The early part of this week has been somewhat low key for us. We have stayed close to campus deciding to invest serious time on our coursework by completing syllabi and Powerpoint presentations for upcoming classes. Some of the rooms we teach in have access to computers and projectors while others leave more to be desired. For this reason we must plan a variety of activities that incorporate both technology and traditional teaching methods.The weather here has been interesting to say the least. At the end of last week it was pretty cold. Temperatures dipped to -7C(about 19F) and barely reached 0C(32F). Then out of nowhere the next few days that followed were fabulous. We're talking highs near 16C(roughly 61F). On top of this the warm weather came with clear blue skies. We asked our students if it was common to see such beautiful days and they told us no. Due to heavy pollution Beijing is lucky to get a handful of days per month with crisp clean air. We were fortunate enough to get two days of it in a row!
With the change in weather the campus life has begun to transform. Students in China regularly partake in extracurricular activities for leisure. The basketball, vollyeball, badminton, and tennis courts are beginning to see tons of action until dusk. The soccer fields and track are also getting lots of attention. The funny thing is that these areas (referred to as the "playground") are only open from around 3pm until 9pm. The rest of the time they are kept locked. We plan on buying tennis racquets and a basketball this upcoming weekend so that we can join in the fun. Interesting note, even though students pay tution they do not get free access to the tennis courts. Due to upkeep and demand, the university charges 10 yuan (about $1.50) to rent a court for one hour.
Also, we are regularly going to our local street market. They have great fresh vegetables and fruit at a fraction of the cost compared to the supermarkets. We often buy the staples like potatoes, onions, peppers, tomatoes, squash, apples, oranges,pears, and kiwi. But we're also experimenting with local foods like lychees. They are a sweet cherry/strawberry looking fruit. The vendors are extremely friendly and help us with our slow developing Chinese.
Speaking of Chinese, we took our first lesson on Wednesday. Ren Jie, a student in Adán's Newspaper Reading Skills class, offered to tutor us. We met for about an hour and a half. She is training to become a CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) teacher. Her skills are quite good. She spent the first half hour teaching us the sounds of Chinese initials (beginnings of words) and finals (endings). It took us some time but we slowly began to catch subtle differences in sounds of the letters by having a true native Chinese speaker talk to us slowly.
We spent the rest of the session practicing pronounciations and learning basic greetings and goodbyes. Ren Jie made the learning enjoyable and had us laughing at the close of class when she said, "Now you guys have lots of practicing to do." We found a great website at www.nciku.com that translates English into both Pinyin (romanized form of Chinese) and Chinese characters. Best of all the website has a feature where a native speaker will say the word for you. It's a tremendous help for improving our pronounciation.
We'll make sure that our next post is much more eventful. :)
