THE WHEELS ON THE BUS

10:41BST 07/20/08
KUNMING TO MI LE

i noticed that i tend to start all of these posts with 'so yesterday' - i think today ill begin with 'well yesterday'.

well yesterday was interesting. it felt like it wasnt a day at all. we woke up, packed, left wang laoshi's apt, now with nannan (another volunteer) and rob. we picked up michael gilner, a retired foreign service officer, and went to this hotel a km or two from the university. mike and i grabbed some pretty rough lunch (a raw pork fat ball and some funky ass peanuts) and then walked around for a little bit. i got my charicature done in this park in what had to be one of the more embarrassingj moments of my life:

there were three artists and when one got me to sit still to do my visage, the other two sat and drew as well. geeeeat. it gets better though, about twenty or so people crowded arond to watch... and when i say crowded around, i really mean it... like, there were kids in my face saying "ah, hen piao liang" (ohhh, how pretty). of course i couldnt move... it was all a really weird experience (though the kids could have said worse).
when mike and i got back to the hotel we soon all gathered to meet with wang laoshi and the rest of the volunteers. there was me rob nannan and mike, now added to the fold are matt (cornell), ru shen (wheaton), and chealsea and husband sam (kunming), and later came joseph(vanderbilt). its a pretty interestign mix of people. anyways, we went through this orientation that was really kind of silly because they didnt tell us anything we didnt already know and on top of it, they didnt give us any class materials. they pretty much told us tht it was our class and that if we needed to make any copies to let the teachers know. kind of silly huh? im glad that in this case ive come prepared with my own thoughts on how to teach the kids.

after the orientation we all filtered back to the hotel and some of us went out to the city center to grab some grub. again, feeling a little rebelious against chinese food, we got italian but i somehow ended up ordering hot an sour soup and... an enchilada? lol. it was all pretty good, but iven noticed that my stomach is a lot rounder when i dont eat chinese food... perhaps its time to get back to that funky sctufff. after dinner we all went to KTV (aka KARAOKE!). i think rob and matt and i had the most fun. ru shen didnt really get into it, and poor mike, although hes got the spirit of a youngin, his 62 year old self didnt know any of the songs we picked though it was still pretty fun. we came back to the hotel to straighten out our outbound fligths with wang laoshi and then i retreated to my ooom to work on my lesson plans for the kids.

ah the kids. this begins what im guessing is the next chapter in the china story. today we headed to the busses at 8:30 and met a bunch of CRAZY OVERCONCERNED PARENTS and their kids, who are, from what i can tell, about 11 or 12. they seem to be at different levels though. im sitting next to an 11 year old boy who dosnt know much more than his abc's and colors, but the boys to my right are the same age and seem to know a lot more. either way, ive made up my mind that their normal method of memorizing words needs a more oral approach to learning. the kids seem to know a fair amount of words, but cant really tie them together into sentences. i think thats what my class is going to focus on. i just hope they dont get bored.

right now, im pretty satisfied... aside from this hunger that i cant seem to quell (i think i need some soup), i havent been uncomfortable in any way. the people here are still really great and the countryside that we are driving through is absolutely beautiful.

apparently, the school that we are going to is this really rich private school that is funded by tobacco money. i want to understand more how the tobacco industry works in china. from what i understand, china has the largest population of smokers in the world, almost all of the guys smoke here (outside and in), and the tax revenue taken in from tobacco funds a nice chunk of the government. robo told me that bill gates wanted to come to china and make reducing the amount of smokers his new pet project. mike said that that would be a near impossible feat though, who knows.

back to it.