I made it. Got into Chengdu at abou midnight last night, found our hostel no problem (it's really nice, not what I expected at all). Think we might go see pandas today.
-AL
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Migrant School
Taking this opportunity to be productive while procrastinating from studying for my Chinese test tomorrow.
Last week was my first week of going to the migrant school to teach English. I believe I wrote on this way back when I first found out that I was going to be able to do this, but I'll refresh your memories briefly. So the students who attend the migrant school are children of migrant workers, or persons from outside of Shanghai, these are the people who do the lowest level work as street cleaners, street vendors and other work. For them Shanghai, and other cities that have benefited from the economic reforms of the seventies, is an opportunity to find work. However, wages here are not quite what we're accustomed to back home and they make very, very little. Normally these parents would have to spend an incredible amount to send their kids to school, even more than for a Shanghai person (it's messed up). And of course education is a means to a better end.
This is where the migrant school comes in, I can't remember if the students don't pay anything or pay very little, but it's much better than if they had to go to another Shanghai school. The school itself is unimpressive, a cement building with a few levels that holds about 700 kids grades k-8 (I think). They have desks, a blackboard, chalk and textbooks... that's about it.
I'm teaching sixth graders with one other kid who speaks much better Chinese than I do, but he's never done any teaching and I've at least taken an education class, so I guess we're a good pair. There's probably at least 30 kids in our class, maybe closer to 40, all sitting two by two in neat little rows. It's one of two sixth grade classes, apparently ours is the more well behaved one while the other fails to cooperate frequently.
So basically we kind of just threw ourselves into it, they have textbooks (we each have a copy also), so we picked up where they last left off and started practicing words for that lesson. The words they are learning are not exactly practical, but in theory they've been learning English since the first grade, so they should have a decent grasp on the language. We started off writing the words on the board, words like "whale," "quarter," "crop" (they kept pronouncing it as "crap," it was pretty funny), and about a dozen more. So it would go I would say the word and they would repeat, then we go back over the words that they didn't pronounce quite right. Then we played hangman, which seems to be pretty popular.
All the kids are kind of like a small army, whenever we wanted them to say a word they would shout it, closer to scream in many cases. Also whenever we called on them to pick a letter for hangman they would first stand up and then tell us... a little different from my memories of the sixth grade.
Going to give them all English names next week, I think they'll enjoy that.
-AL
Last week was my first week of going to the migrant school to teach English. I believe I wrote on this way back when I first found out that I was going to be able to do this, but I'll refresh your memories briefly. So the students who attend the migrant school are children of migrant workers, or persons from outside of Shanghai, these are the people who do the lowest level work as street cleaners, street vendors and other work. For them Shanghai, and other cities that have benefited from the economic reforms of the seventies, is an opportunity to find work. However, wages here are not quite what we're accustomed to back home and they make very, very little. Normally these parents would have to spend an incredible amount to send their kids to school, even more than for a Shanghai person (it's messed up). And of course education is a means to a better end.
This is where the migrant school comes in, I can't remember if the students don't pay anything or pay very little, but it's much better than if they had to go to another Shanghai school. The school itself is unimpressive, a cement building with a few levels that holds about 700 kids grades k-8 (I think). They have desks, a blackboard, chalk and textbooks... that's about it.
I'm teaching sixth graders with one other kid who speaks much better Chinese than I do, but he's never done any teaching and I've at least taken an education class, so I guess we're a good pair. There's probably at least 30 kids in our class, maybe closer to 40, all sitting two by two in neat little rows. It's one of two sixth grade classes, apparently ours is the more well behaved one while the other fails to cooperate frequently.
So basically we kind of just threw ourselves into it, they have textbooks (we each have a copy also), so we picked up where they last left off and started practicing words for that lesson. The words they are learning are not exactly practical, but in theory they've been learning English since the first grade, so they should have a decent grasp on the language. We started off writing the words on the board, words like "whale," "quarter," "crop" (they kept pronouncing it as "crap," it was pretty funny), and about a dozen more. So it would go I would say the word and they would repeat, then we go back over the words that they didn't pronounce quite right. Then we played hangman, which seems to be pretty popular.
All the kids are kind of like a small army, whenever we wanted them to say a word they would shout it, closer to scream in many cases. Also whenever we called on them to pick a letter for hangman they would first stand up and then tell us... a little different from my memories of the sixth grade.
Going to give them all English names next week, I think they'll enjoy that.
-AL
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Spring Break to Chengdu and Yunnan
Here it is, the long awaited plans for my get away. On Thursday evening April 24th I'll get on a plane in Shanghai and head to Chengdu in Sichuan province. Sichuan has most recently been in the news last year where it was hit with those devastating Earth quakes (hoping that doesn't happen while I'm there), but It's also famous for being the home of the Panda Bear, and having melt-your-face-off spicy food. So for two nights we'll be staying in Chengdu which is the capital of Sichuan where we will go see Pandas, eat spicy food and explore.
