I heard about this activity from another American teacher. The most important thing is to not tell the students about the "scary" part until it happens.
Start out slowly. simple, passive reading. A handout. These are Real Dating Advertisements, I tell my students. People really do this in America - they will put an ad in the newspaper or on a website to try to find a girlfriend or boyfriend.
I tell them to read them to get an idea of what they sound like. Some read silently, and others read out loud. After a bit, I announce, "YOU are going to write your own dating advertisement. But this is NOT FOR YOU, it's some new person." I write this on the chalkboard, just so there's no confusion. They're better at reading English than listening to it, and I want to make sure they don't write about themselves. It will be all the more awkward if they do, but if it's fantasy anyway then they should be able to cope with what will happen later. I do a little example of what I want: a name, age, job, hometown, hobbies, what you are like, what you are looking for, 3 questions you would ask someone to find out if you like them.
Then I make my first crazy move, which I hope doesn't show my hand: I tell them I need an equal amount of girl ads and boy ads. If there are too many girls in the class, I tell some of them to write for boys. They have no problem with this. If there are too many boys in the class, I tell some of them to write for girls. This gets lot of laughter, but as long as I make a bunch of them do it they don't feel targeted. They write away and I pace around, spying on their progress.
When the majority of the class appears to be finished writing, the madness can finally begin.
"Ok, now I want everyone to stand up and come to the front of the room."
Blank stares. I keep talking.
"You need to bring your paper and a pen or pencil. The paper where you wrote about your person. Stand up and come here. Come to the front by me."
Nothing. Then one students asks, "Everybody?"
Me: "Yes, everybody. All of you."
Still no one moves. Then: "When?"
Me: "Right now. Stand up and come here right now. All of you. Stand up. Come here. Right now!"
I'm vigorously motioning to stand. Finally, one or two students get some courage and they stand up. A few follow suit, but others still look confused. I usually have to yell something like "You! in the back! come here! now!" I refuse to explain until everyone is crowded around in the front, because if they hear what we're going to do first, they would probably never stand up.
"You must pretend to be your person. Act like you are really the person that you wrote about. You all wrote some questions to ask a possible boyfriend or girlfriend. I want you to find someone to talk to and ask them your three questions. If you think they would be a good boyfriend or girlfriend for your person, write their name on your paper. You MUST get at least FIVE names. More is better. At least five names! Go!"
This activity has varying levels of success. At the beginning the students pretty much seek out classmates of the same gender. Girls who are being boys for the activity are very popular, because the real girls do not want to talk to real boys. Even less do the real boys want to talk to the real girls. If it is a pretty mixed-gender class, the girls usually all talk to each other in a tight pack, and the boys stand off to one side and kind of talk to each other or don't do anything. If there are only a few boys in the class they tend to be more gregarious, I guess because they are used to talking to girls. If there are only boys in the class, which is true of a couple of my classes, they can get pretty wild. There are always some people running around yelling "I'm a boy! Who's a girl?" I try to find pockets of inactivity and urge them, "Go! Find a girl!" or "The boys are over there! Go talk to them!"
With a little urging they finally start to really mingle.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Update in Pictures
I have failed to blog recently. I hope some pictures will appease you, as well as update you on what I'm doing!
To the left, celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival with Yin, another English teacher at Wuyi. To the right, two of my students, Amy and Iris, who were nice enough to take me to Guifeng Mountain one rainy day.
At Guifeng Mountain.
To the left, Caitlin and I with Gary and Helen, who work in the Foreign Affairs Office. Gary is the most helpful person ever, and a mean Uno player. To the right, the ceremony as the school celebrated its 25th anniversary.
Caitlin and me at the anniversary ceremony. To the right, me and William, one of my students. He was super impressed that I chose to use chopsticks.
To the left, some students who came to my place on Halloween. To the right, some of the flowers on the trees outside my apartment.
Creepy Santa in a shop window. To the right, a McDonald's that Caitlin and I go to sometimes. Behind it is the mall where I usually get groceries.
I took a trip with Yin and one of her classes to Yin's hometown. It was a very pretty area. But a lot of trash sitting around!
Some of Yin's students, and to the right, June (Yin's daughter) and me.
When it started raining hard we made a shelter out of sticks, the tarp, and umbrellas.
