Lovell Family Blog

So here I am once again with a bit of writer’s block. Because of the slowness of the internet I have been unable to do much on the blog. On my last entry there was supposed to be a picture but I was unable to insert the pic once I had upload it. All in all it has gotten me off my blogging grove. So with that and a lack of ideas about what to post about, I figured that I would show a couple pictures.

The one above is dedicated to the well-seasoned people that are reading this blog. As we were walking back to the school after exploring the town on Saturday we saw this massive pile of rocks on the side of the road. I don’t know if you can tell, but the one that is standing directly behind the bed is an older gentleman and he is indeed about to commence breaking those rocks. There is another part on our route to the school that often has a big pile of rocks that size or sometimes cinder blocks and a bunch of old old guys that wheel them off to some construction site. Amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The picture on the left is of one of students at the junior school outside of campus. Because there is no projector at that school, we have to do different lessons for them and that week we taught them about sports. This kids starting making his way to the front of the class to write something on the board when this happened. As he was getting up he tripped over this mini chalk board in between some desk and fell flat on his face while simultaneously breaking it. 🙂 It a lot of fun, the class was laughing and so was the kid.

The picture on the right is of me and a girl we met with Zoe on Tomb Sweeping day. Zoe took us later in the day to this fancy restaurant and this girl was one of the workers there. As we were leaving, she came up to me and make a camera sound to indicate that she wanted to take a picture with me. As I am really tall and Chinese people are really short, I decided to have a bit of fun with it and here came the picture. It was a lot of fun.

This last picture is of a gentleman that we met as we were exploring the town this past Saturday. The route that we took exploring took us out of town a little ways and there would be little pockets of shops along the way. At one of the shops was this gentleman working on chair with his wife. Those chairs are all made by hand and quite quickly as well. These chair are everywhere in town and it was cool to see how they were made. Interestingly, the wood they use seem like a really lightweight pine.

Today was Sunday and it was a pretty good one. Not much happened today but compared to other Sunday’s more has happened. Yesterday evening while we were listening to the Saturday sessions of conference we got a call from Stone asking if we could cover his classes for today (Sunday). We agreed and while it wasn’t the best thing we wanted to do, we did it because we have been blessed enough not to teach on Sunday so far.

The experience of teaching that class was quite a fun one. Stone’s students are the oldest at the school and as such have the best English skills at the school. Since we had only taught the youngest students at the school we did not know what to expect. Thankfully we were pleasantly surprised by how good their English was. While we weren’t able to talk with such high vocabulary, we didn’t have to stop and think a sentance through before we said. That made all the difference in the world because it felt more natural teaching that class and helped us have a great time. The only bad difference was that they weren’t as enthusiastic but that is a given since they were older than our other classes.

A funny thing happened at the start of class as we were introducing ourselves. Because of their increased vocabulary we were able to talk about more and they were asking us some questions as well. As I was introducing myself, one of the students asked if I had a girlfriend. After I told the class that I did not have a girlfriend they all asked why. As I stood there a bit taken aback by how I would explain the reason to them, one student chimed in with her theory. “Because you are too handsome!” she said. Haha, that made me chuckle. The Chinese are too nice sometimes. While I know it was to be taken with a grain of salt, I must admit it was a bit of a confidence booster. 🙂

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog. The high-speed part of high-speed internet has seem to have taken a indefinate leave of absense. Haha, all of that means that the internet has been so slow this past week that my blog would not even load. Yeah, it’s kind of a problem but has gotten a bit better; at least enough that I am able to update this blog.

So a lot has happened over the past week. Instead of doing a lot of update posts I will do just one. 🙂 About tomb sweeping day because was something that I did an earlier post about.

So yeah, this past Tuesday (the 5th) was tomb sweeping day here in China and we had the day off. Most of the other China Horizon’s participants decided to use the weekend to travel but because we had to work during the weekend we decide to stay. As I mentioned in the previous post, we got the wonderful opportunity to spend the day with Zoe and her family.

We got out to the school gate at 9 a.m. and went with Zoe to her grandparent’s house. Being a bit oblivious to what was going on, we sat at here grandparent’s house for a while. Out of the blue we got put in front of us a bunch of dumplings for breakfast, they said. The dumplings were, of coarse, amazing and after stuffing those down we taught Zoe and her cousin a card game and showed them some magic tricks.

After that we met up with some other members of Zoe’s extended family and walked with them to the burial ground. After a short hike up a hillside, we arrived and started the “festivities.” The grave actually belonged to one of Zoe’s grandparent’s parents. Once we arrived, the grandmother immediately started sweeping the area around the grave. Others started hanging these elaborate paper decorations. A small fire was also started for the burning the tributes. That was pretty awesome because they gave us some paper money and we were able to join in. After all of that, they lit some firecrackers off.

All in all, I was a bit surprised that it was as small as it was. Haha, don’t ask why I thought was going to be bigger. Nonetheless, it was still awesome. I got to experience something that I normally would not have been able to experience. Personnally I am quite happy that I stayed behind to participate in this. It was pretty awesome.

