Volunteering includes 'A Day in the Park…’

I have been to Xi’an, China two times with the Global Volunteers. The first under the guidance of Hu Di, the second under the guidance of Wang Baoli. I have spent both these years at the High Technology University. The English department professors are wonderful group to work with. Lei Shurya was our leader with Miao Rong, Li Dong and the others. They took great care of us, letting us spend time with their students, who came from all parts of China. Taking us to see some of the great things to see in Xi'an.

As much as I have enjoyed the time with them and their students, there is another part of this adventure that, to me, has been as great a pleasure. It is the people I have met in the parks near the Sino Pearl and Empress hotels where we stayed. The hotels are very close to two large parks, the Xingqinggong Park and the park by the south wall near the Hucheng River.

A cup of tea with two opera singers, a conversation with the dentist, a couple who let me watch their wedding, a conversation with 3 young children, yes they could speak some English. A group that wanted their pictures taken with us. A young girl practicing her instrument, the man who let me fly his kite. The man who let me use his whip to keep the top spinning. The trip to the Famen Temple with Lei Shuya. The five 12-year-olds who stopped to talk for about one hour. The camera club from Jiao Tong University.

Li Xia, whom I met on my first trip to China, we have become very good friends. Five girls who were in my class the first year, had lunch and a great conversation with them. Conversations with a group of students from another High Tech College. Amy, a student from another college who sat in on my classes. Students in the park doing a sketching assignment. There are so many more that I have met and talked to.

Then there is Niu Shuai Hang (Alice) who came up to me to practice her English, she is 13 years old. She was in the park with her mother on a Sunday afternoon. We spent 3 hours talking and walking through the park and the beautiful campus of the Jiao Tong University. We were going to meet again, but our schedules did not permit it. We do e-mail each other. Can you imagine how I feel when I do get that occasional e-mail from her and the first words I read are “Hi Grandpa.”
There are wonderful opportunities to meet so many people. You do not go to the park to meet people, you go to the park so they can meet you. Looking forward to October 2010.

~ Fred Powell

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Thought of the day: Let’s remember, as we see the faces of our students, the goals of our Global Volunteers to promote peace and understanding between/among peoples. –Karen

(Prelude: Thursday evening I was too exhausted to write and fell asleep at 8pm. I awoke at 9pm, while I was trying to decide whether to get up and write, I fell asleep. I awoke in the night, I wanted to rise by 5am to write this. Finally after an hour of restlessness I got up to se what time it was, 2:45. I lay there for some time and finally rose at 3:45. I am now in the small room sitting on the white ceramic chair and writing with this notebook on the marble sink.)

I was glad to see the rain this morning. It would mean the dust and other pollutions would be dampened for a while. But the rain I guessed would make for more hazardous driving. I was right. It was a 2 fender-bender day on the way to school.

At the school, we learned the electric power was out. The library has large windows so it didn’t affect us.

My class has 12 students, with only one young man. They were a bit more reserved and my attempts to warm them up were hot so successful. Perhaps they’re slightly dampened by the annoyance of the power outage. During the first period, I have them recite sentences, so I can assess their pronunciation. It goes well. During period 2, Karen and her class join us. This expands our possibilities for dialogue because Karen and I can talk to each other and we can each speak to the class in 3rd person. The recitation is quick but relaxed. In the 3rd period we sang our two songs and as usual they seemed to enjoy them. We had stipulated they could take pictures at the end of the class at 11:55. So, at the end they crowded around taking pictures on their cellphone cameras.

One unpleasant incident happened. A shy and somewhat sober Uighur girl stood by me to have her picture taken by a friend. A taller and exuberant girl pushed her from behind to get alongside me. The first girl was shoved two feet and she turned, obviously surprised and hurt. She ducked her head and went around on the other side but then withdrew because her face was contorting. She was about to cry. I motioned for her to stand by me bit she wouldn’t come and walked away and stood by a pillar obviously holding back tears. She walked to a friend by a window but the friend ignored her, waving her away, because she was on her phone.

Our lunch was at a nearby hotpot restaurant picked by Julia because the other restaurants needed electricity. It was an interesting meal but I prefer hotpot at home with only 4 or 5 people because it is less chaotic.