Sports Day at Wuyi University. It's basically track and field day. The runner is one of my students.
From a seafood restaurant we went to. You have to walk around and pick out what you want.
To the left, fish heads at the restaurant. To the right, me and my tutor Enya, and some friend of hers who was taking graduation photos.
One class of students... some of my favorites!
To the left, celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival with Yin, another English teacher at Wuyi. To the right, two of my students, Amy and Iris, who were nice enough to take me to Guifeng Mountain one rainy day.
At Guifeng Mountain.
To the left, Caitlin and I with Gary and Helen, who work in the Foreign Affairs Office. Gary is the most helpful person ever, and a mean Uno player. To the right, the ceremony as the school celebrated its 25th anniversary.
Caitlin and me at the anniversary ceremony. To the right, me and William, one of my students. He was super impressed that I chose to use chopsticks.
To the left, some students who came to my place on Halloween. To the right, some of the flowers on the trees outside my apartment.
Creepy Santa in a shop window. To the right, a McDonald's that Caitlin and I go to sometimes. Behind it is the mall where I usually get groceries.
I took a trip with Yin and one of her classes to Yin's hometown. It was a very pretty area. But a lot of trash sitting around!
Some of Yin's students, and to the right, June (Yin's daughter) and me.
When it started raining hard we made a shelter out of sticks, the tarp, and umbrellas.
Sports Day at Wuyi University. It's basically track and field day. The runner is one of my students.
From a seafood restaurant we went to. You have to walk around and pick out what you want.
To the left, fish heads at the restaurant. To the right, me and my tutor Enya, and some friend of hers who was taking graduation photos.
One class of students... some of my favorites!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Food
I haven't eaten any dog yet, as far as I know. Or cat, or donkey. I have not had any cream cheese wantons, though I did have wanton soup the other day. There seems to be a lot of rice, and people talk about eating it, but I feel like I never actually see people eating it. Whenever I go out to someone's house or to a restaurant, they don't have rice, unless they order it for us Westerners because they know it's a food we can handle. Noodles are around sometimes, but not all that often. A lot of people don't know what sandwiches are.
So, you may very well be asking, what does one eat in Southern China? Meat, and vegetables, is the short answer.
There is meat in absolutely everything. It's a vegetarian's worst nightmare. If you order something like "green breans," it will come out with bits of pork in it, or the other day we had "bitter melon," which was accompanied by tiny fish, all their normal features intact and ready for eating. Everything either has meat in it, or was cooked in a meat broth. At any nice meal there will be a few meat dishes. There's a lot of pork, and beef, chicken, and fish are also common. You can get all kinds of really weird meats too, if you want them. At the markets they have freshly slaughtered animals, and will sell you any part, be it head or heart or foot. Chicken feet are really big here. If you buy fish, you pick a live fish out of a tank and the seller will chop it up in front of you. It's unnerving to see the gills still moving after the head's been chopped off, as the seller weighs it. Also, people love bones in their meat. They think the best meat is around the bone, and they don't cut the meat away from the bone, so sometime you will order chicken and get a whole cooked chicken, complete with head and feet. People will just put a whole piece of meat in their mouth, chew away the meat, and then spit the bone onto a plate. I haven't quite mastered this. Unfortunately, it's rude to touch your food with your hands, making the eating of meat all the more difficult.
Most fancier meals will involve a few meat dishes and some vegetable dishes. Green beans, boiled Bok Choy, celery, and brocolli are all pretty common. Fruit is also normal at the end of a meal, and sometimes some kind of roll. Then there will be some strange dishes in every meal that are hard to classify. Like sugar-coated corn and pea and nuts (which I have become really fond of), soups that don't really have anything in them, and some things with eggs. Rice is seen as a filler: if you are not full at the end of the meal, you order rice to fill up. A meal is always "family style" - they just bring out large plates of food, staggered and in some particular order that they seem to understand, and everything is set on a big Lazy Susan, or just in the middle of the table. The only things you get to eat with are the plate where you can only put bones and junk that you won't eat, a little bowl that you can throw some food in, a large spoon, and chopsticks. So, you must pick a very small amount of something up with your chopsticks, and throw it in your bowl, or just eat it directly. That same bowl is used for every dish, and everyone's chopsticks touch everything. There is always way more food than anyone could feasibly think they could finish. A lot of food gets wasted, and that's just seen as normal. Apparently they never got the "there are children starving in China" line when they were kids. The standard drink is, of course, tea.
