Week 7  Visit to the Xi'an International School

 

This week has been busy with school work but I did have an opportunity to volunteer with culture projects at the Xi'an International School.  It's a K-12 school with many American students  but also students from many European and Asian countries.  The classroom language is English but students have Chinese class every day.  It was very interesting and class sizes were wonderfully small.  The largest class was 3rd grade with 15 students and the Kindergarten had only 3 students.  Teachers were also from many different places.  Some have been in China for many years, others have come on a 1 year sabbatical.  The PE teacher was from my home state of North Dakota so we had fun visiting and the kindergarten teacher was from Montana and also a delight.  The principal is from Florida and has been in China for only 3 years but previously taught and was a principal in South America for 18 years.  His wife was the media specialist and they have both loved working internationally.  However, their daughter is going to be having their first grandchild and she lives in the US so they may be heading "home."

Next week I am going to a Chinese elementary with another XJTU student who is doing a graduate study on language acquisition so we will be observing Chinese and English classes and how they are taught and how students respond etc.  I'm looking forward to that.

Here are a couple of the new foods I tried this week and both were delicious.  I also discovered a "Costco" type of store that carries more American / European foods so I was able to buy cheese, salsa, and popcorn for the first time.  Small pleasures. :-)  Tonight I am getting together with other BYU teachers to watch a conference from the US together and we will be having pizza and salad ... that is also a treat because it's rather expensive.  Hope you have a great week.  I'm guessing the leaves are beautiful at home.  Leaves haven't started turning color here but it does now get cool in the evenings.  Thanks to those who have sent messages and especially the post cards have been fun.  Thanks.

Stir fried noodles

Rou Jia Mo (Chinese Hamburger)