Greetings from a sweltering Sanda University! I am here in the air conditioned office typing my update to you but outside is so hot you feel it immediately on your face and under your clothes? UGH. Many of my students have mentioned that it gets very cold here in the winter time. Of course, cold to a Californian and cold to a New Englander are not the same but we’ll see. I mean, cold to a Shanghai person isn’t the same as cold to a Beijing person…anyways…I hope it does get quite cold here though. And I do hope I will be getting more letters soon…
Enough complaining though, I have much to tell you! I have finished my 2nd week of classes and today as I write I am on my 3rd week of classes. The classes are really going well and my students are really a lot of fun. We have a rule in our class about ONLY SPEAKING ENGLISH and the students have a hard time doing this but they have learned quite quickly. I have had them do 1 minute speeches in front of the class as a consequence. There is a stack of words in my podium drawer and they choose one and they have to use the word in a story. One of my students had a word and they are only supposed to speak for 30 seconds at the beginning so it isn뭪 so hard. Well he started speaking, then continued this quite involved story, and after a minute I thought I would just stop him before he got too embarrassed. I jumped in and said, “OK class what was the word that he used?” if they don’t know the word then the student did a good job in using a word in the story. The student looked at me with a bewildered look and said, “But…but, haven’t used the word!” I was shocked he made it seem so painful at the beginning and now he was disappointed that I stopped him, so I told him to continue the story as the bell rang. He finished the story after another minute or so and the last word he used was the word that he was supposed to use: ghost! The students of course knew it!
There are many, what we call ENGLISH CORNERS, here at Sanda University. ENGLISH CORNER is when students will come to the classroom or office in droves and speak English. Now technically the foreign teachers, that is me and my team, should facilitate and the students should be the ones speaking. But, alas, the foreign teachers are more interesting to listen to than to talk with and that is how most of the ENGLISH CORNERS are. I feel wiped out after a few of them because I am constantly thinking of things to talk about. Last week we had an ENGLISH CORNER and after the normal introductions I went around and asked every student what they were going to do during their October Holiday which is coming soon. I was interested to know what they were doing and sometimes I feel nosy. “I’m going to the zoo!” Lead to discussions about animals and trying to interpret their actions of a giraffe when they don’t know the word in English. I learned that in Chinese a “river horse” is a hippo, but I let them keep the Chinese since that is a much better representation of what a hippo really is and plus I have no idea how to spell the longer version of the word.
Another fun ENGLISH CORNER I had the privilege of attending was near the school and some of the students who are interested in English and want to donate their time in helping the community came along too. It was about a ten minute walk around the school and down a street and into an apartment complex called, “SUNNY NEIGHBORHOOD” and we went to find the people who wanted to speak English. Now this neighborhood had it all from the Chinese health plan for the country, (which consists of huge metal jungle gym type things all around the courtyard area on which you are supposed to do special exercises and strengthen different parts of your body,) to special areas for ENGLISH CORNERS. Except that some one used the literal Chinese translation and made a sign and never asked a student or a foreigner and of course printed a bunch. So there are signs all over the place advertising that this is place for ENGLISH ANGLE! I pointed it out for the students to see which they didn’t get right away until I really showed them “It doesn’t say CORNER does it? No, look, it doesn’t SAY corner does it? NO, it DOESN’T say corner…it says ANGLE!” To which they all nodded and giggled a bit at my obvious annoyance.
But so far, this school is great. I am really looking forward to a great trip on October 2nd to a place called Hangzhou. I can’t wait because all the students and teachers tell me that Hangzhou is beautiful and almost “a heaven on earth.” So, heck I am looking forward to that!!! But as you can see by the picture below…that I am happy here at SanDa University and that this year will be really enjoyable!
And of course here is the skyline of Shanghai that, thanks to my nice camera’s software, I was able to combine 5 pictures for this one incredible shot. If you are able to download the picture it looks really nice when you zoom in and if you look carefully you can see that the JINMAO TOWER, the tallest building next to the ORIENTAL PEARL TOWER looks like it is swaying in the wind. ENJOY!
Posted September 20, 2004 6:15pm
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![img 717990 720639 1?1092054546 [lang en]San Fransisco...[/lang en]](http://img.blog.yahoo.co.kr/ybi/1/1c/f6/cliffordmlarsen/folder/717990/img_717990_720639_1?1092054546.jpg "[lang en]San Fransisco...[/lang en]")
![img 717990 720639 2?1092054546 [lang en]San Fransisco...[/lang en]](http://img.blog.yahoo.co.kr/ybi/1/1c/f6/cliffordmlarsen/folder/717990/img_717990_720639_2?1092054546.jpg "[lang en]San Fransisco...[/lang en]")