Sunday morning we fly from Chengdu to Kunming in Yunnan Province in SSW China. Yunnan borders all of the south-east Asian countries of Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Laos and I think Thailand too so were pretty far south (should be warm ala). We spend Sunday just exploring and then first thing Monday we're on a bus headed to Lijiang, about four hours away from the capital of Chengdu. The main attraction in Lijiang: Tiger Leaping Gorge, looks beautiful, supposed to be some great hiking too. We're staying at an Eco-lodge overlooking the gorge for two nights (it's our most expensive accommodations at $7 a night). So that puts us at Wednesday when we drive back to Kunming for the remainder of our trip. Not sure what we're going to do in that time, it's apparently a pretty cool town. Then on Friday we fly from Kunming back to Shanghai with a few days left over to sleep and do the homework that we'll be neglecting while we're gone.
It's not Tibet, but I think it's going to be a great trip. Really excited for Tiger Leaping Gorge, and seeing some "natury stuff."
Hot and sticky in Shanghai this week.
-AL
Sunday morning we fly from Chengdu to Kunming in Yunnan Province in SSW China. Yunnan borders all of the south-east Asian countries of Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Laos and I think Thailand too so were pretty far south (should be warm ala). We spend Sunday just exploring and then first thing Monday we're on a bus headed to Lijiang, about four hours away from the capital of Chengdu. The main attraction in Lijiang: Tiger Leaping Gorge, looks beautiful, supposed to be some great hiking too. We're staying at an Eco-lodge overlooking the gorge for two nights (it's our most expensive accommodations at $7 a night). So that puts us at Wednesday when we drive back to Kunming for the remainder of our trip. Not sure what we're going to do in that time, it's apparently a pretty cool town. Then on Friday we fly from Kunming back to Shanghai with a few days left over to sleep and do the homework that we'll be neglecting while we're gone.
It's not Tibet, but I think it's going to be a great trip. Really excited for Tiger Leaping Gorge, and seeing some "natury stuff."
Hot and sticky in Shanghai this week.
-AL
Monday, April 13, 2009
Easter in Shanghai
I think probably one of my misconceptions about China before coming here was that Christianity was not a significant faith for Chinese people. While I do not have exact statistics, I can tell you that there are a number of Churches in Shanghai that on Easter Sunday were packed with Chinese and Expats alike. I was one of the Expats who went to worship on Easter. Following the direction of one of my friends, we were going to go to a Catholic mass where we thought the service was in English. It quickly became apparent that this was not the case as we were the only foreigners in the church. Using a English telephone service called Shanghai Help, we quickly found a service that did offer an English translation, grabbed a cab and made it in time for the 10 O'clock service.
The church we ended up at was Shanghai Community Church, I'm not sure what denomination it is, but definitely a protestant branch as there were two women celebrants. The church was packed with people standing outside near the windows trying to look in. We sat in the balcony where they supplied headphones and had someone translating. The church itself is bigger than St. Saviour's but smaller than Trinity Church in Boston. The service itself was 90 minutes, including a 40 minute sermon that I cannot describe any other way than very 'Chinese.' During the course of the service four different choirs performed, singing songs all with tunes that I recognized, but very different words or course.
After the service we decided that Easter wouldn't be complete without some hot cakes, so we took off to a meiguo fandian (American restaurant) called City Diner, which is probably serves the most authentic western food in Shanghai.
Following a few hour break which involved going back to the fabric market for a Chinese project (ended up buying corduroy jacket while I was there), met up again with the SLU crew (all the kids from my school aka SLUzers) plus a few for Easter dinner. Since were all on budgets we didn't go to any of the more expensive Easter options that various restaurants were offering, but rather to Yao Ming's very own "Yeeha" restaurant, featuring Texas BBQ. It was pretty surreal feeling, felt like I could have been anywhere in the US (it was kind of nice), TVs with NBA games and the Masters being broadcast, the walls lined with NBA jerseys and cowhides and to top it off a mechanical bull in the corner. We all indulged in our western food then called it a night, completing what was actually my second Easter abroad (I was in Costa Rica two years ago while I was a senior in HS).
Happy (belated) Easter!
-AL
PS. Booked my spring break trip tonight, going to Sichuan and then Yunnan provinces, will provide details later.
The church we ended up at was Shanghai Community Church, I'm not sure what denomination it is, but definitely a protestant branch as there were two women celebrants. The church was packed with people standing outside near the windows trying to look in. We sat in the balcony where they supplied headphones and had someone translating. The church itself is bigger than St. Saviour's but smaller than Trinity Church in Boston. The service itself was 90 minutes, including a 40 minute sermon that I cannot describe any other way than very 'Chinese.' During the course of the service four different choirs performed, singing songs all with tunes that I recognized, but very different words or course.
After the service we decided that Easter wouldn't be complete without some hot cakes, so we took off to a meiguo fandian (American restaurant) called City Diner, which is probably serves the most authentic western food in Shanghai.
