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???
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???
how delightful the “The Three Little Pigs” presentation and lovely dance must have been, and,
ReplyDeletesounds like you two were great judges under the circumstances.