Sorry that there aren’t any more pictures. Considering the occasion I did not take more. In addition, I my skin was having a bit of allergic to something. I don’t know what it was but of course, there is a picture after the break. Click the link to see. 😛

Continue reading “The tomb has been swept”

Does the above picture strike you as a bit odd? Look at the kid’s ear. Indeed, that is a cigarette tucked behind a 12-year-olds hair. A couple of minutes later him and a group of similarly aged kid lit up there fags.

This was the sight that I beheld today. We had a lot of fun today at the activities center, of which I will write in a later post. We hung out with a cool group of kids that we met that day and at the time that I snapped the picture we were at the roller skating rink at the center.

I saw the kids smoking, snapped a couple pics and asked the group of kids we were with me why those particular kids were smoking. They told me that was “because they were bad students.” As I was thinking about the day on our way home and found this to be quite interesting. It seems that people students often classify other kids their age as either good or bad student. The peculiar part is that these labels are attached because of more social reasons rather than academic reasons.

I am going to share my observance of this and offer a possible conclusion but I don’t claim to be authoritative by any means. Another instance I saw of this today was when we were having lunch with these kids we asked which of the boys had girlfriend. One of the girls said that one of the boys did not have a girlfriend because he was a “good student.” There have been many other instances where I have asked why certain kids were doing something I have been told the reason is because they are either a good or bad student.

Here in China it seems that great emphasis is placed on education, as it is in America. The observable difference is that it seems that Chinese students have a greater understanding of how important education is (as it define much more of their future) than American student who seem not to care anymore.

The response “because he is a bad student” becomes more notable when you start to consider how an American student would respond. If you asked an American student what he/she thought of a 12 y/o that was smoking a likely response might be that they are lazy or a punk. Not that that response would be bad, it just highlights the difference being discussed. Of course the lack of a diverse collection of English worsd might lead to this, it was something that highlighted to me how the Chinese embrace education.

Be cool; stay in school!

A cool thing will be happening on the 5th of April: Tomb Sweeping Day. We have an extended weekend so we are going to have a lot of fun and I figured that I would write a description of what all of this is.

To us: what it means to us is that we get an extended weekend. Tomb Sweeping day is the 5th which is a Tuesday. We get Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of this week so are totally excited about that. Unfortunately we have to work tomorrow (Saturday) but we are teaching some of our most liked classes so that isn’t a problem.

To the Chinese: think of it as a Memorial Day for the Chinese. Growing up the states what I remember most about Memorial Day was that we would eat A LOT of food and then stand around forever at a cemetery 🙂 . It is pretty much the same for the Chinese.

Tomb Sweeping Day is actually called the Qingming Festival. The day, according to the world wide webs, is the first day of the fifth solar term, which is often April 5th, give or a take a day. Other names for the festival are the Pure Brightness Festival and Ancestors Day. Essentially the holiday is “a time for people to go outside and enjoy the greenery of springtime and tend to the graves of loved ones.” It is also a time that people often start dating and also when farmers will start to plow their fields.

On that day, people will spend a lot of time outside and then they might bring a large meal to grave site to eat. They then will tend to the grave sight and clean it, hence why it has been named tomb sweeping day. People will also often burn spirit money and other paper replicas of material items such as cars and homes. They do this because the Chinese believe that those things are still needed in the afterlife.

An interesting thing about the holiday: appearently people can be seen carrying branches of a willow tree or they might also leave them by the door of their home. It is believed that the willow branches help ward off the evil spirit that wanders during Qingming.

So yeah, we were going to head out of town for the weekend but since we have to work we are going to stay here. While I think that it would be cool to leave town I know that spending time with the locals will be worth more than any trip. It is one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that just can’t be missed.

Sorry that I have been kind of sporadic lately with the blog updates recently. I have been stuck with writer bloc the past couple days and frankly, I have had that same problem tonight. I have set a goal for myself to make sure that I update it regularly so tonight I am going to push one out.

I suppose that this more of plea for advice more than anything. Since I have been here my experience with teaching the classes has been nothing but positive. With one exception: class 15. That class is my bad apple and they are a pain to teach. Let me explain:

The class struggles with listening. The concepts that I am teaching are so simple that if they listen, they will understand despite however big the language barrier might be. The kids always find ways to get distracted. Even when I try to get them to be quiet it never works. This last week they were being a little defient. The thing that breaks my heart with this class is that since they don’t listen, they never seem to understand and thus the class isn’t fun. None of my other classes have any problems like this.

So here what I have done and what I plan to do to fix this problem. After I taught class 15 this week  I had the best student take me to their English teacher. I told the teacher that I wanted to talk to her about the class after I taught them next week. On the way walking back to the classroom I talked to the student about why listening is important.

