A Chinese teaching competition....

This week I was forced to participate in a teaching competition.  The Chinese love anything that has to do with competition.  To prepare for it I had to make a power point presentation.  I decided to talk about teaching body parts because it's an easy and fun lesson.  I thought my power point was cute so even if I was boring they'd have that to look at.  I wasn't happy about doing this and tried my hardest to get out of it.  I also had an exam that morning so I knew I couldn't get there at the beginning.   Of course I was supposed to be the 4th person......

Unfortunately they were able to get me a new number and I made it in plenty of time after my exam.

The 3 Chinese teachers I work with also participated and went 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  In their 8 minutes they talked about teaching a lesson - everyone after them actually taught the lesson and had their coworkers act as students.  When I arrived we put together a new plan for my presentation.  One of the judges (that works at our school) was texting my manager about what I needed to do inorder to get a high score.  The Chinese love their competitions but are not against cheating to win. 

As we were waiting this guy decided to clean the floor.  He moved the signs out of the way and started washing the floor.  All I could think about was walking through this 1/2 inch of dirty water to get to the room and then falling once I got in there.  That's all I needed. 

Once he was done with the dirty water he got out a really noisy vacuum.  A few people, including us, told him we were having a competition and could he come back in 10 minutes.  He said no!  He was cleaning the floor.  Of all the places he needed to clean in the entire hotel - it had to be right outside the door of the competition.  Typical Chinese. 

My presentation ended up being ok, I suppose.  The power point that I thought was so cute couldn't even be seen by the judges.  So it was all me and my Chinese teacher 'students'.

I don't think they've announced the winner yet.  I really don't care about winning since I didn't want to do this in the first place.  I think it would be hilarious if I did win though.  Supposedly there was another foreign teacher competing but when I was there I didn't see any other foreigners.

LoveLY Notebooks

The Chinese have some very sappy notebooks. They are all about love, beautiful things, and over the top inspirational sayings. This is how the Chinese seem to be at times but I find it ironic. Love doesn't seem to be an important part of their relationships. They are very practical when choosing a partner yet their songs, notebooks, clothes, etc. are very passionate. 

All English in China is full of grammatical / spelling errors - notebooks are no exception.

'Don't stop, never give up. LOVE STORY'

'Believe.  Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.'

'Whisper.  A heart that loves is always young.'

'Honey Honey.  I always be with you.'

'The more one learns, the more one wants to know.'

'Dreams come true.  Though it is sick and tiring for you to listen to studying everyday.  The hardship you are facing now will reward you as a precious present.  Why don't you enjoy the moment now?'

This is my current notebook.  I thought it was appropriate to use for some inspiration at 8am.

'Enjoy this morning'

University Midterm

This is my midterm exam.  I got a 91%!  For some reason she printed the exam on huge paper.  It was a bit overwhelming at first but I made it through each section with no big problems. 

In the first section we had to combine characters to make words.  There are a lot of characters that can mean different things or slightly different things when combined with a different character.
For example:  如 with 果 means 'if'.  苹 with 果 means 'apple'. 

 

The next few sections were constructing sentences using different grammar points.

The final section was writing a letter using 150 characters.  I wrote a letter to my mom and talked about a trip I had gone on the week before.

Lately I've gotten pretty frustrated with University actually.  My reading and writing is good but my speaking is really weak.  They don't have us speak enough in class.  When it is time to speak I feel like I'm in a class of the 8 year olds I teach on the weekends.  There's a certain group in class that has to be the first to answer every question and when we're reading they will jump in if anyone pauses to remember the character. It's incredibly annoying!  I've realized that whatever I can do I should feel good about though.  Some people in class are really good at speaking but can't read and write very well.  After University is over I'll probably enroll in a class that is mostly speaking and hopefully it will come.