The good news about all the weird food is that no one really cares if you don't like something. I don't have to try chicken feet if I don't want to. And, it is really fun to try all the random dishes. You never really have the same thing twice; every restaurant makes way different stuff. I haven't tried anything too appalling yet, but there's still a lot of time.
On a less interesting topic, as far as cooking for myself goes, I am becoming an excellent steamer. You can steam just about anything, it turns out. Rice, vegetables, meat, eggs, and dumplings can all be easily steamed and come out really tasty. I don't experiment with meat too much, but steamed rice mixed with some kind of vegetable and soy sauce, maybe some fruit on the side, is my staple lunch. All fruit and vegetables are super cheap and easy to get. I also steam a lot of freshly made dumplings, which are utterly delicious, and make eggs in various ways. A Chinese friend taught me how to make fried rice, which I make all the time and am becoming a little addicted to. The only other thing I make consistently is grilled cheese, and it is always delicious.
So, in sum, there is a lot to be eaten in China, some of it is weird, and a lot of it is really good.
So, you may very well be asking, what does one eat in Southern China? Meat, and vegetables, is the short answer.
There is meat in absolutely everything. It's a vegetarian's worst nightmare. If you order something like "green breans," it will come out with bits of pork in it, or the other day we had "bitter melon," which was accompanied by tiny fish, all their normal features intact and ready for eating. Everything either has meat in it, or was cooked in a meat broth. At any nice meal there will be a few meat dishes. There's a lot of pork, and beef, chicken, and fish are also common. You can get all kinds of really weird meats too, if you want them. At the markets they have freshly slaughtered animals, and will sell you any part, be it head or heart or foot. Chicken feet are really big here. If you buy fish, you pick a live fish out of a tank and the seller will chop it up in front of you. It's unnerving to see the gills still moving after the head's been chopped off, as the seller weighs it. Also, people love bones in their meat. They think the best meat is around the bone, and they don't cut the meat away from the bone, so sometime you will order chicken and get a whole cooked chicken, complete with head and feet. People will just put a whole piece of meat in their mouth, chew away the meat, and then spit the bone onto a plate. I haven't quite mastered this. Unfortunately, it's rude to touch your food with your hands, making the eating of meat all the more difficult.
Most fancier meals will involve a few meat dishes and some vegetable dishes. Green beans, boiled Bok Choy, celery, and brocolli are all pretty common. Fruit is also normal at the end of a meal, and sometimes some kind of roll. Then there will be some strange dishes in every meal that are hard to classify. Like sugar-coated corn and pea and nuts (which I have become really fond of), soups that don't really have anything in them, and some things with eggs. Rice is seen as a filler: if you are not full at the end of the meal, you order rice to fill up. A meal is always "family style" - they just bring out large plates of food, staggered and in some particular order that they seem to understand, and everything is set on a big Lazy Susan, or just in the middle of the table. The only things you get to eat with are the plate where you can only put bones and junk that you won't eat, a little bowl that you can throw some food in, a large spoon, and chopsticks. So, you must pick a very small amount of something up with your chopsticks, and throw it in your bowl, or just eat it directly. That same bowl is used for every dish, and everyone's chopsticks touch everything. There is always way more food than anyone could feasibly think they could finish. A lot of food gets wasted, and that's just seen as normal. Apparently they never got the "there are children starving in China" line when they were kids. The standard drink is, of course, tea.
The good news about all the weird food is that no one really cares if you don't like something. I don't have to try chicken feet if I don't want to. And, it is really fun to try all the random dishes. You never really have the same thing twice; every restaurant makes way different stuff. I haven't tried anything too appalling yet, but there's still a lot of time.
On a less interesting topic, as far as cooking for myself goes, I am becoming an excellent steamer. You can steam just about anything, it turns out. Rice, vegetables, meat, eggs, and dumplings can all be easily steamed and come out really tasty. I don't experiment with meat too much, but steamed rice mixed with some kind of vegetable and soy sauce, maybe some fruit on the side, is my staple lunch. All fruit and vegetables are super cheap and easy to get. I also steam a lot of freshly made dumplings, which are utterly delicious, and make eggs in various ways. A Chinese friend taught me how to make fried rice, which I make all the time and am becoming a little addicted to. The only other thing I make consistently is grilled cheese, and it is always delicious.
