After our Chinese/teaching classes in the morning, our group headed off to what the orientation schedule called "Chinese Cooking Class," which didn't really teach us how to cook. We arrived at a community center to make dumplings, but all the filling and the dough was already made and it was our job to wrap up the dumplings. This is much harder than it sounds. The women who were teaching us must have been doing this for years because their dumplings were not only aesthetically pleasing but functional. Mine were neither. Nevertheless, it was fun to mess around a bit with the whole group. Also, they cooked the dumplings and we got to eat our handiwork. They were still delicious despite being ugly.
Hard at work making dumplings.
Following the class we headed to Xin Tian Di, which literally means "New Heavenly Place," and is basically a really cool shopping/dining pedestrian area. All of the shops and restaurants are made of old Shanghai homes that were converted and refurbished. The buildings were a cool mix of European and Chinese architecture. Our guide said that to Westerners it seems very Chinese, but to Chinese it seems very Western.
Most of our group in Xin Tian Di.
Our dinner this night was at a Uighur restaurant. Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority in China who come from the far western province of Xinjiang. Their native language is similar to Turkic and they look more Middle Eastern or eastern European than Chinese. The food here was decent, but I think I prefer traditional Chinese food to Uighur food. They did do a song and dance for us, and even pulled a few of our group on stage to dance. While they were dancing the men made no expression and all I could think of is Borat. They looked very Kazakhstani.
Two of our fellow teachers, Liz and Paige, dancing with the Uighurs.
Thursday, February 5
On Thursday a bit more than half the group gave practice 20 minute teaching lessons. Megan and I did not do our lesson on the first day, but we played the part of students in the class who didn't know much English. This was particularly difficult for the teachers who would be teaching kindergarten, as we had to act both ESL and 5. I'm not sure how convincing we were as students, but it was very helpful to watch different teachers and their styles and ideas.
Following the teaching practice we took an excursion to the Shanghai World Financial Center which is the second tallest building in the world. Upon arrival, Megan looked up to the top of the building from the base and immediately became quite nervous about the prospect of going to the top. She grit her teeth and did it though, although it was pretty funny to watch her jog from one end of the observation deck to the other so she could wait for the next elevator down.
The World Financial Center from the base.
Megan not very pleased while waiting in line to get down from the observation deck.
For those of us who did take some time to look out the windows the view was impressive, but it was hurt by the haze of pollution over the city. On a clear day (if there are any), I'm sure the view is much better. I saw a sign that said that we were in the highest observation deck in the world, so even though Taipei 101 is taller, people can't get as high as we were in this building. Right now a building is being built right next to the World Financial Center which will be significantly taller. The arms race continues.
The view from the top.
We had dinner free this night so Megan and I had planned to meet with her friend from high school, Heather, who is currently living in Shanghai. Although Megan and I waited at the wrong subway station for 45 minutes angrily waiting for Heather to arrive, we eventually realized our error and took to the subway one stop down where fortunately Heather was still waiting for us.
We stopped by Heather's apartment which she shares with two other people, a Spanish guy and a Chinese girl. They weren't home but we saw the whole place which seemed pretty comfortable and in a good location. We then went out to dinner at a local restaurant and had my favorite meal of the trip so far. I kept eating even after I was full because the food was so good and Heather asked, "Have you had enough?" I had, I just couldn't stop eating. It was good to catch up and talk Singapore.
Heather by the door of her apartment.
Megan and Heather in front of Heather's pink building.
Friday, February 6
The last day of orientation started with us giving our practice lessons. I gave my lesson on transitional words and phrases (However, Additionally, On the other hand, etc). I had the students to an exercise where they had to fill in the appropriate transitional word or phrase at the start of a sentence based on the context. The lesson went pretty smoothly, but at times I became flustered by certain questions that were asked. I'll need to learn to think on my feet.
Megan gave an example of the first day of class for her lesson. She gave a brief introduction of herself and then set up an activity where the students interviewed one another and then reported back to the class about what they learned. The purpose of the lesson was to get a feel for the students' overall English ability and to get introduced to the student. We both felt that the practice lessons were valuable practice for what we'll be faced with soon. However (<-- transitional word or phrase!), I don't think we can know exactly what to expect from a class until we start.
We had the afternoon free and after a nap we went to a cool little shopping/eating area near a road called Taikang Road. We ducked back into a back alley and were immediately in a different world. There were lots of art and photography galleries, mixed in with cafes and bars. Meanwhile, there were families who lived above the shops and galleries just wandering around. We were immediately disoriented because the area was just a bunch of alleyways and nooks with cool stuff around each corner.
Part of the Taikang Rd area.
That night we met up with Heather again at a bar but called it an early evening as we had to depart our hotel at 8 am the next day to get to the airport for our flight to Qingdao! All in all it was a very useful orientation, and I feel much more prepared to teach than I did before the week. All the other new teachers were easy to get along with and we had a great group. Too bad we're all heading to different places around China.
Us with Jerry, our Chinese teacher.
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