你好 Ni Hao!
China-3 days. In Shanghai most of those days, but I was able to do one day trip to Zhou Zhang (“China’s Venice”). Shanghai was a very big city and the architecture of the city was very interesting because it was an utter mish-mash of different styles. Yes, as a city there was dirt (inevitable) but I thought it was a rather beautiful city.
Ate a lot of delicious food. Chinese dumplings were awesome!! (Sorry Korea, you lost hands down). And they should not be compared to the pathetic fare I’ve eaten in the U.S. My favorite was a type of dumpling called, Xiao Long Bao, which has soup inserted into the dumpling along with the meat (or vegetables). First,m you should carefully bite a hole in the dumpling, letting the liquid drain into your spoon. Second, drink the soup. Then eat the dumpling. If you just put the dumpling in your mouth without following these three steps – you will scald your mouth with the hot liquid (I read about this beforehand and avoided the situation^.^v). My other favorite Chinese treat was CoCo – a store known for their coffees/teas – that had jelly like things in them (i think the black jelly circles were made of tapioca). In the U.S. this is known as Bubble tea. I found it to be a surprising amount of fun chewing and drinking. My favorite drink was the coffee milk mixed with pudding, pieces of coconut, and jellies. Yum! If I were braver I would have tried the lemonade and prunes drink….scary. Anyway, enough about food…. (I could go on and on because often my trips become eating trips..but this enough for now).
Winter Camp 2010-11
This year, as many of you know I have had to do another English camp over Winter Break. I am never terribly excited about these “camps.” But I do believe this camp may have been my best yet, because the work/the outcome was totally dependant on the students. This is different from my regular classes, where I am usually up on my soap box. In this camp, students were working together to make their own website (in English). I gave them some suggestions on content (like doing a news section, music, etc) but it was up to them what they wrote & what the filmed. I merely double-checked them and encouraged them to work harder. I believe they liked the camp. I was hoping they would find something rewarding in creating their own website – because in normal classes, I can’t do this kind of activity. It’s just not possible logistically. Either way, camp finishes tmrw & I hope students will get it all finished. I am going to take them out to McDonald’s and treat them to an ice-cream for their hard work. I’m pretty proud of them. If you wanna check out the website, here is the link: http://cafe.daum.net/goenglishloving
Mellow in South Korea 