Last three days
Monday, September 4 was our very first day of teaching in China. Our class periods are 2-45 minute classes back-to-back with a five minute break in between. We both had one class and it Michael who went first with a class at 8 AM. Both of us agreed that the best way to start was to introduce ourselves, tell them about our education and majors, talk about vacations (they just got back from theirs) and other interests. We then handed out sheets of papers and asked each of them to answer the questions we just answered. We did this for a couple of reasons. First, it gave us a chance to pass around another needed piece of paper requesting their phone numbers and English names. Secondly, we knew that after they finished we could ask them to stand up and tell us what they wrote and assess their English skills, and thirdly, use up some time. Ninety minutes is a long time!
Michael’s class consists of thirty-one students, mostly young girls, who are sophomores majoring in English. Of the thirty-one in the class only 4 or 5 are boys. One girl, who is studying broadcasting and works as a broadcaster on the campus radio station, has already asked him to join her as a partner on the radio. He hasn’t made a commitment yet but is thinking about it.
It was slow going for the first half hour or so with only six students speaking up as most of them were apprehensive. He hopes he broke the ice and that they will open up next week. The most fun was the verbal exchange he did receive when he talked about basketball. He used his knowledge and admiration of Yao Ming as a metaphor for how anyone can work hard and succeed at anything if they put their heart into it. With everyone knowing Yao Ming this was a hit! For those of you who don’t know who the heck he is just Google him and you’ll find out.
Cindy’s class began at 1:30 PM and consists of mostly young men with only 5-6 young girls. These are also sophomores but are known as “advanced” because they have a bit more English behind them. On those informational sheets they state that they are computer, information, electrical, or technology majors with only one psychology major. It was easier to get these students involved with their advanced language skills, thankfully, and there was some laughter too! With no knowledge of Yao Ming, Cindy’s hook was humor and giving them a hard time without embarrassing them.
Biggest laugh for us both were the English names some of these young people have chosen. Here are just a few. Watermelon, Big, Small, Fluffy, Ring, Winds and Windy, Snow, Dream, and of course last but not least, Cool (we both had one of these.) There’s so much more to come :)
We’re off until next Monday so Tuesday we got on our bikes and headed to the open market about a mile away. We got our bikes filled with air, lifted the handle bars and tried to get a special paper in order for the university to reimburse us for the cost of the bike. When we started to show the paper that our Chinese contact wrote for us to show the bike seller, we became famous. As lots of students are out buying their own bikes within moments we were surrounded by 30 of them wanting to either hear what we wanted from the bike seller or help us because we were trying to tell him what we needed. They were very helpful and we got what we needed.
Michael had a chance to meet and talk with a post grad there that really had much better English than the rest. He is from the Shanghai area and is down here for school (not our university) but what was interesting was that as soon as he found out we were from MN he mentioned the Timberwolves and its biggest player, Kevin Garnet. If time allows it he might contact us as Michael gave him a card with our number.
Today, September 6, we had to meet up with Molly (FT from Philadelphia) at 8 AM. A driver picked us up to go to downtown Hangzhou for medical exam and resident permit. The driver got us there at 9AM (Fanny met us there as she lives only 10 minutes from there) and then we all had our blood test, electrocardiogram, and an eye, weight, and blood pressure check. The female doctors (we think because they all had white coats on) listened to our hearts and performed an EKG. We also had one chest x-ray. This took only about 1 ½ hours to complete and cost us 386 RMB or $48.60 U.S.
By the way, the results came back at 3:30 PM as Fanny had to go back to the hospital where this took place and pick them up for our 4 PM meeting to apply for our resident permit. Amazing!
Molly, Michael and Cindy spent the day eating, walking around a tourist area and finding a free Hangzhou History Museum. Then we headed to the Resident Permit Office where we waited 45 minutes to apply for the permit. This permit will be ready for us to pick up in a week (will cost us 400 RMB or $50) and it is only then that we may be allowed to travel to another city.
Most interesting occurrence at the Resident Permit Office – we met a Chinese born U.S. citizen who was hired by a university -- not to far from ours -- as a resident professor to head a huge project. He was a professor in Tampa Bay, Florida for ten years. Michael didn’t quite get the whole background of his course of study but he thinks it is in some bio-technical sophisticated arena. This gentleman was given a huge grant to build a department that at this point has twenty professors. We hope to hear from him as again, Michael passed out one of our cards.