Following a few hour break which involved going back to the fabric market for a Chinese project (ended up buying corduroy jacket while I was there), met up again with the SLU crew (all the kids from my school aka SLUzers) plus a few for Easter dinner. Since were all on budgets we didn't go to any of the more expensive Easter options that various restaurants were offering, but rather to Yao Ming's very own "Yeeha" restaurant, featuring Texas BBQ. It was pretty surreal feeling, felt like I could have been anywhere in the US (it was kind of nice), TVs with NBA games and the Masters being broadcast, the walls lined with NBA jerseys and cowhides and to top it off a mechanical bull in the corner. We all indulged in our western food then called it a night, completing what was actually my second Easter abroad (I was in Costa Rica two years ago while I was a senior in HS).
Happy (belated) Easter!
-AL
PS. Booked my spring break trip tonight, going to Sichuan and then Yunnan provinces, will provide details later.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Chinese Opera
Yesterday evening I got to go to the Chinese opera for one of my classes. The opera is called "Dream in the Red Chamber" or it's also referred to as "The Story of the Stone." It's based on a book which is, as my teacher puts it, is the Chinese equivalent of all of the great western novels that you read in high school combined into one. We read the extremely abridged version, but the actual book is in five volumes and a few thousand pages. The book itself is part love story and part religious transcendence, but the opera only did the love story part of it.
Getting to the play alone was a bit of a nightmare, fighting the swarms of people in the metro heading home from work, but it was not nearly as bad as the opera itself. Nightmarish is the first word that comes to mind, it wouldn't have been so bad except what I thought was a two hour show, was more than three hours (no intermission either). Three hours of Chinese music and singing, which isn't particularly pleasing to the western ear.
I eventually couldn't stand it any longer, the seats were so close together that my legs were starting to cramp up and when I looked over and saw what looked like my professor being asleep I decided it was time to leave. Overall it was not a pleasant experience. Fortunately the school bought the tickets (which were fairly expensive), and I guess if there's one good thing, it was a really cool looking theater.
So, moral of the story, if your ever in China and someone suggests you go to the opera, DON'T.
-AL
Getting to the play alone was a bit of a nightmare, fighting the swarms of people in the metro heading home from work, but it was not nearly as bad as the opera itself. Nightmarish is the first word that comes to mind, it wouldn't have been so bad except what I thought was a two hour show, was more than three hours (no intermission either). Three hours of Chinese music and singing, which isn't particularly pleasing to the western ear.
I eventually couldn't stand it any longer, the seats were so close together that my legs were starting to cramp up and when I looked over and saw what looked like my professor being asleep I decided it was time to leave. Overall it was not a pleasant experience. Fortunately the school bought the tickets (which were fairly expensive), and I guess if there's one good thing, it was a really cool looking theater.
So, moral of the story, if your ever in China and someone suggests you go to the opera, DON'T.
-AL
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Small Problem
你好我的朋友们！(hello friends!) Finshed my midterms today, think they went pretty well.
So I've had my first problem since I've been here occur the other day. Stopping at the ATM on my way to class I pulled out my wallet only to find that my debit card was not where it should've been. Of course I searched my wallet before relizing the fact that my card was not on my person, leaving me to think that somebody who's not supposed to have it does, and has probably spent every dime to my name. Fortunately, thanks to technology I was able to check my account on line and find that no money had been withdrawn since I last used my card. So my card was either stolen by a bad thief who has yet to spend any of my money, or more likely I lost it somewhere (still don't know how I could've lost it).
Did a thourough search of all my clothes and room but to no avail. However I do have a second card that I normally use when I'm at SLU, so I still have funds availible to me. I figure for being here nearly two months if thats the worst thing thats happened, things are going pretty well.
-AL
So I've had my first problem since I've been here occur the other day. Stopping at the ATM on my way to class I pulled out my wallet only to find that my debit card was not where it should've been. Of course I searched my wallet before relizing the fact that my card was not on my person, leaving me to think that somebody who's not supposed to have it does, and has probably spent every dime to my name. Fortunately, thanks to technology I was able to check my account on line and find that no money had been withdrawn since I last used my card. So my card was either stolen by a bad thief who has yet to spend any of my money, or more likely I lost it somewhere (still don't know how I could've lost it).
Did a thourough search of all my clothes and room but to no avail. However I do have a second card that I normally use when I'm at SLU, so I still have funds availible to me. I figure for being here nearly two months if thats the worst thing thats happened, things are going pretty well.
-AL
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Change of plans
Ni Hao, taking a break from writing my IR paper to let you all know that my Tibet plans fell through. Guess I wasted all that blog space for nothing. In the end instead of the 8-10 kids we thought we had interested, we had 5. Combined with the fact that if we were going to be able to get back to school on time we'd have to fly at least one way, the costs and time constriants were just too great.
So Tibet didn't work out, but on the plus side I have a great excuse to come back...
Have new plans in the working, but I think I'll wait till I've bought my train ticket before I give you my itinerary.
-AL
So Tibet didn't work out, but on the plus side I have a great excuse to come back...
Have new plans in the working, but I think I'll wait till I've bought my train ticket before I give you my itinerary.
-AL
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