Gansu Calling
Well, I've had quite the week. The train ride wasn't that bad, after all, and we had a great time. It was wonderful to see so much of the country. Sichuan is very lush and beautiful, so it was incredibly interesting to watch the scenery metamorphose into the desert as we traveled north. Camels and mountains and dunes, oh my! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera as I was packing, so I don't have any photographs to share. I'll make sure to keep it handy when I travel back to Gansu next month; the scenery really is breathtaking.
We pulled into Zhangye after thirty-six hours on the train. The China 10s (we're the China 11s) were waiting for us at the train station, and they immediately took us to our hotel. They gave us about an hour or so to shower before dinner, and then we had an excellent meal at this little hole in the wall resaurant. Gansu is famous for its mutton and sweet-and-sour pork--both of which we enjoyed. After dinner, they escorted us to a dance club, where we were allowed to play our own music and dance about on top of this multi-colored glass platform. Dancing my little heart away, I eventually shattered a section of the glass and decided to take a break for an hour or so. As we were preparing to leave, Weezer came on, and we all had to rush back to dance. Unfortunately, a China 10 (whose way was graciously prepared by yours truly) did some more damage to the dance floor, so we had to rush out of there pretty quickly. The bonus, I guess, was that the second crash provided a quite emphatic end to "Say It Ain't So." This incident has already made us, the Gansu crew, quite notorious amongst our colleagues.
We woke up bright and early the next morning (Sunday) to hop a (hot, sweaty and extraordinarily crowded) bus to a Tibetan minority festival up in the mountains of the province. After only six hours on bumpy, twisty, and quite frightening mountain roads, our bus driver told us that the roads would only continue to worsen ahead, so we best turn around. Well, it was certainly a disappointment, but, trying to make the most of it, we turned around and held a picnic outside of this very small, very beautiful mountain village. There was a number of people who had set up tents as a kind of base camp about an hour from the festival. They slaughtered a sheep for us and cooked it right away. They also shared some rice and wine with us. We had an excellent couple of hours trying to communicate with them and wondering around the hills. My friend Katie and I befriended this nice old lady who showed us around a small Buddhist temple in the village. I ended up getting sunburned pretty badly in the altitude. After the short break, we re-boarded the bus for another six hours back to Zhangye. Even though we never reached our destination, the trip was a great success--it gave us more time to get to know the older volunteers and was, frankly, just a lot of fun. Misadventures seem to have a way of being perfect.
Monday we began our summer project. We assisted the 10s in teaching a melange of primary and secondary school English teachers about Western methodologies and culture. Despite my reservations about teaching more experienced teachers how to teach, I knew that I could help the teachers learn more about American culture and decided that, hopefully, this knowledge could help them to engage better their students. Also, their oral English was surprisingly poor, so I hope that it was helpful for them to converse with a native speaker. On Monday, we basically just observed our older colleagues. I was assigned to the "Culture" group (the others were Environment and Current Events). Tuesday, I aided a 10 on a lesson about American dating. There was one hilarious moment when I tried to explain speed dating to the class; I have never seen a group of people look more bewildered. I guess it is a fairly confusing concept.
The following day, I taught a literature class on the balcony scene from _Romeo and Juliet_ (after introducing the lesson with a fairly awesome explanation of "hump day"--thanks Jess). We read the scene and did some role plays, and then I had the students rewrite the end of the play. Here are my two favorite alternate endings:
1. In heaven, Juliet is very ugly. When Romeo comes upon her, he does not recognize her as his mortal love but falls all over again regardless. He subsequently mauls his face so that she doesn't feel physically inadequate, and then they have many gorgeous babies.
2. Following Romeo's experiment with pharamceuticals and Juliet's dalliance with seppuku, they both turn into beautiful butterflies and live forever.
I find it truly amazing how the Bard could have overlooked these clearly more fantastic endings.
