Earthquake pen pals in Sichuan

So for our last week we did the earth quake correspondence class for the seventh graders and the library jeopardy for the eighth graders.



My apologies for the poor quality of the picture as it was taken in a dark room with the projector. We were very surprised that they did have a projector in this school though.



Then of course the projector quit working on us so we resorted back into the traditional classroom mode and had the kids writing letters with markers in English to kids who were affected by the Sichuan earthquake.



This was one of the finished products being held up.



This is a sample of the format of the letter. Our aim was to try to teach some English and let the kids be artistic and creative at the same time.



Another example, this one was written on the back. These student's chinese are quite good, which means, better than I can do.

Classrooms in China

From teaching in a normal school in China for three weeks I hope to sum up what I have learned here. The school that I taught at is neither a city school nor a rural school. It is actually in between the two due to its location. Each class typically have around 50 to 60 students and each grade is composed of 5 to 6 of these classes. The school has three grades, 7th, 8th and 9th. Their day starts with morning individual study at 8:10 and ends at 4:20 p.m. Usually the school day hs 7 periods of 45 minutes each with a morning exercise time at 9:20-9:55 a.m. and lunch period from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m. From what I gather, the subjects tends to be: Math, Literatue, English, History, various sciences, Geography, P.E. and every couple of weeks, art and music.

When we arrived at the school the 9th graders had already finished their exams so we mostly taught 7th and 8th graders. Perhaps due to puberty, there were two totally different attitudes between the two grades towards learning. It seems that while the 7th graders are still open minded towards learning, the 8th graders really dislike it. There seem to be a general trend in China currently with the attitude of the 8th graders: dislike of learning. In a discussion with one of my uncles, he seem to think that while the Chinese students tend to learn more in the school system at a younger age, it seem to be cramming too much information too soon into the children, thus causing them to really dislike school in general.

Life in China

Surprisingly enough, except for facebook and the English version of Wikipedia, I have not run into many banned websites here in China. If one really did not pay attention, the communistic policies are not noticeable at all in the life of the average people here in China. They live normal everday lives here. (more about my observations of this later)

In the blink of an eye, it seems like summer is almost over and my stay in China is half finished. As to what I have been doing, well, here's the low down. The month of June I taught in a middle school in Sichuan China as I was not needed in the earthquake zone. (Not many people who are not with the army or professionals/organizations like the red cross are allowed into the earthquake zone.) We didn't experience any after shocks and taught mostly English although we did teach earthquake knowledge and sent letters to the students who were affected by the earthquake.

Except for a visit to the hospital and a forced evacuation due to a potential landslide, my stay in Sichuan was very peaceful. More about the day to day life and our earthquake pen pal writing activity in another post. I actually learned a lot from these kids even though the conditions were not as bad as I imagined they would be.

After our stay in Sichuan, we were sent back to Beijing for a closing forum and I celebrated my 21st birthday in Beijing with two of my very dear friends. Although my parents promised to throw me a party in August when I get back.

From there in Beijing, I went on to ride the train to Shenyang by myself. It was quite an exciting adventure as I did train stations mixed up and had first hand experience with the Beijing public transportation system and various con-artists who try to make money off of naive gals like myself. A price list of what I got conned is quite interesting. Also coming in another post.

In Shenyang I visited my only living grandfather as this was the focus of my trip this year (as opposed to the olympics and the earthquake). I also visited the graves of my other grandparents in Tieling. (More post about that as that was also an adventure in itself).

Anyhow, as I still have half of my trip to go, I will go to Sichuan again but this time a bit more closer to the earthquake zone (Chengdu) to see if they'd let me in this time. (If not, it would only make me all the more determined to be a nurse as I would certainly get in if I already was one). My uncle has a pharmaceutical program starting up in Chengdu so I want to talk to him about the health policy currently in China (I got to talk to my aunt, who is a doctor in China and will report more on that later).

Overall, it is quite exciting to be in another country, especially one where I could speak the language. This makes me all the more determined to learn Spanish and visit the Latin America countries.

Note to self: need to brush up on English grammar and vocab when I get back to the states, can't remember if periods goes inside or outside parenthesis. Good thing I was only teaching oral English as some of the students' English are better than mine.

List of upcoming posts:

Earthquake pen pals in Sichuan

-what we did and photos

Con-artists in China

-various schemes I got caught in

Hospitals in China

-my two visits to the hospitals in two different areas

Beijing's transportation system

-taxi, subway, bus, train and plane

Post-quake Sichuan

-my visit to Sichuan post the earthquake

Tieling adventures

-visited my father's old high school where Zhou En Lai also studied at and also the grave of my grandparents (those that adopted my father)