My afternoon class was more advanced. They took to everything so smoothly. They were so attentive and responsive. The understood a great more than I expected and it was great fun. They were all 20 or 21 with one exception – one girl was 19. They wore the navy blue pant suit with pink shirt blouse which I thin is the nurse’s student uniform.

Vivian suggested Karen teach the hula. We formed a rough circle and a good time was had by all. There is much more I could write but it is 4:42 and there is still time for an hour’s rest.

-Bob

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Thought of the day:
In high school 55 years ago, I learned in my Geometry class that the sum of the parts is equal to the sum of the whole.
But the sum of life may be more than the sum of its parts.
We have only ten brief days of instruction to give but what might be our influence here? Perhaps most of the students may barely remember us in a year. But perhaps some will remember us forever as those Americans who made learning English a pleasant experience. – Bob

Today I woke up extremely pleased to find out that my near-deaf right ear is now much better. I’m glad that it got better on its own because otherwise I will have to go see an ear specialist and miss spending time at La La Shou special education school, and that is something I would like to avoid to the best of my abilities.

La La Shou special education school is school primarily for kids and teenagers with disabilities such as autism, intelligence and mental growth retardation, as well as other birth defects that significantly reduce their ability to communicate, learn and even the ability to perform basic daily living activities such as brushing teeth and going to the bathroom. I will be spending 3 weeks volunteering at the school, and my role is more or less like a teacher’s assistant, to help the teacher keep the classroom in order, to help carry out the lesson plans, and many other misc. things such as cleaning up and serving lunch.

Today the class started with the usual morning reading of a few children’s articles (written by the teachers themselves), followed by some morning exercises in the classroom. Unfortunately, for the teachers and me, the children were extra “wild” today and the morning exercises became us constantly chasing running children down. They are usually less crazy than this, maybe because of the rain?

Anyways, the students finally settled down just in time for art class. Today’s art class was to fill colors of fruits with the outline already drawn out by the teachers. We all had a lot of fun doing that and all the students did a great job, although we had to hold some students’ hands to finish the drawings as they lacked the hand and finger dexterity and coordination.

We then had lunch and it was hot and sour soup with white flour buns. We all liked the lunch very much and I especially enjoyed the buns. Although I was supposed to eat them with hot spicy paste, I decided not to and just ate them plain.

The students then went for a short nap while the rest of us washed the dishes and cleaned up the classroom. I personally can’t cook too well but I am able to do many of the chores. So I was able to help the teachers out quite a bit. After about an hour and half, the students began to wake up.

We began the afternoon lessons with a little bit of show and tell and some biscuits. It went by relatively well and then for the last lesson of the day we had a combined music class with the neighbor class. We rehearsed some songs that the students will be performing at the zoo trip which will take place next week sometime. We had some progress but there were still a lot of practice that needs to be done. After the music class, the students packed their backpacks and were picked up by their parents one by one, and that’s a typical day at La La Shou Special Education School.

-Yibo

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Thought of the day:
You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good. –Jerry West

This has been the first full day of teaching, with classes in the morning and afternoon. The teachers have all been very solicitous about my strength and agility, and give me much help up and down the stairs and over distances which are long for me, but not for the others. I feel pampered and guilty, but I must admit, not as tired as I might otherwise be. They even carry my books for me.

They have delightful English names, such as Sunshine, Swallow, and also Diana and Della. One student asked Bob to name her, and he chose Diana, goddess of the hunt. What an honor for him.

Yibo, our fellow teacher, works at another school with autistic children. He speaks fluent Chinese, and is a cheerful soul, and seems to have the patience and caring to do much work. I am glad he is with us.

Our co-teachers, Karen and Bob are experienced teachers in life, and by being here last year. Bob was a career teacher and Karen has held a variety of jobs. Nonetheless, or because of this, I learn just by listening to them, talk about plans for their students and evaluating their days. I am also thankful for Bob’s spork.

