Last Week in Xi'an

This is our last full week in Xi'an. It was a very nice weather week with temps in the 70s both Wednesday and Thursday. Even the classrooms were decent temperature. We saw many people without coats for the very first time.

Today Don finished teaching and testing in his classes. With many students (about 1/3) not attending class often or at all until test day (!!), the scores on their test were not very good. For the great majority of the students attending class, note-taking meant copying down the Power Point outline and no additional notes or comments. So even many of those students didn't do well. He also gave them a short research paper to do on factors in the American economy. Most thought that meant: Internet, copy, paste. Thus, those scores were not very good either. They were also embarrassed when confronted about their plagiarism. Writing skills are not emphasized until their senior year of college (these are juniors) and not really emphasized until grad school. A little different than the USA. His mentor here was fine with what he did and said that Chinese students have to learn more about thinking and writing skills.

Bobbi also finished her mentoring and working with the Chinese teachers and students. A couple gave her parting gifts and there were many photos taken to remember their English teacher. It's hard to see people so hungry for information when it's SO available to so many others in the world. The classroom was a very rewarding experience.

Saturday night Kristi, Romee, DT and Kelly all arrive here from the US. We will spend two days here, then 3 in Beijing and 2 in Hong Kong/Macau. After that restful week, we will all head back to the US on or about April 10 and we're looking forward to seeing you! Thanks for staying in touch throughout the 10 weeks of our adventure. We really appreciated the news from home and support of friendships.