Day 6: Volunteering in China

Today was our second day working at No. 1 Middle/High school in Luxi. It was another busy day working with the children and LAC. When all the guys were up, we went to the cafeteria to have breakfast as usual. For two days I saw Eric running to the supermarket to buy something, which just triggered my curiosity. Eric went to buy milk tea every day, which he loved when he lived back in Asia before he went to UMich, and now he could enjoy this Asian heritage. Breakfast was the same as usual, so we have different kinds of buns (meat, sugar, pickeledvegetables, and red beans) to choose from. However, today the soy machine at the breakfast place went down, so we ate/drank some porridge with the buns. After breakfast, we took a picture with an M-flag as we all work Michigan t-shirts.

 

We started our English lessons at 8:30 AM. Today’s topics were Occupations and Education. As I was coordinating all of the courses before the trip, I felt that this section was the most unprepared of all the sections. However, after yesterday night’s discussion and everyone’s hard work, it turned out to be a great class. We introduced different occupations by describing what each one does, and the students proved their intelligence – they understood most everything. Then we asked them to describe each occupation in their own words so they could practice speaking. Next, we played charades – we had 5 groups of students and we asked one student from the class to act out an occupation and one person from each group to guess what occupation what the occupation was. The kids loved this fame and it became really competitive.

 

After a short break, we started to talk about education. After teaching them necessary vocabulary, we started to tell them about the differences between the education systems in the United States and in China. Students were very active in this part and to my surprise, they knew a lot about the education system. We specifically talked about the college application process in the US and some of the students were even going to apply to US schools, which really impressed us. So we decided to give them a brief intro to UMich. We showed them many pictures of our beautiful UMich including the Law Library, Law Quad, Ross, the Diag, Fletcher Library, Angell Hall and our excellent School of Engineering. Students were amazed byUMich and hopefully some of them could become future wolverines!

 

Lunch was the same as usual. After lunch we all went to our different mini project teams. Today I took a leave from my drama team and went with Nikki’s sociology survey group to see how things were going. I was really glad to see Nikki played a great leadership role in the group and successfully broke the cultural/language gap with the students. We went to all five different bookstores in the town. Before every time a students started to ask a question, they would show the question to Nikki to make sure the questions were OK and Nikki gave them good advice on how to make a good survey and interviews. On the way they chatted about different topics including “Gossip Girls” and other general stuff. I was glad to see Nikki really became part of the group and experienced a lot about locals in China. Also, she used her talent to help the students.

 

This was pretty much the fifth day for the VA China team, we worked hard again in the evening on our next day’s lesson plan and we look forward to working with the children again tomorrow.

 

Go EGL and go blue!

 

-Chen

Day 5: Volunteering in China

6:30 AM: Joe’s cell phone alarm startles all of the guys awake. Today was our first day teaching and we had to report for breakfast at 8 AM. LuXi has proved to be as hot as ever so a cold shower was a welcome relief. We were warned about the mosquitoes before arrival, but so far a closed window and an anti-mosquito candle have proved to be more than enough to keep them away.

Our breakfast consisted of the same pork/vegetable buns as yesterday however today they were brought to the cafeteria for us. After a quick meal, we headed over into the middle school to meet up with our students to begin the food lesson. Jenette and I were partnered together as instructors and it was really interesting to learn how much English our students already knew. We also found that almost all of the students take class seriously, and wanted to learn more. They were very excited about the opportunity to work with native speakers. We followed the lesson plan for the day which included a lot of vocabulary, a crossword puzzle, and “Scattergories.” The students did well, and it was great to get to know their personalities; they’re all great kids.

After class was lunch, where the food was good, per usual. The lunch ladies were reluctant to give us any spicy food and laughed at us when we asked for it. The always serve it anyway and it usually proves to be delicious.

After lunch, the group headed back to the school to work on our “mini-projects,” our afternoon classes that the students get to choose, sort of like an elective. These are taught in Chinese, and we are assisstants. Jenette and I were assigned to the industrial Packing class, since we are both IOE students. The language barrier was really difficult, but they really appreciated our insights. The instructor (one of the Chinese LAC volunteers) even asked us to help design the class! It felt nice to be able to help. We were both afraid we wouldn’t be much use due to the Chinese instruction. The kids put forth a lot of interesting ideas on how to improve packaging for things like toothpaste, shampoo, and baby formula.

After the mini-projects came dinner, followed by a meeting regarding tomorrow’s lesson. We discussed some of the good things that occurred today, and reflected on some possible improvements. This meeting ran until about 9:30, after which everyone dispersed back to their rooms and relaxed until bed. Another great day in LuXi.

-Luke

Day 4: Welcome to Jishou (China)

The girls and I woke up around 7 AM on Sunday morning. It was the best night sleep I’ve had in a long time. We got ready and walked to the boys’ dorm. However, they were quite lazy and got off to a late start. While waiting for them, we toured the school campus. There were some ladies sweeping the grounds. There is a basketball court very close by. Red lanterns are definitely symbolic here. I was feeling a bit dizzy and light-headed (probably from the time change). Already so early it was very humid outside, which probably added to my dizziness. We finally met up with the boys and the Chinese LAC teachers. Since breakfast isn’t served at the school cafeteria, we decided to walk into town. We stopped at a breakfast place to get Chinese buns. They were bread filled with either pork or red bean paste. I told myself that I needed to have an open mind about the food here and try everything that I can. One of my biggest fears about coming here was the food. The bun actually turned out to taste really good!

