Another post about our time in Shenzhen for our TESOL training. Gallery is posted after the break!
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So on day five we started our classes. These classes are meant to teach us how we can better teach the student that we are going to have.
Thinking about the classes I am having a difficult time thinking of how I am going to explain it but I will try our best. Our teacher was Gail Chou and, despite the last name, she is about as Texan as Texan come. She was the best. Really kind hearted and you could tell how much she loved what she was doing. It was really cool.
Things that we talked about were what we should expect, classroom environment, discipline and teaching ideas. Most importantly we talked about how we can suit our lessons to the needs of our students. I learned a lot from that and the training that we received was very valuable. I apologize that I don’t have any other details. I guess if I had written on the day that we had classes it would have been better. What I will do is attach the power points of the lessons that she taught us. It is all very interesting.
The surroundings of the hotel were very interesting. Outside our window you have a pretty poor looking neighborhood right below us and then further out you have a bunch of industrial building. Jordan and I had a pretty awesome set up for our food. On one side of hotel was a small bunch of shops. There was a bunch of food stalls next that area that was cooking food.
Jordan and I became fans of this one stall that cooked the best noodles we had ever tasted. They were simple noodles fried with sauces, egg and some vegetables. It was amazing. And cheap. It cost 5 Yuan which would be less than a dollar. I got addicted to it. Another food item that we got addicted to was found inside the super market nearby. It was the most delicious bread ever. It almost tasted just like Hawaiian sweet rolls. It was soo good and Jordan and I ate a lot of them.
On Saturday we ate dinner with the president of the virtual church branch that covers China. In another post I will talk about how this works but for now I am just going to focus on the restaurant that we ate at. The place was really cool. The president got us three private booths for the whole group. There was also a lot of different food. To be honest, only pictures do it justice so look at them. The most interesting dish that I would say that we had was a mushroom (fungus) dish. It tasted like beef jerkey. Unfortunately for one guy in our group, Richard, he has like a bajillion food allegories and so he left the table early because he was having troubles breathing.
As we were leaving the restaurant, it was awesome to see how happy people were when they saw us. Everybody would stare, smile and wave. They would also laugh at us when we would try to speak Chinese to them. After eating we went over to the other side of the hotel that had the food stalls. Group dancing (pretty much just line dancing) apparently is pretty common in China and by this particular area there would be dancing every night. Jordan and I joined the party and it was a ton of fun. To say the least, we sucked at it (especially me 🙂 ). I was told that they do the same songs every night so the local have had a lot of time to get very good at it. It was fun to see a crowd a gather to watch to the group of Americans trying to dance.
I have really come to love the uniqueness of each area we get to. It definitely has broadened my perspective on the world.