Thurdsay, Katie and I taught a two-part lesson on American slang. Our lesson plan was adopted by another volunteer, Matt, on Friday who tweaked it just a bit. For example, I walked in to Matt's class as his thirty, Chinese, middle-aged students said in unison: "Man, I'm wasted! I've been boozing all night with my homies. Keep it on the down low from the old lady, but I got into a rumble cuz this dweeb trashed my new kicks." Yeah, Katie and I didn't teach that. That night, our China 10s invited us to a toga party at one volunteer's apartment. Although I was convinced that they were just hazing us trainees in an attempt to have us crazy foreigners wander the streets of Zhangye wrapped in bed sheets, I acquiesced and dressed myself up like Caesar. When we got to the party, we were fortunately not the only ones in togas, and we all had a great time getting to know each other better. The 10s are pretty serious poker players, so we played Texas Hold'Em with Jiao (Chinese cents).
The following day I taught a fairly interesting lesson on party culture, during which I had the students play a game I ripped off of "Who's Line Is It Anyway"--in which a "host" had to guess the profession or identity of his or her guests by asking a series of questions about him or her. Then, we played Pictionary to review vocabulary from the week.
The experience, as a whole, was a pretty wonderful one--our students were really interested and felt like they had some new tools for their own classes. One last highlight involves my roommate Clayton teaching a class on Cowboy culture: rodeos and ranchin' and such. Anyways, he had the class listen to Willie Nelson's "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" and fill in some blanks as a listening activity. He then got the class to sing along with him. The best part was, however, this one woman who adamantly refused to sing along because she very much wants her son to be a cowboy. It was fabulous.
Later on Friday, we hopped back on a train to return to Chengdu. We arrived Sunday afternoon, and my family promptly carried me off to the multi-person birthday extravaganza. To clear something up, cake fights are not commonplace at Chinese birthday parties--we're just a lively bunch. After we cleaned up the mess, we had a mini-dance party. First, my cousin performed a traditional dance; next, Nainai spent about ten minutes trying to teach Mary how to box step. Then, I gathered the family around to teach the Electric Slide, which we eventually enjoyed while dancing to Avril Lavigne's "Skater Boi". Chaos ensued, and I sang "Complicated" to a gleefully flabbergasted Nainai before calling it a night.
Unfortunately, the rest of this week hasn't been quite so spectacular. I've gotten a cold and a fever which comes and goes. Luckily, I don't feel too sick and am still attending class and moving along as usual. I hope you all are doing well, and I apologize for not having blogging sooner. Take care.
We pulled into Zhangye after thirty-six hours on the train. The China 10s (we're the China 11s) were waiting for us at the train station, and they immediately took us to our hotel. They gave us about an hour or so to shower before dinner, and then we had an excellent meal at this little hole in the wall resaurant. Gansu is famous for its mutton and sweet-and-sour pork--both of which we enjoyed. After dinner, they escorted us to a dance club, where we were allowed to play our own music and dance about on top of this multi-colored glass platform. Dancing my little heart away, I eventually shattered a section of the glass and decided to take a break for an hour or so. As we were preparing to leave, Weezer came on, and we all had to rush back to dance. Unfortunately, a China 10 (whose way was graciously prepared by yours truly) did some more damage to the dance floor, so we had to rush out of there pretty quickly. The bonus, I guess, was that the second crash provided a quite emphatic end to "Say It Ain't So." This incident has already made us, the Gansu crew, quite notorious amongst our colleagues.
We woke up bright and early the next morning (Sunday) to hop a (hot, sweaty and extraordinarily crowded) bus to a Tibetan minority festival up in the mountains of the province. After only six hours on bumpy, twisty, and quite frightening mountain roads, our bus driver told us that the roads would only continue to worsen ahead, so we best turn around. Well, it was certainly a disappointment, but, trying to make the most of it, we turned around and held a picnic outside of this very small, very beautiful mountain village. There was a number of people who had set up tents as a kind of base camp about an hour from the festival. They slaughtered a sheep for us and cooked it right away. They also shared some rice and wine with us. We had an excellent couple of hours trying to communicate with them and wondering around the hills. My friend Katie and I befriended this nice old lady who showed us around a small Buddhist temple in the village. I ended up getting sunburned pretty badly in the altitude. After the short break, we re-boarded the bus for another six hours back to Zhangye. Even though we never reached our destination, the trip was a great success--it gave us more time to get to know the older volunteers and was, frankly, just a lot of fun. Misadventures seem to have a way of being perfect.