We then walked back to school and went to an empty classroom to get to know each other. We played an icebreaker game and then talked about the projects the students were doing. I was put on the sociology survey project team with Nikki, Jesse, and two Chinese volunteers. It sounded exciting, like it might be a good opportunity to learn about Chinese customs and culture. Joe and Keith are on the photography project which also sounds awesome to me. Jenette and Luke are working on a production class, similar to IOE. Yijia and Eric are working in the Debate group and Chen is in the Drama group.

We moved to the library to talk about our first lesson for tomorrow: food. We decided to add pictures to the lesson plan and we brainstormed ice-breaker games to play with the students in the afternoon.

Lunch was almost like stir fry. It started with rice, then cooked squash, mushrooms, tofu, chicken, and a spicy mixture of peppers and beans. I can see why Chinese people are so healthy. The chopsticks were a challenge at first but we caught on quickly. However, we eat much slower than the LAC volunteers. I actually love the spicyness of the food – which surprises a lot of Chinese people.

After lunch we headed over to meet our students for the first time. They were overexcited to see Americans and took lots of pictures of us. We gave our students English names and I memorized quite a few of them today. I teach class with Yijia and Tony (an LAC volunteer). Our class is the most energetic, which I love. The students loved to hear me speak Chinese and helped me write characters on the board. Some Chinese boys from another classroom spontaneously came into my room and gave me a hug. They came up to me and said “Um, I’m sorry” then smiled and gave me a hug. I thought that was really cute.

We ate dinner and then started an intense basketball game. It was so much fun. By the end I felt like it wasn’t physically possible for me to sweat any more. Jesse threw me to the ground when attempting a layup. It was unintentional of course J. After that we all gathered in the boys’ room and played four games of mafia. By the end of the day a cold shower was absolutely glorious. We fell fast asleep.

-Christine

Day 2 & 3: Travel to China

Christine and I were the first to arrive in Beijing at about 3 PM local time. Conveniently we happened to be on the same flight. After getting strange looks for sleeping on the floor for four hours and finding out that Jesse would arrive an hour later than expected, Christine and I decided to find dinner. After grabbing some “Chinese fast food” we went back to our meeting spot and Yijia and Jesse showed up within ten minutes.

By midnight everyone except Eric had landed. After waiting in a very long taxi line we discovered that they would not take us to our hotel. Although they claimed that they did not know the hotel, the real reason for our rejection was that our hotel was too close for them to make good money off of us. Nonetheless, we figured out that we could take a hotel shuttle from the airport, so the girls got to the hotel around 2 AM. The boys waited a bit longer for Eric. Since Eric and Yijia both speak Mandarin fluently, it worked out perfectly. While we only got one hour of sleep, we all got to shower which made going back to the hotel worthwhile.

We made it back to the airport without a problem. After an uneventful flight to Changsha, we met up with Chen whose luggage magically appeared on the same carousel as ours! We then took an hour bus ride to the town’s bus station where we killed time by playing cards at McDonald’s. I guess we weren’t ready for the Chinese experience yet – that was really the only restaurant near the station, so we sadly ate there.

Our next bus ride didn’t have assigned seats so Nikki and I grabbed the two in the very front row. The Hunan province is beautiful. About halfway into our ride, we entered the mountains. The country side was very lush. Everything was green and there was even occasionally some flowers along the side of the road.

Interestingly, a lot of the road signs were in Chinese and English. I noticed a few other interesting things about driving in China. Our bus driver honked almost any time he passed anybody. I’m guessing he didn’t trust anyone not to change lanes suddenly. Or no one uses their mirrors to check behind them. I think that all drivers in china have very good awareness of how large their car is. People tend to pass each other in very tight spaces, like a small two lane road on the side of a cliff that also happens to be under construction.

We arrived in Jishou and met the LAC volunteers easily. Jesse handed his suitcase to some older woman to roll for him… Guys and girls dorms are on opposite sides of the complex. We dropped off our stuff and had a chance to change our clothes before heading off to dinner. The shuttled us in cars to a local hotel that had a very nice dining room.

We sat at a huge circular table with the largest lazy Susan that I’ve ever seen. There were some brief welcoming speeches in Chinese and Keith spoke on our behalf. Then we ate some fantastic Chinese food. I did not take up the offer for a fork and successfully used chopsticks for the entire meal.

Then we returned to the dorms where I managed to fall asleep before 9 PM. I woke up at 2 AM and was very confused for a second about why I had perfect vision – my contacts were still in. Needless to say I and everyone else were quite tired after two days of traveling (three days if you count the fact that we lost a day flying to China. I am very excited to start volunteering!

-Gina

EGL VA China

*NOTE: this blog is written on a two week delay – we weren’t sure we would have internet access throughout the two weeks, so we kept a journal throughout the two weeks and are now blogging from the great University of Michigan.

Day 1: Day Prior to Leaving for China

I am very excited to go to China! I have been looking forward to this all summer. I was lucky enough to study abroad in Spain earlier this summer, and I found out that Europe is very similar to the United States. I have a feeling, however, that China is going to be very different. I am looking forward to learning about Chinese culture and to teach English to Chinese students. I don’t know how well the teaching will go, because I don’t know any Chinese. I wonder how much experience the Chinese students have with English. I’m curious about the food that we will eat, and nervous about the bathrooms (I was told that they just have holes in the floor – no toilet bowls!). I am all packed and ready to head to the airport. Luke, Jenette, Joe and I will meet in Detroit, and Keith will join us in Seattle on our second flight. We will meet everyone else in China.

-Nikki