Here are the things that I plan to do with the class: there is another female student that is kind of the mischievious ring leader of the class. I want to talk to her and help her also to understand why listening is important and hopefully she can influence some students as well. I am also going to focus next weeks lesson wholey on Class 15 and their needs.

To solve all of this really quickly I could just have the English teacher discipline them and all would be fix but I really really do not want to go that route because it usually doesn’t end to nice for the kids. I am hoping that the things that I plan to do will work so that we can have more fun in that class.

So this is where I am. I need your advice. What would you do in my situation? What other things could I do to change the way that things are happing in the class? Any help would be greatly appreciated and would truly be of great value to me. So leave a comment and share your ideas!

So let me inform everyone on a comment made by my sister, Lindsey, on an entry I posted last week about minesweeper.

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#1 by Lindsey on March 23, 2011 – 1:56 PM

 

This is a continuation of my last post, “Crack still kills in China.”

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After the park Zoe went back to her parents and we headed back into town. On the way into town we decided to try different street food and we found some great food. I would try to describe it to you but honestly, I don’t know how. Just know that it was fried in a oil and you’re good.

As mentioned in my last post, we made our way to the local activities center. Before I had my ping pong fu battle with the old man, we went on a bicycle adventure. Actually I guess I should call it a quadcycle, if that even is a thing. It is a bike with four wheels designed to fit two people and, in some cases, a baby. Anyway, after deciding it would be a fun thing to do we looked for the bike in the best shape (which isn’t saying much) and headed on to the track.

While on the track we had a bunch of fun chasing after people and having races, which we always won. 🙂 Go America! 🙂 Anyway, we saw this dog on the grassy area inside the track and Jordan suggested we chase after it. I agreed and we pedaled full toward the 6 inch curb, hoping to make it up.

Unfortunately for the bike we didn’t. As we hit the curb we suddenly stopped and became lopsided. I look down and see the front right wheel a few inches from the bike. It seemed that we were so awesome and fast that when we hit the curb the rusted wheel just came straight off. Fortunately for us we had a tremendous laugh. 🙂 We then acted like it was an accident and pushed it back to the rental place. What? I am sure that it was totally inconspicuous. 🙂

After that we went food exploring some more and called it a night. Another adventure was in the books.

This past Saturday was another one full of adventure and we didn’t have to leave town for it. Which is always a plus. My last entry was about the crazy good ping pong players that I competed against so in this entry I will cover the rest.

We started out our day with another amazing lunch with Zoe. Her mother is an amazing cook and made us some amazing dumplings. If you are wondering what dumplings are, they are pretty much what we call potstickers in America but are freshly made and taste even better. The meal also had other veggies and meats that I cannot pronounce but those were amazing too.

After the meal we headed with Zoe down to the park. Fortunately we weren’t bombarded by those wanting to take pictures so we were able to enjoy more of the park. We found this group of people that were building this fence along a path. The interesting part of it was that they weren’t using wood but bamboo that was sliced lengthwise. It has amazed me how ingenous the Chinese can be with a small amount of resources.

On our way to the park we snapped the funny picture that you see above. Yes, that is the child’s butt crack through a hole in his pants. I think it would suffice to say that different things pass through that hole. Anyway, lots of kids use that part of the bridge as a slide which is fun to watch every time that we pass by. There are play equipment in the park but unfortunately neglet and lack of maintenence has rendered them kind of dangerous.

Yet despite that I am amazed at how the Chinese can entertain themselves with such simple mean. I feel sorry for my future kids. They get a stick to play with and nothing more. 🙂

 

Today was another one of those Saturdays that were full of adventure and memorable times. And I have decided to crown myself the new ping pong champion. China ain’t got nothing on me.

Actually they do but I was able to keep up and probably would have won a couple games, if we were keeping score. Today we went exploring out on the town and decided to check out the activities center that we had visited a couple of weeks ago. When we went then there weren’t a lot of people on a weekday so we went in hopes that more people would be there on a weekend.

After we had been there for a while talking to a bunch of kids and doing different things, we started walking by the ping pong tables and got invited to play a game. Jordan and I played a couple of services together but then someone asked Jordan if they could play me. Immediately after Jordan left he got swarmed by a bunch of teenage girls and I continued playing.

Normally I am not very good but I was able to keep up. At first I was playing a 12-year-old (I believe that was his age) kid and he was amazing! He had a sort of spin on his serve the would make the ball go super far when I returned it. Then the old man that originally inviting us to play decide to challenge the white-skinned American.

The old man (in the picture above) was a lot of fun and boy could he move! I have never seen a old person move that fast and he was also dishing out some wicked spins too. I am sure he could take on plenty of white boys and be plenty victorious. Plus the funny noises he made whenever he hit the ball added to his epicness. Is epicness a word? 🙂 It is now.

The whole experience was a lot of fun and very memorable because with both of my opponents, neither of us the other person’s language. Which was awesome because despite the language barrier we were able to become instant friends and have a fun time. I love how emotions such as happiness and joy transcend the language barrier.