Blog 5

Today is Friday, so we expected a really short week after last week’s 7 straight days, but life in China is always a series of changes of plans – perhaps especially at GaoXin No. 1 High School. Luckily my host sister and some other people from our school bus let me know that the Chinese students will have school this weekend, then will have two days off to study for their final exams. The exams will be from Wednesday until Friday. So I stopped by the office to find out what our schedule was. The lady on this campus thought we had the weekend off, so she called the main campus… and we learned that we, too, have class tomorrow and Sunday, then two days off. Then while the other students will be taking exams our small group will attend some classes taught by foreign teachers in Chemistry, Physics and English in place of their normal morning classes. These are all offered by the International Division here on campus and are all taught in English. (In fact our classroom--on the 5th floor -- is in the International Division building.) The purpose of this division is to prepare Chinese students to apply to foreign universities. These students hope to pass AP tests or the British equivalent in order to increase their chances of success. We will continue our normal schedule of 3 intensive Chinese classes, my class and then culture classes. As I write the students are learning about the masks used for Chinese opera and then painting their own masks.

As promised I asked the students about their activities over the days off earlier this week. The two girls had the opportunity to visit their host families’ hometowns and to visit the homes they or their parents live/lived in there. I had told them that life in the High Tech Zone is very different from traditional Chinese life, but after these visits I think they really understand the different life in the country or rural towns. They were able to see the traditional homes with huge double red doors and rooms inside built off a central courtyard. The kitchen is in the back of the courtyard in a small room and often has a wood stove, or a propane/butane stove. The beds in the bedrooms are large plaster or brick platforms which can be heated by small fires (built from the outside) providing for warm eating/living/sleeping. Aida also crossed (and fell in) a branch of the yellow river – but is just fine! She also attended a wedding. Sam’s family had a power outage so they spent a night in a hotel and drove to see a waterfall in the local mountains. They also ate lunch there. They were all able to see more than the high-rise neighborhood where we live.

This morning in Chinese class we watched our second movie. The last was the Chinese version of Mulan. We all loved it! Today we watched “Painted Skin” a kind of fantasy/love story set in ancient times. The main actress from Mulan was also in this movie. It has lots of action, good versus bad and special effects. (The students said it was something between Harry Potter and Ghostbusters.)

Today we were invited to a delicious luncheon by the principal of this campus – another Madame Wang. (We even got to take an elevator to the 4th floor!) We were joined by the assistant principal, Mrs. Dong (my host sister and one of the previous exchange teachers at Saugus) and our local liaison Li Xiaolan. The students are beginning to realize how much they have learned in the last two weeks. Chinese is no longer just a stream of sounds, but now they can all at least pick out words, so that they can have an idea of what is going on. Each day is a great learning experience. They have already learned more than they would have learned in 3 months (or more) at home. They have not only learned vocabulary, but also grammatical structures and how language changes according to the culture. For example yesterday we learned that in China it is not nice to call someone short, but you can say they are not too tall.