a teacher and who isn't)

Then after that english corner, we went to another english corner, the same one as last week and chatted with our friends. I got a call while I was there that I would be going to another school the next day, but no one seemed to have any details for me. 

So the next morning I woke up for my 7:15am pickup (I was not so happy about that). They were a half hr late to get me. I got in the car and met the teacher I was going with, Ma Yin. She's super awesome, we're bffls now. The other people in the car didn't talk to us and we proceeded to pick up and drop off randos for awhile on our way to YanQing, the town where I was going to teach about 1.5 hrs away. Ma Yin is a dance teacher at the Children's Palace here and apparently goes to this other school that the Palace has a partnership with to teach a few times a week. She's 23 so we're pretty close in age and talked about a lot of funny stuff, like how she thinks the boys on my trip are really cute and how she only likes talking to cute boys, very funny. Plus she has a boy friend. 

So we arrived at the school and I met Lucy, the english teacher I'd be working with for the day, and Tina, her assistant who's doing an internship at the school. Lucy's english was ok, but Tina's was really really good so we talked about women's roles in China, and politics, and more. It was great. With everyone else, I spoke chinese so it was a great day of practice for me. As long as they speak slowly and use Mandarin (not Sichuan dialect), I can usually understand what they're saying or the general idea even if I don't get every word. I taught the first class, which went quite poorly. The kids didn't even know how to say "My name is..." They had learned to say "I am..." instead so the sentence structure change totally threw them off. It was pretty rough. Then we went to the lobby downstairs for recess essentially but it was raining so they couldn't go outside. There were about 40 kids in the class. Lucy turned to me and said "Teach now!". I hate when they said that because you never know when they want you to teach, or what, or how, etc. So we played a few games and sang some songs. The kids were gathered in a huge circle and I was in the middle "teaching", while tons of rando chinese people (mostly parents I assume) watched me. It was very stressful and awkward. 

Then we breaked for lunch. They asked me if I liked Hot Pot and I said yes, so naturally that's where we went. I told them dumplings were my favorite food so they ordered some of those for me too (typically not served with hot pot). NOTE: When in China, if someone asked if you like something or you like to do something and you say yes, that means they will get it for you or you will do it for sure. So be careful. haha. Lunch was great though. The last few hot pots have been entirely too spicy but this one was good and we had broccoli, woo! my fav. so of course, they ordered another order of it because I liked it and made me eat tons of it. We had great conversation, almost all in chinese, and the people at lunch were very funny. 

Chinese people usually take long lunches and then nap. They always assume we're really tired and tell us to nap, but usually I just read or do email or something. So they napped and I read. Then I tried to teach a 4-6 yr old class but had literally no materials. no blackboard or anything so they were really really bored. But then they sang me some hilarious songs (videos to come) so that was great. Then I taught some more and it was hard. Then I went to my last class, kids who were about 9-11. We played a "game" where I wrote a letter on the board and they told me words that started with the letter. I taught them a few new words per letter. They have a really hard time pronouncing certain sounds, which became very apparent when they didn't even know what letter the words started with. Example: For S, a kid raised his hand and said "Thirteen", which sounds like sirteen. Another fav: For Z, there said "there", which sounds like z. For W, "vegetable"=wegitable. soooo funny. I couldn't help laughing. 

Then we took a long break to wait for Ma Yin to finish, and then got a car back to Mianyang. Ma Yin and I went out to dinner with her friend and her friend's daughter. At dinner, Ma Yin told me to stop being so polite and be real (essentially that's how I'd translate it), it was great. We had a this big pot of soup on the table on a heater that cooked a bunch of veggies (very similar to hot pot) and then some delicious noodles. Then I brought her back to our room to introduce her to my other foreign teacher friends. 

Today we taught in the morning and now we're off to Chengdu for the weekend! woo! Then homestay until Tuesday!

I leave Mianyang two weeks from tomorrow, and get home two weeks from Sunday- how time flies!