So, in sum, there is a lot to be eaten in China, some of it is weird, and a lot of it is really good.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Settling in to Jiangmen
Wow! It's been over a month since my last post - and something like five weeks since I left the US. I have been trying to settle in to life here, so I haven't worried too much about this blog yet. I will have to slowly update with the things that have been happening.
First of all, I have been teaching! I've just finished my third week. This semester the school is trying something new: having all the students at the university take English classes. There are not enough foreign teachers to have full classes of oral English, so instead we all have twice as many students for half as much time. That is, I have one week of 8 two hour classes, and then the next week the same thing but a completely different group of students. Total I have over 600 students, and I see them each about 9 times... I'm not sure how I will get to know them all! It has been a little hard to know what to plan for lessons, since we are free to do pretty much anything, but I think I'm getting better at this. My students are great. They are all polite and eager to learn. Their English is not great (I have all the non-English majors), so I'm just getting used to repeating myself a lot.
Today I tried out a lesson where we talked about descriptions of people, so I taught them a lot of vocab by drawing pictures on the board. Things like "ponytail" and "lanky." I also taught them some personalities, which they really remembered well - things like "happy-go-lucky" or "stoic." I'm not sure they understood "drama queen." Then in groups they had to write a description of a famous person, and then I collected them and read them aloud and had the class guess who the person was. They liked this a lot. Then I made them sing "Yellow Submarine," because other than "submarine" there are a lot of really simple words, and it is easy to sing along to. I think they liked this, but they want Lady Gaga next time. Then we played a simpler version of Scategories... and ran out of time, which I felt bad about. I also gave them all mooncake, because someone gave me the most giant mooncake and I just want to get rid of it! All 40 students had some, and some had seconds, and they ate less than half of it I would say. This is the group of students I probably know the best at this point, since they're the only ones I've had three times.
Mooncake, in case you are unaware, is the traditional food of the mid-autumn festival, which is coming up on the 22nd. It's basically sweet bread filled with... whatever. You usually don't know until you bite into it. The one I have involves fruit and nuts and some kind of paste that tastes a bit bitter. It's pretty weird.
Next post I will talk more about Jiangmen or food or lifestyle or something, and maybe I will have some pictures by then. I haven't really been taking any, because I don't feel like as much of a tourist here. Anyway, sorry about the long delay, hopefully some of you are still reading!
First of all, I have been teaching! I've just finished my third week. This semester the school is trying something new: having all the students at the university take English classes. There are not enough foreign teachers to have full classes of oral English, so instead we all have twice as many students for half as much time. That is, I have one week of 8 two hour classes, and then the next week the same thing but a completely different group of students. Total I have over 600 students, and I see them each about 9 times... I'm not sure how I will get to know them all! It has been a little hard to know what to plan for lessons, since we are free to do pretty much anything, but I think I'm getting better at this. My students are great. They are all polite and eager to learn. Their English is not great (I have all the non-English majors), so I'm just getting used to repeating myself a lot.
Today I tried out a lesson where we talked about descriptions of people, so I taught them a lot of vocab by drawing pictures on the board. Things like "ponytail" and "lanky." I also taught them some personalities, which they really remembered well - things like "happy-go-lucky" or "stoic." I'm not sure they understood "drama queen." Then in groups they had to write a description of a famous person, and then I collected them and read them aloud and had the class guess who the person was. They liked this a lot. Then I made them sing "Yellow Submarine," because other than "submarine" there are a lot of really simple words, and it is easy to sing along to. I think they liked this, but they want Lady Gaga next time. Then we played a simpler version of Scategories... and ran out of time, which I felt bad about. I also gave them all mooncake, because someone gave me the most giant mooncake and I just want to get rid of it! All 40 students had some, and some had seconds, and they ate less than half of it I would say. This is the group of students I probably know the best at this point, since they're the only ones I've had three times.
Mooncake, in case you are unaware, is the traditional food of the mid-autumn festival, which is coming up on the 22nd. It's basically sweet bread filled with... whatever. You usually don't know until you bite into it. The one I have involves fruit and nuts and some kind of paste that tastes a bit bitter. It's pretty weird.
