Sunday, April 5, 2015

India and China Summary (Videos)

Here are the URL's to the videos for India and China.

India:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_5mOkYkZok

China:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJq5y4gUGsM

As a bonus too, here is the video of Shaanxi College of Communications Technology that was shown Friday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAHkYslvbQ

Enjoy!

Saturday, April 4, 2015

48-Hour Day, 4-Hour Night

Sadly, this is our last blog post of our trip.

We were woken by an alarm set for 4:30 and a hotel call we had set up last night. We were off to the airport on an empty road in China. Very strange! Very strange! Before we knew it, we were on the plane to Shanghai with two carry on’s this time.  The school had presented us with beautiful plaques to take home not realizing how much more work it would be to have to take two carry on’s.

The plane took off 30 minutes later than scheduled, which did not work in our favor considering originally we would only have 2.5 hours to change terminals, but because of the late take off, we now only had a 2 hour layover. Montana and LuRue did some airplane sleep during the flight. We were served a "delicious" breakfast of extremely bland rice and some sort of bread with spicy meat inside.

Once the plane landed, we had to get our bags, go to Terminal 2, check in at Delta on the level above & get our passes to Seattle, drop our bags off, go through customs, hurry up through security. The people that helped us weren’t very helpful, because they kept saying how we should’ve been earlier as if it was our fault. The person who gave us the boarding ticket even put a note on it telling us to be at the gate 55 minutes early. We had to butt in line several times, but we did make it 20 minutes before the flight was scheduled to take off.  Actually, what happened, was the gate closed about 5 minutes after we got there (LuRue was drenched in sweat), but we sat in the airport for another hour before actually taking off. Good thing we didn’t have another close take off to catch.

On the 10-hour flight, we did a lot of movie watching. Montana and LuRue both watched the modern version of “Annie”. LuRue then watched two other videos she didn’t think Montana would be interested in, as Montana did some video editing and watched “The Theory of Everything” which proved she was never going to be a scientist or mathematician. They ended the plane flight by watching “Singing in the Rain” together – a movie suggested by LuRue in the beginning of the trip. The movie ended just a bit after they landed. When they had left Shanghai, it was Saturday mid-day and when they arrived it was Saturday morning. Where did the time go?

Once we had successfully dropped our luggage off to go to Tuscon a helper kindly pointed the way to D3, which involved getting on two subways. However, we got there and the huge sign with all the gates and flights said N16 was our gate. We asked a worker just to make sure, but it was N16. As LuRue turned around to start walking back to the N gates, she tripped over a man's luggage and fell onto the carpet. Luckily, no harm done, but after surviving 3 countries coming very close to falling it would seem like she would have it down to an art…obviously not.


We backtracked to the N gates where we had started our little adventure. Once we knew we were in the right area, we immediately looked for a plug in to charge computers and go on Google. Wow! We’ve been away from Google for too long. We spent a few hours organizing and replying to unanswered emails. At 11, Montana, LuRue and Montana’s parents did a video chat before we headed to board the plane. We are finally back in America!

PS...video summaries of India and China will be posted some time tomorrow.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Countdown to Takeoff

Montana and LuRue had mixed feelings about today. Neither of us were exactly sorry that it was the last day to "dance" our last routine. We've about worn out the charts prepared over two weeks ago, so it is time to retire those. But at the same time, we don't feel like it is time to go home. Not exactly like there is a "bucket list" from which to tick off items...more like this has become a fun life of discovery that we don't want to end.

Our final class was 90 minutes this morning at the original school. For the first time, there wasn't even a single girl. And it wasn't long before we figured out that the level of understanding was the lowest we had encountered yet. Fortunately, "John Wayne" was the teacher and he was terrific. He translated all our directions, as well as the sentences on our posters which made our activities with this group just as much fun as all the others have been. And "John Wayne" was really into the Hokey Pokey, too! While neither of us will miss the significant effort it takes to prepare for and to conduct the classes, we will very much miss the interaction with the students and the teachers. Having kids race to the front of the class, then awkwardly try to say their sentences in a language they can barely wrap their tongues around is very endearing. They are so embarrassed, but try so hard.

As soon as class was finished and the final "rock star photos" were over, the vice-director Mrs. Shi was there to escort us to a display room, showing all the accomplishments of the university. Then we were led into the same room we had entered on our first day...the same spots with our name plates...directly across from the president of the university, Mr. Yang. The difference this time was that we recognized all the teachers as friends and also some of the students. The Farewell was just as formal as the Welcome, with our "speeches" following one by the president as well as from other school officials. For us, the highlight was the video Montana had put together about our experiences during these past three weeks. With BaoLi's help, it was a tribute to the school as well as a journal of our experiences, so the school loved it, too. They couldn't thank us enough for introducing them to different ways of teaching. We realize that they are limited in what they can do, for various reasons, but it would be nice to think that both they and the students may be able to take away something fun from our activities.

Then we were taken to a special dining room with one large table. Though it was a little while before we understood just what was happening, eventually the places at the table were taken by the party secretary at the place of honor with us at either side, along with some of our teacher friends. The elegant plates of food were placed endlessly on the large Lazy Susan...about 20 times more food than we could possibly eat. As BaoLi said later, it wasn't really about eating the food, it was more about toasting everything imaginable. The secretary and the director kept coming around the table clinking glasses as we sipped wine each time.

When that was over, we said our goodbyes to everyone, then headed off to a folk museum, which was an hour or so away. Much to our surprise, after we got to the museum, a carload of the teachers pulled up. So we all went through a large estate which has been constructed by recreating piece by numbered piece, the homes from neighboring areas that date back to several of the dynasties. The teachers did get a guide, but a Chinese-speaking guide, which suited LuRue and Montana very well, leaving them free to look at their own pace. The first stop was a musical presentation on a stage of ancient music & comedy, a dying art. After we had been invited on stage, for photos of course, it began to sprinkle. Sprinkles turned into rain & then we were presented with museum umbrellas to finish the tour.

