Shangri-La and Classes

Tuesday was our last full day off before teaching. That morning Don ran off some more copies for his class and found out that the English department (100 or so teachers) gets 2 reams of paper, total, for the month. He has used almost one full ream himself. We will buy some paper in the department store on Saturday. (Students are expected to write everything down, instead of getting handouts.)

We woke up to a big surprise Tuesday morning: sunshine! After a few days of rain, it seemed that the air had cleaned and we could see buildings from our windows that weren't visible before. So we walked over two miles to a 5 star hotel called Shangri-La. On the way was a nice Portuguese restaurant, but the menu was only in Chinese and Portuguese, so we'll have to wait until DT gets here in April (studied two semesters of Portuguese at Madison). We saw several nice, huge apartment buildings as reflected in the 2nd picture.

At Shangri-La we talked to the concierge (pretty good English) re: some tours and golf courses. We got some good info but he was way off base (like 200 miles) re: one weekend trip we want to take to Pingyao (another old walled city - but much smaller, only 500,000 people).

We had a nice lunch there and walked back to the campus. They have a golf driving range there, but the nearest golf course is 25 miles away.

Today we started teaching. Don went this morning and Bobbi helped him with some technology concerns (the computers are old and virtually all of the language and commands are in Chinese). A lab person also came to get us going. There were 15 students in the World Civ. (How Western/American Culture has Effected US Economics) class. This is one of the 8 classes he will teach. Their English skills are fair to marginal to having the "deer in headlights look." About half took notes (though prodded very heavily to take notes often). They were all very nice, polite, very quiet and cold. The room was about 60 degrees at best. Don was the only one not wearing a coat. This school is kind of a mix of UW-Milwaukee and UW-Washington County. We hear some are very good students, most are fair to poor at best. We'll find out soon. It is private and you can just buy your way in, even if you didn't pass the standard college entrance exam.

This afternoon Bobbi taught her two classes. There were 20-25 English teachers in each. Her Powerpoint wouldn't open, so Don ran back to our room to save it in an older version, then it worked fine. The teachers were also very nice, polite, enthusiastic and classes went well. Each of our classes is about 2 hours long. When we get this down, we won't have to be go-fers for each other.

All in all, it was a good day & we're glad to be teaching.