Day 6: Working Weekends

So today I got half of my wish from yesterday; it only rained for half the day today. In the morning we taught English to children at the local school. I neglected to mention in my last post that Tracey (the girl from Hangzhou) left last night because she has driving lessons this coming week. So there are only four of us in the house now. Tao Yuan and Eric taught the class of younger children, while Cherry and I handled the older kids, many of whom were 18. Their English was obviously not great, but I was generally impressed with their vocabulary. We started out very simply, as I wrote a dialogue on the board that went like this:

A: Hello.
B: Hello. What is your name?
A: My name is Joshua. What is your name?
B: My name is Cherry. How are you?
A: Fine, thank you. How are you?
B: Fine, thank you.
A: So what do you like to do?
B: I like to shop. And you?
A: I like to read.
B: That's great!

This was reconstructed from my very dim memory of learning French at a very young age. It was rather difficult to demonstrate in front of the class without laughing, the conversation was so bland. Of course we had the children practice, inserting their names and hobbies in the place of ours. Later we taught them the English words for various foods, and although my Chinese is much better than their English, I did not know the Chinese words for much of what they learned in English today.

We spent a good deal of time on pronunciation, particularly on the "th" sound that is rather difficult for Asians. Many of them were pronouncing "thank" "sank." But I must say that I was impressed with how eager to learn they were; there were no disruptions of the kind that I would normally expect in a high school classroom. For readers who have never been to China, municipal government is known for being incompetent and ineffective; likewise municipal services usually leave much to be desired. I have great respect for the principal of the school, whom as I mentioned, we met with yesterday. He seems genuinely interested in the childrens' well-being.

After a morning of classes, we ate lunch (no new exotic foods today), and then went out to start working. We were at the other worksite today, as construction as stopped on the first worksite until the necessary materials arrive (which they did at the end of the day). We were essentially leveling the ground in preparation for paving. In this manner, the rain of this morning and yesterday was useful; it provided us with an easy indicator of which areas were lower than the others. These we filled in with excess dirt from the high places. After our labor was finished, we took a walk to the other campsite, where we saw that the materials for cement had been delivered. Then, we decided to walk a little bit further to tour the river that runs through Gaoxiang. I had not yet been to this area of the town, and I am glad I got the opportunity. It was quite beautiful; it is difficult to impress upon you how green the fields are what with all the rain and humidity, but hopefully when I can upload pictures onto this site they will tell an adequate story.

I suppose that's all for today, and tomorrow should provide more of the same: half a day of teaching, and half a day of labor. I will report dutifully on both. Good night.