Next post I will talk more about Jiangmen or food or lifestyle or something, and maybe I will have some pictures by then. I haven't really been taking any, because I don't feel like as much of a tourist here. Anyway, sorry about the long delay, hopefully some of you are still reading!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Maryknoll House, Stanley, Hong Kong
Hi everybody! So first off, I hear that this blogger website is probably blocked in mainland China. I will find out what is available when I get there, and a link to a new blog may pop up on here... probably this is one of those things I should have looked into earlier.
More importantly, though, I am in Hong Kong! I arrived Sunday evening (Hong Kong time) and am staying at the Maryknoll house for training for two weeks. The Maryknoll house is pretty gorgeous. It is at the top of a hill in what is sort of the ritzy part of Hong Kong. It got this location just because it’s been here so long – over 75 years I think. The Hong Kong government wants to make it a historic landmark. Here are some pictures of the yard and the view from the house.
Also, here’s a picture of the area around the house, taken from the top of this hill we hiked up. You can see the Maryknoll house – it is red and green.
So yesterday I wandered around Stanley and then Hong Kong central a bit with Mike. We went to this crazy escalator midway and had lunch at “Dumpling Yuan.” We also saw the building Batman jumps out of in the Dark Knight
I really like Hong Kong! It is an interesting city with quite a mix of people and a lot of them. The buildings are old or new, with really fancy chic looking buildings right next to dilapidated junky looking buildings. There's lights and color and advertisements everywhere. Plus, the scenery of hills, tropical plants, and the ocean is quite beautiful.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
First post - purely informative!
Hello all! Welcome to the blog I intend to keep up as I experience China next year! That's right, on August 14th I will moving to China for a year to teach English through Maryknoll China Service Project. I will be there until mid-July of 2011 (besides hopefully coming home for my brother's wedding, of course).
To give you a vague idea of what I know now: first I'll be staying in Hong Kong for a couple of weeks to do some training-type stuff at the Maryknoll house. Then I will be teaching at Wuyi University in the port city of Jiangmen, Guangdong Province. Jiangmen is very close to Hong Kong (about an hour away) with a population of around 4 million and sub-tropic weather. So pretty far South, and close to the coast, and really hot and humid. Fairly urban and westernized, with some pretty crazy food. Look it up on Wikipedia if you want more info about the city or to see it on a map.
Once I'm in Jiangmen, I will be teaching conversational English for around 20 hours a week, plus the hours spent creating my own curriculum. I'll probably do some tutoring on the side too, and hopefully I will get to take some Mandarin classes to supplement my lately neglected knowledge of the language. The university supplies me with a single person apartment near campus, so that's where I will be living. I hear the apartments have all new appliances, and that the second floor is cursed but no one will talk about why.
In the rest of my spare time I hope to go hiking in a mountainous region that has old temples that apparently is nearby. I would also like to join random groups of people that exercise or meditate in parks in the morning, doing Tai Chi or whatever. Maybe I will even take up the Erhu, if I can get one cheap.
To give you a vague idea of what I know now: first I'll be staying in Hong Kong for a couple of weeks to do some training-type stuff at the Maryknoll house. Then I will be teaching at Wuyi University in the port city of Jiangmen, Guangdong Province. Jiangmen is very close to Hong Kong (about an hour away) with a population of around 4 million and sub-tropic weather. So pretty far South, and close to the coast, and really hot and humid. Fairly urban and westernized, with some pretty crazy food. Look it up on Wikipedia if you want more info about the city or to see it on a map.
Once I'm in Jiangmen, I will be teaching conversational English for around 20 hours a week, plus the hours spent creating my own curriculum. I'll probably do some tutoring on the side too, and hopefully I will get to take some Mandarin classes to supplement my lately neglected knowledge of the language. The university supplies me with a single person apartment near campus, so that's where I will be living. I hear the apartments have all new appliances, and that the second floor is cursed but no one will talk about why.
In the rest of my spare time I hope to go hiking in a mountainous region that has old temples that apparently is nearby. I would also like to join random groups of people that exercise or meditate in parks in the morning, doing Tai Chi or whatever. Maybe I will even take up the Erhu, if I can get one cheap.
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