Biggest disappointment was after we got home and looked at the conversion of kilograms to pounds and we realized that we hadn’t lost that much weight :(
Michael’s class consists of thirty-one students, mostly young girls, who are sophomores majoring in English. Of the thirty-one in the class only 4 or 5 are boys. One girl, who is studying broadcasting and works as a broadcaster on the campus radio station, has already asked him to join her as a partner on the radio. He hasn’t made a commitment yet but is thinking about it.
It was slow going for the first half hour or so with only six students speaking up as most of them were apprehensive. He hopes he broke the ice and that they will open up next week. The most fun was the verbal exchange he did receive when he talked about basketball. He used his knowledge and admiration of Yao Ming as a metaphor for how anyone can work hard and succeed at anything if they put their heart into it. With everyone knowing Yao Ming this was a hit! For those of you who don’t know who the heck he is just Google him and you’ll find out.
Cindy’s class began at 1:30 PM and consists of mostly young men with only 5-6 young girls. These are also sophomores but are known as “advanced” because they have a bit more English behind them. On those informational sheets they state that they are computer, information, electrical, or technology majors with only one psychology major. It was easier to get these students involved with their advanced language skills, thankfully, and there was some laughter too! With no knowledge of Yao Ming, Cindy’s hook was humor and giving them a hard time without embarrassing them.
Biggest laugh for us both were the English names some of these young people have chosen. Here are just a few. Watermelon, Big, Small, Fluffy, Ring, Winds and Windy, Snow, Dream, and of course last but not least, Cool (we both had one of these.) There’s so much more to come :)
We’re off until next Monday so Tuesday we got on our bikes and headed to the open market about a mile away. We got our bikes filled with air, lifted the handle bars and tried to get a special paper in order for the university to reimburse us for the cost of the bike. When we started to show the paper that our Chinese contact wrote for us to show the bike seller, we became famous. As lots of students are out buying their own bikes within moments we were surrounded by 30 of them wanting to either hear what we wanted from the bike seller or help us because we were trying to tell him what we needed. They were very helpful and we got what we needed.
Michael had a chance to meet and talk with a post grad there that really had much better English than the rest. He is from the Shanghai area and is down here for school (not our university) but what was interesting was that as soon as he found out we were from MN he mentioned the Timberwolves and its biggest player, Kevin Garnet. If time allows it he might contact us as Michael gave him a card with our number.
Today, September 6, we had to meet up with Molly (FT from Philadelphia) at 8 AM. A driver picked us up to go to downtown Hangzhou for medical exam and resident permit. The driver got us there at 9AM (Fanny met us there as she lives only 10 minutes from there) and then we all had our blood test, electrocardiogram, and an eye, weight, and blood pressure check. The female doctors (we think because they all had white coats on) listened to our hearts and performed an EKG. We also had one chest x-ray. This took only about 1 ½ hours to complete and cost us 386 RMB or $48.60 U.S.
By the way, the results came back at 3:30 PM as Fanny had to go back to the hospital where this took place and pick them up for our 4 PM meeting to apply for our resident permit. Amazing!
Molly, Michael and Cindy spent the day eating, walking around a tourist area and finding a free Hangzhou History Museum. Then we headed to the Resident Permit Office where we waited 45 minutes to apply for the permit. This permit will be ready for us to pick up in a week (will cost us 400 RMB or $50) and it is only then that we may be allowed to travel to another city.
Most interesting occurrence at the Resident Permit Office – we met a Chinese born U.S. citizen who was hired by a university -- not to far from ours -- as a resident professor to head a huge project. He was a professor in Tampa Bay, Florida for ten years. Michael didn’t quite get the whole background of his course of study but he thinks it is in some bio-technical sophisticated arena. This gentleman was given a huge grant to build a department that at this point has twenty professors. We hope to hear from him as again, Michael passed out one of our cards.
Biggest disappointment was after we got home and looked at the conversion of kilograms to pounds and we realized that we hadn’t lost that much weight :(
posted by royben | 9:38 PM
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