The place was quite impressive and was easy to imagine servants scurrying around, waiting on the important masters. One of the displays features shoes worn by women with bound feet. BaoLi said that her grandmother had had them; another teacher said that her husband's grandmother did as well.

One of the most magnificent displays was of paper cutting. There were some huge pieces of the most intricate designs imaginable. It would have been fun to see something like that being crafted. Only one of many things that we didn't get to see. Guess we'll have to come back.

The trip back to the hotel took about two hours because of the rain/rush hour combination. The teachers came into the hotel lobby, carrying the huge plaques with which we had been presented at the end of the formal welcome. We said our goodbyes once again, knowing that this time it really is goodbye.

Dinner was time for our last team meeting, so a farewell to Don, then back to the room to pack. Just before slipping out for one last nostalgic trip to Baskin-Robbins, we met with BaoLi just finishing up her receipts and paperwork. We are taking a package back to the USA to mail. After hugs and farewells all around, we went back out into the rain.

Oh, nooooo! 4:30am is going to come very early!! We have a 5:00am pickup!

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Ouch! The Busy Bee Stung Me

Another early start to the morning. We met Don, who was already waiting in the car, and our escort, who was waiting in the lobby, 10 minutes early, because 10 minutes early is on time in China. 

We seem to finally have a pattern down for the classes. Montana and LuRue did their normal pronunciations, drawing, Simon says, homonyms and sentence game for both classes. Both groups were very eager to participate and Montana and LuRue even got a few lovely performances at the end of their classes. 




After the classes, we headed to the bell and drum tower market for Montana to get a souvenir. It was a quick stop. Cici and Phyllis brought Montana and LuRue to a little alley with lots of souvenirs. Montana picked out a dragon statue that was originally sold for about 70 yuan, but with the skillful bargaining of Cici, Montana bought it for 50 yuan. 


The driver brought them back to the hotel with just a few minutes to spare before heading down for lunch which was at 1:30 today. We discussed our days and then at 2:30 Don and LuRue went down to teach the hotel staff some English. LuRue did a role playing game with phrases they requested to practice. 

Montana went to go finish her video then go get BaoLi's opinion. Montana spent the rest of her afternoon at the "Torture Chamber" a.k.a. "Fitness Centre".

We met up again at dinner time, except BaoLi wasn't here today because she had to go pick up Jerry. She had already ordered some ribs (specifically requested by LuRue) and some noodles. After dinner our day wasn't even close to being over. We both had to start getting packed and take a shower, because we are having lunch the party secretaries tomorrow, as well as the president of the college. Montana also had to do some final touch ups on the video before showing it tomorrow AND, if that wasn't enough already, she had to finish up writing both the journal & blog. No early bedtime tonight!

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Spring is Here!

We expected to experience winter during our entire trip to China. We have been surprised to watch cherry trees and other flowering trees, some a deep fuchsia color, come into full bloom, while the weeping willows are dressed in new green leaves. We've even had some shirt-sleeve weather...but not today. Thundershowers and lots of rain.

Today is April first, but we could find no one to fool today. The best we could do was to trick our classes with Simon Says. Once the students realize the point of the game, there are always a lot of giggles and embarrassed realizations that they have been tricked.




Montana and LuRue weren't caught by any April Fool's Day pranksters, but they were surprised and delighted at the end of each class. After the first session, Lily's class acted out "The Three Little Pigs", presenting us with pig faces as gifts (beautifully drawn, by the way!). A young woman performed a very graceful dance after the second session. She ended her performance by gliding into a perfect leg split!


At lunch in a hotel on the main campus, we got a peek at our next "assignment"...judging the Oral English Contest which was to take place immediately after we finished eating. Montana and LuRue were staring blankly at 5 charts on which the participants would be commenting, while Don was feeling on "home ground". Before we three knew what we were getting into, we were escorted from the restaurant to a room in the college where we were seated in the front row, with very official-looking pages, pens, and stapled scraps of papers on which we would be writing numbers, expressing our opinions of the quality of the students' presentations (17 in all) on a scale of 1 to 10, with 5-7 being average. There would be three competitions: retelling a short story after 5 minutes' preparation, explaining a picture, randomly picked, and explaining a chart. As if the contestants weren't terrified enough, they also had to endure a question from each of the three foreigners regarding the content of the chart he or she had randomly picked. Of course, Don was looking at the charts as child's play and challenged the students to provide percentages while comparing one point of data with another. Montana and LuRue looked at each other with open mouths since neither of them would have had a clue on how to answer. And we supposedly speak English! Montana and LuRue had questions such as, "In what year was the green higher than the red?" At that point, we gave the student points on how well they managed to maintain poise while under pressure. 

Neither Montana nor LuRue like being a judge...we want everyone to do well...but we survived with our dignity intact, we think. The three of us were given the top 3 prizes to present: 2 second-place prizes and first prize. Those and the 3 third-place prizes were all mobile phone chargers of various capacities.

On the way back to the hotel, our driver's patience was once again put to the test as he dealt with the rain & the rush hour traffic. His audible "tsks" make us realize that his job of getting us back and forth from here to there to everywhere must be very frustrating. However, he skillfully darts into available spaces the millisecond they open up, acing out the drivers to his right and left. Yesterday we saw a young man pedestrian perform a skillful pirouette while leaping a foot or two off the ground to avoid being hit by the car just in front of us. It was almost like a long practiced dance step. You literally have to be on your toes while crossing streets here!

Only three more performances of the Hokey Pokey. How will we ever survive???