Monday we began our summer project. We assisted the 10s in teaching a melange of primary and secondary school English teachers about Western methodologies and culture. Despite my reservations about teaching more experienced teachers how to teach, I knew that I could help the teachers learn more about American culture and decided that, hopefully, this knowledge could help them to engage better their students. Also, their oral English was surprisingly poor, so I hope that it was helpful for them to converse with a native speaker. On Monday, we basically just observed our older colleagues. I was assigned to the "Culture" group (the others were Environment and Current Events). Tuesday, I aided a 10 on a lesson about American dating. There was one hilarious moment when I tried to explain speed dating to the class; I have never seen a group of people look more bewildered. I guess it is a fairly confusing concept.
The following day, I taught a literature class on the balcony scene from _Romeo and Juliet_ (after introducing the lesson with a fairly awesome explanation of "hump day"--thanks Jess). We read the scene and did some role plays, and then I had the students rewrite the end of the play. Here are my two favorite alternate endings:
1. In heaven, Juliet is very ugly. When Romeo comes upon her, he does not recognize her as his mortal love but falls all over again regardless. He subsequently mauls his face so that she doesn't feel physically inadequate, and then they have many gorgeous babies.
2. Following Romeo's experiment with pharamceuticals and Juliet's dalliance with seppuku, they both turn into beautiful butterflies and live forever.
I find it truly amazing how the Bard could have overlooked these clearly more fantastic endings.
Thurdsay, Katie and I taught a two-part lesson on American slang. Our lesson plan was adopted by another volunteer, Matt, on Friday who tweaked it just a bit. For example, I walked in to Matt's class as his thirty, Chinese, middle-aged students said in unison: "Man, I'm wasted! I've been boozing all night with my homies. Keep it on the down low from the old lady, but I got into a rumble cuz this dweeb trashed my new kicks." Yeah, Katie and I didn't teach that. That night, our China 10s invited us to a toga party at one volunteer's apartment. Although I was convinced that they were just hazing us trainees in an attempt to have us crazy foreigners wander the streets of Zhangye wrapped in bed sheets, I acquiesced and dressed myself up like Caesar. When we got to the party, we were fortunately not the only ones in togas, and we all had a great time getting to know each other better. The 10s are pretty serious poker players, so we played Texas Hold'Em with Jiao (Chinese cents).
The following day I taught a fairly interesting lesson on party culture, during which I had the students play a game I ripped off of "Who's Line Is It Anyway"--in which a "host" had to guess the profession or identity of his or her guests by asking a series of questions about him or her. Then, we played Pictionary to review vocabulary from the week.
The experience, as a whole, was a pretty wonderful one--our students were really interested and felt like they had some new tools for their own classes. One last highlight involves my roommate Clayton teaching a class on Cowboy culture: rodeos and ranchin' and such. Anyways, he had the class listen to Willie Nelson's "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" and fill in some blanks as a listening activity. He then got the class to sing along with him. The best part was, however, this one woman who adamantly refused to sing along because she very much wants her son to be a cowboy. It was fabulous.
Later on Friday, we hopped back on a train to return to Chengdu. We arrived Sunday afternoon, and my family promptly carried me off to the multi-person birthday extravaganza. To clear something up, cake fights are not commonplace at Chinese birthday parties--we're just a lively bunch. After we cleaned up the mess, we had a mini-dance party. First, my cousin performed a traditional dance; next, Nainai spent about ten minutes trying to teach Mary how to box step. Then, I gathered the family around to teach the Electric Slide, which we eventually enjoyed while dancing to Avril Lavigne's "Skater Boi". Chaos ensued, and I sang "Complicated" to a gleefully flabbergasted Nainai before calling it a night.
Unfortunately, the rest of this week hasn't been quite so spectacular. I've gotten a cold and a fever which comes and goes. Luckily, I don't feel too sick and am still attending class and moving along as usual. I hope you all are doing well, and I apologize for not having blogging sooner. Take care.
posted by Benjamin Hudson at 4:32 PM
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