Day Five: A visit to a middle school

This morning Andrew had a test to determine which Chinese language class he was to be placed in. While he was taking that, Ashley, Dale, Karombe and myself were shown the way to an excellent beef noodle (niú ròu miàn) house. This bowl of soup consists of a clear beef broth, white radish, chilli oil, coriander and yellow or white noodles. It was delicious! And only 3 Yuan.

Next, we were shown the way to the Medical School Campus. This is just behind the campus on which the Guest House is located, but there are few gates in. We strolled around for a while before being taken to our next destination. We did not know beforehand, but we were being taken into the classrooms of some intermediate school students to help them practice their English! We arrived and were told, "Today's topic is: Make A Difference Day", and had but a glance at a related newspaper article before being ushered in. We each introduced ourselves and then the class was divided into a group of students for each of us. Most of the students were quite shy initially, so it came down to going around the group and having each student introduce themself and what they would do for "Make A Difference Day". Once they began speaking, they all had quite good conversational English -- even the shy children -- but more of a challenge was conveying the idea of "Making A Difference"! Initially students would talk about what they would do for themselves -- that they would get up, eat breakfast, play some games, etc. It took some prompting with the suggestion that perhaps they could help their family or other people in some way, but then some more selfless suggestions came through. That they could do some of the cleaning duties for their mother since she was always so busy, that they could play a sport with their father (even though they didn't really enjoy it!) so they could spend some time with him, or preparing a meal and inviting their friends and family around to enjoy it. And then, finally, their suggestions broadened into the wider community -- helping someone old or disabled, picking up litter/rubbish, etc. Hopefully these children will be prepared to make a difference -- each one is truly capable.

We then separated into groups of two and went into another classroom for the next period and had "free talk" discussions. I went with Karombe into a classroom and we were asked many questions about our home countries, what we thought of Lanzhou, and the students offered helpful advice. This class was absolutely delightful, and while there were some minor errors in their speaking (and plenty of jibes for it), they were an open, interesting and wonderful class. Andrew and I spoke afterwards and agreed that where possible we would dedicate some time to helping with English teaching at the schools.