Let's start with the mainland China trip.
On campus.
All 16 ETAs and Manie, our chaperone/program assistant, went to Sun Yat-Sen Univ & the attached Secondary & Primary schools in Guangzhou, to teach and observe some of the classes. I taught an English lesson with 3 other ETAs in a Junior 2 class [their 8th grade].
We also gave a talk to the whole Junior 2 class about life in the United States. They had the most hysterical reactions to our slides of a school bus and a typical school lunch (corn dog & fries) -- first surprise, then hysteria.
The students also put on a talent show for us, which we then had to participate in. 0_o Perhaps the banner should have given us some clue; it said "Foreign Talent Performance"...
Luckily Laura, Shanita, Meghan, and Meaghan pulled it together and got up on stage for the rest of us. My excuse: they didn't have a piano set up. ;)
I just figured out how to upload video from my camera. ENJOY!
Jingle Bells, from the fabulous Meghan and Meaghan:
Shanita and Laura, our "sexy teachers"... turn it up!
After we got back, I felt a little sick. Apparently everyone else did, too. I guess eating Chinese food 3 meals a day, for 6 days straight, doesn't really sit well with Western constitutions.
Then, those of us who were still in HK went on a swanky boat cruise to Lamma Island. We had a 9-course seafood dinner. Glenn (the guy who took us to Sai Kung) arranged it all for us. I *love* being a Fulbrighter. ^^
I've been on vacation since then, and I've been reading a lot. I've been inducted in to the "50 books in 11 months" bookclub, headed up by Meg & Meaghan. I finished What is the What (Eggers), Siddartha (Hesse), re-read The Alchemist (Coelho), and just got done with The Island of the Colour-blind and Cycad Island by Oliver Sacks. For Christmas, Matt got me Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Hofstadter, so I'm going to start on that one soon. It's a brick, so we'll see how far I get!
Matt and I have also been exploring HK while we have time off, so we went to the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery in Shatin (I didn't bring my camera though, sorry!), the Peak, and Victoria Park/Causeway Bay. We're going to Macau, Ocean Park, and Lantau at some point in the near future, as well.
New Year's should be fun, I think a lot of the ETAs will be back in town, so we'll all go out to Central or something to celebrate. Then, we'll have another (Chinese) New Year celebration in February. Not bad!
