COUNTRY: China
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Declan
Hello again everyone, Greetings from the beachfront in Sanya where the weather is 26 degrees – a little warmer than the last time I wrote! How has everyone been over the past week? I hope life is treating you all well. :)
First lesson at Fengyan Primary School and Gongcheng Primary School As part of the program, we teach English for three hours a day at local primary schools. We are responsible for devising our own lesson plans. This week we taught our first lessons at Fengyan Primary School and at Gongcheng Primary School. The students were all extremely polite and we were all very impressed with how much English they actually knew! As part of our lesson we planned to teach the kids anagrams. We expected them to have absolutely no idea what anagrams were (let alone be able to solve them) but they solved them as soon as we wrote them on the whiteboard. The kids were so excited to have a teacher from a foreign country. After class they swarmed our desk asking us to sign our name on their books and take pictures with them. Even on the way out of the school all the kids stopped to wave at us and say hello. We felt like celebrities!
Bamboo rafting This week Golden took us to a place called the ‘Model Village’ - named because all of the houses in the village are built identically. The model village is separated by a river, which we went bamboo rafting on. It was very relaxing drifting slowly down the river on the bamboo raft and soaking up the breathtaking scenery of the mountains and countryside.
Learning the art of Chinese calligraphy at the Wen Temple The Wen Temple (also named the Confucius Temple) is an ancient temple located in Gongcheng County. It was constructed in AD1410 for people to pay homage to Confucius. Renee and Golden gave us a tour of the Wen Temple and then taught us the art of Chinese calligraphy. What I didn't realise about Chinese characters is that they are all drawn using a combination of only five strokes. We were also given our Chinese names on that day. My Chinese name is Shangzhi, which translates directly to appreciate (Shang) wisdom (zhi).
Visiting Yangshuo for Merren's birthday On Friday, we all went to Yangshuo County to celebrate Merren's 19th birthday. Yangshuo is a very popular destination with tourists in China mainly because of "West Street". West Street (as the name implies) is an entire street devoted to western culture – restaurants and markets and such. It was like a little slice of home! As Merren is from Germany, we took her out to a German restaurant for dinner and drinks. Afterwards we went to a rooftop bar and played beer pong all night (surprisingly, Chinese people love beer pong!), which resulted in a slight headache the next morning. The next morning we all went out for a traditional English breakfast which tasted like heaven after two weeks of eating nothing but rice and dumplings for breakfast.
Bartering in Chinese One of our lessons this week with Golden was Chinese numbers and bartering techniques. Whilst in Yangshuo I had the chance to put these techniques to good use. Golden explained that shopkeepers usually triple the price for westerners. So, after our lesson I went in search of a new backpack at the market. The shopkeeper assured me that the backpack I had chosen was the best that money could buy and that she would give me a "special tourist discount". Her starting price was 300 yuan (approximately $45) but thanks to Golden’s advice, I eventually got the price down to 100 yuan (approximately $15) which isn't a bad price for the "best backpack money can buy", right?
Road trip to Sanya We travelled over 24 hours by bus from Fengyan village to Sanya but it was well worth the journey. Sanya is located in the Hainan province in the south of China – which means warm weather! When I left Fengyan village I was wearing seven layers of clothing but by the time we arrived in Sanya I was down to one. This trip was an opportunity to have a holiday away from our holiday and to participate in a new volunteer project that our project manager’s company has started in Sanya. The program aims to assist children living with mental disabilities in this area. Today will actually be our first day of the program, so I shall keep you posted. Apart from that we've spent most of our time on the beach soaking up the sun, meeting other travellers from across the world and going to the markets on the promenade.
And that's been my week so far!
Keep in touch guys,
- Declan
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