This week was finally what I expected the programme to be.
First for the teaching, I had an excellent time teaching; I made Who Wants to be a Millionaire with content from my previous lessons. This PowerPoint I downloaded was fantastic and even had proper music and animations; the kids seemed to have a great time, and were genuinely excited when they got questions right, and whether to risk time (the currency) by answering questions. The amount of money they won was converted into time, and they had to work together to translate up to 15 sentences in that time to win boba for all. No team won, but they all got Oreos if they got 10+. The last class was my favourite, because they were really smart (figured out receipt came from receive and thusly knew how to spell it), and I thought they were the most into the game and hardworking, as they won the million dollars. We started the translations, and they blazed through them; they were going to win, but the teacher stopped them and made them get their stuff and leave school... so sad because I wanted them to win.
Singing class went better than I expected too. We had to do some choreography during the song which took a bit of time, and we had to rush a bit through it, but we got everything introduced in terms of stage placement, and the whole song learnt. For our review week, we really only have to review and perfect; I thought we might have to teach some things during that time. Of course, they're likely to forget everything, but at least exposing it to them before hand can equate to less time wasted during the reteach. My little Favourite Things bit was going well, but a fourth person wanted to join, which threw off the lyric timing, but I didn't want to reject a willing student, so I still have to figure out how to distribute the lines AGAIN AUGHH. But that's OK; I'd rather do that than redistribute lines because people quit, so I guess I'm lucky. We got some tricky syncopated phrases down that I didn't expect the students to understand without sheet music
The host family situation was improving too. I think it is fascinating that the brother was completely unaware of some of China's atrocities like the Cultural Revolution, but that maybe shouldn't be discussed publicly while I'm in China @_@
We watched a film that dealt with these topics (霸王別姬 Farewell My Concubine), and he asked if it was made up..... Anyway, when the brother was playing with his friend, the father and I walked with one of his colleagues to meet some other colleagues in the neighbouring city of 中山 which was a solid 45 minute walk away from the home, but we got to spend some quality time together. We had some 河南 food for dinner, which was really good, but I also found out today that my father cooks really REALLY well. There is something called 涼粉 which is noodles in gelatinous cubic form, and fried a little bit they are amazing. All four dishes and the soup were great (especially because the soup wasn't scalding).
The volunteering at the special needs school was leagues and light years better than our previous venue, as this time we were actually interacting with the children. We helped them do some artwork, taught them some of our dance, and Wes and I played badminton with them (we really lost the first game to middle schoolers...)
I got to spend some time with some Duke students with whom I usually do not spend much time, and I have learnt a great deal about them and have made some new friends (I'm looking at you Tessa and LEGENDS OF THE HIDDEN TEMPLE)
Some parts were a little weird though, like getting called a 洋鬼子 (foreign invader) when I already hate the term 外國人 (foreigner) really struck a wrong chord with me, and it made me question what was considered acceptable between cultures, races, ages, and settings... to me, calling someone a foreigner is not quite respectful, essentially labelling them as "other" without any reasoning, but this foreign invader was simply uncalled for. There were other names I was called that I didn't appreciate, but am in no place to confront. So now, when someone calls me a 外國人 on the street randomly I turn to them and say "Actually, I'm from Taiwan" in Chinese, which usually shuts them right up. But in any case, this week was finally what I wanted from the programme, and hopefully next week as we detach ourselves from Zhuhai and reflect a bit whilst in Beijing, I hope I can set more reasonable goals of what I can expect from myself, my students, my Duke peers, and especially the site co-ordinators, and let issues I notice be attributed to mistakes in the moment instead of problems of character, while pushing myself to be the person I expect from others.
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