I continue to be humble about my abilities. I am essentially learning by doing, and my students suffer for this. I have two or three teachers from the school in each period of each class and I am grateful for them. It was either Swallow or Fisher who suggested the game that was such a success yesterday. The first student picks a word, and the following student picks a word beginning with the last letter of the first word within a certain time, or must perform in some way. Those who failed mostly sang songs. The students delighted on this game both in thinking of words and thinking of songs. Singing songs as a group was also a favorite activity. Unfortunately my voice tends to crack, which it never has done before. We sang Frere Jacques in French, English and Chinese.

Today when the students introduced themselves, I took notes, the better to remember them. I was glad I started this.

In my first class I had several young mamas’ students I had trouble keeping their attention and eventually some did not come back after the second break. The teachers told me their English skills tended to be low, and they also would leave regular classes. None the less I feel I should be able to teach them.

Today I tried to use a book about Obama’s life designed for level three readers. I had hoped for spontaneous comments about the pictures, but most students chose to read the pages. It was hard to correct their mistakes unless I followed the book to each student. However, their reading was pretty good. It broken, we did not finish the book, but will save it for class next week with them.

So tomorrow is another day, and I will try and try again to find ways through Karen and Bob and Yibo and my life to teach English skills to my students.

Respectfully submitted,

Allison

Monday, May 10, 2010

Thought of the day: We were all young students once, and if we are lucky we will be students for the rest of our lives.

Monday seemed to come quickly, but fortunately I felt rested and ready to meet the students, and the English teachers whom I remember fondly from last year.
Julia met us with the small van that took us to the Xi’an Biomedical College. That ride was much as I remembered…a fascinating trip through the Inner City where we saw the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, followed by the ride through the highly industrial Western part of the city to the college.

We were greeted by the English Club students and the English teachers whom we had seen last year, with one exception. CiCi is a new teacher, having been here ONLY one month. We walked up the three flights of stairs to the office for the foreign English teachers, and then over to our classes in the library. This is a new location for us, but they had set things up nicely with each of the three classes set far enough apart so we weren’t too distracted by each other.

My first period was spent introducing each other…I had the students mimic my words, introducing each other, giving names, age, family size, and of them took the initiative, following my example by telling what they liked to do. I was pleased with their intiative.

During the second and third periods Bob and I brought our students together and shared stories about our background, visiting San Francisco, and talking about our families. Then we sang songs…”My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and the Hawaiian hula song, “Hukilau”. The students seemed to have fun learning both. Finally we asked them if they had questions of us, and they asked what kinds of foods the Hawaiians had, and also about Hawaiian history. They learned about fish, pork, poi, and fish and also about the Hawaiian monarchy and about World War II, and we talked a bit about war and people’s desire for peace.

Then it was time to go back to the hotel, to another delicious meal. Baoli helped me reach Rui, who will phone with suggestions about a good time to visit. Then I checked email and wrote to friends before going upstairs to rest. Sadly, jet-lag is still somewhat with us. Just before dinner (more food!) Bob and I had a very good Mandarin lesson with Baoli, who is so patient with us! Allison was tired, and YiBo obviously didn’t need a lesson, so it was just the two of us!

YiBo worked with autistic children all day, and came home with a ringing ear. We’ll hope that a good sleep will help him.

A very satisfying first day came to a close!

-Karen

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Thought of the Day: Bring Joy and Understanding to Learning!

After our late arrival Saturday night it was a tired group of three who joined BaoLi and YiBo in the dining room. But the delicious array of breakfast good and several cups of coffee helped some of us begin to recover from our arduous trip.

At 8:00 am we met in Room 302 for our first meeting. Bao Li gave an introduction to the city and some of its sectors. She said that Xi’an is called the Education City because of its numerous colleges and universities.

After we introduced ourselves, Bao Li gave a history of the Global Volunteers program and a list of principles that have helped Global Volunteers be effective in 19 countries.
We did a team building activity to Form goals for our group. Perhaps because there were only four of us, we reached consensus quickly.

Next four managers were picked:
Bob- Journal Manager
Yi-Bo- Health and Safety,
Karen & Allison agreed to share Recreation and Final Evening Celebration

After a seven dish lunch we rested for a while and looked forward our meeting with some of the teachers and students of the college and one teacher from the school for autistic children where YiBo will be working.

