Week 3

All of the SST men took on the Foreign Language Department's best English-major basketball players a week ago. The crowd grew in numbers as the afternoon wore on as Goshen's team edged out the Sichuan Normal team. Here Ryan jumps while Kent and Matt look on. After the game the two competing teams posed together, and invitations for additional bouts began coming in. Goshen's men will compete in the university's 50th anniversary October basketball tournament, which will include teams from each department.

Last week we had two taijiquan sessions with an excellent instructor. We learned one basic routine in the four hours of training. Seven students are taking private tutoring in taijiquan (including Steve). Other students are being tutored in art, traditional Chinese music theory, and religion. Seven students have been assigned "cooking families" who take students home each week to cook a Chinese meal with them.

Matt had a small crowd of women gathered around him at English corner. The great majority of English majors at SNU are women. Students continue to spend two hours each week at English corner, where the questions are deepening and friendships are being formed.

Here Kate and Ruth conduct their first class session with a group of sophomore English majors last Wednesday.

The group eats lunches together each weekday, but separates to the streets for evening meals. One pair cooks breakfast for the entire group each Thursday. Here, at one of our group lunches, Matt attempts to remove a stray noodle from the ear of Kent, while Sophie looks on in amazement.

Mandarin instruction is actually going extremely well, and we're making great strides in language acquisition. At right, Daron, Elizabeth, and Nick perform a basic Mandarin skit for the class, drawing on our new vocabulary. We're quite adept at giving our Chinese names, telling where we are from and where we live on campus, and explaining that we do or do not like yogurt.

Students will have this week off for the national holiday (celebrating the founding of the People's Republic of China 53 years ago). All members of the group are traveling this week, singly or in pairs or triples, usually with Chinese hosts, to scattered places across the province for several days or the entire week.