Teaching, Celebrating, and Halloweening

Although we had only one afternoon lecture and only three Mandarin classes this week, our days were packed with activities, with as many as three major events happening in one day. The climax of the week was Thursday (see the next page), which started with our participation in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Sichuan Normal University and culminated with a markedly successful Halloween dance party we threw for our students and friends.

The week included both the truly spectacular and the more mundane. Abby and several of her friends picked up cotton candy at the north gate after dinner one evening. The friends were Abby's Chinese roommates during her week in the dorm.

Through our Mandarin teacher (Jiang Laoshi), Ben and Sasha were able to meet Hou Mian, whom they described as a "Chinese Darren Bender." Their new friend's home had turtles and lizards and other reptiles everywhere, and his English vocabulary consisted almost entirely of the proper names for his menagerie.

The SST men played their fourth and final game of the all-university tournament. The men won by a large margin, leaving their season record at 2-2.

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• Nick and Sasha visited a museum about an hour away from campus with two of their Chinese friends.
• One of the favorite mealtime places for all of us is what we affectionately call "the good place" at the back gate, just a five-minute walk from the international students' dormitory. Here Ruth and Kate and Steve and Landon enjoy dinner before heading off to class.
• Ben and four other group members are continuing their stay in the Chinese dorms, remaining there as long as both they and their roommates feel comfortable with the arrangement.
  

English

In their English classes this week, many of the students focused on North American holidays, including Halloween. Here Sophie shows a jack-o-lantern to the class she and Ben co-teach. They also illustrated the prank of TP-ing by covering a human tree with toilet paper. The students were amused.

After Rachel and Nick walked their Wednesday evening class through a mock wedding officiated by Keith, the students turned the tables and explained a traditional Chinese wedding, with Nick and Rachel as the bride and bridegroom. Near the end of their ceremony, Rachel and Nick exchanged cups of wine (actually, boxes of chalk), much to the delight of their students.

Lectures & trips

Monday afternoon Chris Leuz, an American physician who has worked in Africa and various parts of Asia for most of his adult life, did a lecture for the group on Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chris and his spouse Lois are now China Educational Exchange workers in Chengdu. On Tuesday Lois arranged for the entire group to experience and observe therapeutic massage at the clinic on their Traditional Chinese Medicine university campus. The massages lasted about 70 minutes each, and included thorough head and face massages as well as neck, back, and leg massages. After the sessions, students agreed that experiential learning was better than they had ever anticipated. Most members of the group looked a little like Steve and Kent following the massages.

 

Friday the group had an all-day field trip to Anren, arranged by a former Goshen College exchange scholar who teaches at SNU. There we visited the Bad Landlord's Museum, established after the 1949 Communist Revolution to evidence the flagrant abuse possible under the previous social and economic system. The museum, located on the estate of the landlord, packed a punch. Students from the Anren Middle School, where each of us later taught several classes, served as our guides at the museum.

Following the museum visit and a trip and our middle school teaching, most members of the group walked into the countryside to the home of one of the students, which included a number of pavilions and heavily stocked fish ponds. About half of the group (including Daron, at left) took the opportunity to fish.

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• Liz was the first to snag a fish, then drop it into the bushes. She retrieved the large catch for a moment before returning it to the pond.
• Liz and Niles pose with a host of new friends.
  

We're now into sweater weather, after a gorgeous and warm fall that lasted until last week. We continue to enjoy the occasional sunny and mild day in Chengdu, and look forward to the remaining weeks of the fall season.