Reviewing the schedule and learning more about our assignments was very useful but the greatest pleasure was seeing the three teachers who came- Della, Sunshine and Lisa, and meeting two very nice students who came – Rainbow and Mike, who seemed genuinely pleased to meet us and who each sang a song in English for us. We chatted for a while giving the students an opportunity to speak. Mike said that he liked English very much d. but he apologized for his pronunciation. I told him that I could understand him and I looked forward to helping him. Rainbow, whose English is good, helped Mike understand my questions. Around five o’clock we ended our meeting and all said we were looking forward to our first day at the college.

After dinner BaoLi reviewed some best teaching practices for working with Chinese students. An other-wise pleasant dinner was marred only by the “Mysterious Chopstick Caper” that, to this day, remains unsolved.

-Bob

Xi’An Program Journal April 10 – May 1, 2010

This program was unique from the standpoint of I was a group of one for this outstanding 3 week program. The following is a summary of my working at the Xi’an College of Career and Technology augmenting the English speaking program.

When I arrived in Xi’An, Baoli was temporarily ill, but she had chosen an assistant Susan Shang, a student at the career college, who did an excellent job meeting all the scheduled commitments.

The first week I met with students studying hotel management. There were about 30 shy students who were for the most part beginning level English speaking although their reading and writing skills were much higher. For the week we practiced making room reservations, conference room reservations, dialogue for questions about a hotel health club, and various other hotel situations. I wrote the basic script on the board for the students to follow with encouragement to create or add to it as they felt appropriate. One day we practiced and discussed international differences in using hand and body gestures used in everyday communications. China and the USA seemed to have no conflicts although students were cautioned to be mindful of possible problems. Near the end of the week we discussed differences in school systems, postal systems, and possible jobs available to students after they graduate.

On the weekend of the first week I went to dinner with the family of a student I met while on a GV program in 2001. Janet is now an English professor at Xi’An International University.

During the second week I worked with a group of students studying international business. They seemed to somewhat better speaking skill than last week’s students, but still mostly beginning level. During the week we worked on creating business letters and negotiating contracts and developing dialogue for buying merchandise for an international business. Tuesday I was invited to a dumpling lunch at one of the teacher’s apartments on campus. As I am a hobby cook I was able to get a lesson on how to make Chinese dumplings. Wednesday and Thursday the international business students described the various job opportunities were available after graduation followed by each student describing their family members and what kind of work they did. A significant number were either farmers, apple orchardists, or small business owners. China produces 30% of the world’s apples. Friday we continued with the family profiles and a comparison of Chinese and American holidays. Saturday I visited a Confucius museum an art street with many stalls selling all kinds of souvenirs. While at the museum one of the guides asked me if I could visit with him so he might improve his spoken English. So for the next 45 minutes we had an interesting conversation that has now become email visits.

The last week was a return of the hotel management students of the first week. We compared American and Chinese holiday celebrations, how to write a business letter and returned to having the students create various hotel situations such as ordering food at a restaurant, answering hotel guest’s questions about exchanging money, finding the laundry facility, and giving directions to hotel guests. I wrote a basic dialogue on the board and encouraged students to add to it and develop their own two-way conversations. Wednesday I was invited to lunch by the school director at one of the restaurants that is uses the hotel management students as interns for part of their training. This is probably the largest restaurant facility I have ever seen as it has the ability to serve over 1500 guests at one event plus individual banquet rooms for smaller groups. The staff that attended our lunch was made up of hotel management students. In China lunch is kind of a misnomer as all my lunch experiences were more on the order of a banquet. After the “lunch” students spoke on what part of China they are from and details about their immediate family. Students at this point began to show their English speaking ability skills, which were improved from the first week. Much of their improvement was from a loss of shyness and being more comfortably with the class the second week. Thursday the students explained how and what their cell phones answering various questions from me about the individual features of unit. After lunch the students and faculty held a farewell party for me at which students sang, read poetry, and gave many speeches that seems to be a cultural phenomenon in China. On the last day I attempted to present some English idioms. To my surprise some students already knew some and had Chinese idioms that had similar meaning as ours.

I found the 3-week program as a group of one a very enjoyable event and am looking forward to participating in another GV program.

Donald