It’s so confusing that I can’t find myself really shopping there unless I know exactly what I’m looking for. I’ve been twice in the last couple of weeks and left with nothing but confusion and a free Buddha figurine. I did find a place where I can get some lights to decorate for Christmas and a couple of folk art shops. Too bad almost all of the clothes and shoes wouldn’t fit me in a million years.
On another note Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve also met the deputy director of foreign affairs for Anhui Province. He asked our foreign affairs liaison if we could help him by providing a teacher to a middle school every couple of weeks. Well, that teacher is me, and I met him and the teacher and her students, all 70 of them, a couple of weeks ago. I will be visiting them every couple of weeks with special lessons on American culture and giving them a chance to speak with a native English speaker. My first lesson is next week with the topic of Thanksgiving. If you have any great ideas for teaching and keeping engaged middle school students on the topic of Thanksgiving, please let me know.
Halloween in China | 12 November 2011
Last week, after the wonders lesson, I taught a lesson on Halloween. They don’t celebrate Halloween or any of the traditional holidays like All Soul’s Day since they have never been a Christian culture. However, some of the bigger cities are starting to celebrate it with costumes and parties. The kids here do love learning about it and how Americans celebrate. So, that’s what we talked about. I shared a small bit of its origin and how it morphed into what we celebrate today. They made Halloween name tags with adjectives of the season. The best were Grave Silence, Zombified Dawn, Batty Sky, Ghostly Mirror and Eerie Echo (the second word of each of those is their English name). I also took the opportunity to give them a little scare. I tell them how people like to watch scary movies on Halloween and that I don’t like them. I start describing watching a scary movie and how you know something is going to happen or jump out and how intense it is, how you hold on tight to your seat or to your friend or cover your eyes, then when they least expect it or when they are completely expecting it I jump towards them and yell giving them all a good fright. I did this a couple more times throughout the lesson. During the break, I shared with them some videos including “This is Halloween” from Nightmare Before Christmas and the classic “Monster Mash.” I couldn’t find a good video of the Purple People Eater so instead I show them the “scary car commercial” with the car driving with soft music down a winding country road then a zombie pops onto the screen screaming. They jump at it every time. After the break, we played a version of Mafia. Instead of mafia members that need to be found there were witches attacking and turning people into stone and frogs. It’s a fun game that eventually they got into and started defending themselves and making accusations. It gets them to speak and think on the fly. Then I gave them candy and some of them gave me candy. It was all good fun with a bit of American culture, which they love, and some good opportunities for them to speak.