½ School ½ Green Tea

(Dareus)

If you’ve read the previous posts then you probably know what our average “school day” is. Regardless, I will tell you how today started. Four knocks on my bedroom door woke me up and initiated the daily routine of choosing my clothes which usually includes the blue and white school uniform jacket that I was given a few days after arriving here at Hangzhou. A shower later I hopped in my host dad’s car with breakfast in hand and then fell asleep for the one hour and ten minutes it takes us to get there. We usually take the back gate into school grounds. Since this high school is obviously a city there are always two students with red sashes standing on either side of the gate to help filter out people who aren’t students and are trying to enter the campus.

Hangzhou High School! (HangGao)

(Caitlin)

The last week has been, well, crazy. We arrived a little more than a week ago, and since then, we’ve all settled into a rhythm. Wake up early, have breakfast (which is delicious, by the way, but I’ll get to that later), and head out into the crazy traffic jam on our way to school. In the mornings, we all go to class with our host siblings first thing, for the first two classes. It’s kinda cool, seeing a class that I might have already taken at home, like physics, but in a different language. I can’t exactly understand what the teacher may be saying, but I can understand what’s on the board, so I can still pretty much follow along.

The ABC’s of China!

(Heather)

Below, in alphabetical order, you can find some of my thoughts on China thus far!

A: Attention Span:
I’ve only been “teaching” for two days thus far, but American students take note—students here listen to EVERY WORD you say with rapt attention. In fact, I’m reasonably certain I could read straight from an IRS tax manual to the Chinese students, and they’d listen quietly, avidly, and respectfully. I’m chalking this up to the vast differences in pedagogy between our two countries—in China, the teacher is the expert, and classes are conducted as such. The teacher presents material, and students listen, absorb, and retain. There are few questions, and the concept of “tell me your thoughts about this poem or story” is completely foreign. In fact, I spoke with a student today who is likely spending a year at a high school in Canada, and her biggest fear revolved around this difference—she was terrified at the thought of having to put forth her own thoughts about class material.

West Lake & Plum Blossoms

(Heather)

My apologies to those of you reading this blog post—there’s no creative title this time round. There’s a reason for this, however. You see, as a group we spent Saturday at the infamous West Lake in Hangzhou, and on Sunday I had the opportunity to see the stunningly lovely peach and plum blossoms at the Hangzhou Botanical Gardens. As everything I’ve seen over the past two days has been so, well, just so lovely, I feel that trying to force creativity or compose a saccharine metaphor would inevitably fall flat and detract from the actual beauty of what we’ve (I’ve!) seen.

“Oooh, Kill ‘em” at Ping Pong

(Timmy)

Student’s log. Day 3. It has been 3 days since the group has infiltrated the high school. We have begun to gain the student’s trust. Actually the first few days have been a little awkward for us, but only because most of us don’t understand what they are saying. Today was much better because over the last few days, I have been able to make more friends. At the end of second period today, two girls came up to me and gave me what I think are postcards. We talked for a little bit in broken English and Chinese until I went to meet the rest of the group in room 209, our base of operations. I thought I was doing alright socially, but apparently Max has an entourage of students that always visit him. They are all nice people, but they took the last cookie from our snack bowl.