Fact: Chinese people and food - food is a way to say thank you for your work; food is a way to prompt you to work well; food is a way to lure you into doing work; food connects people.
The staff in charge of organizing the open house and administration for the school invited
the foreign teachers for lunch. The reason for this kind gesture? They want to hear our thoughts on activities and other fun Western culture stuff.
Or at least that’s what the email implied.
After experiencing the delicious food from the cafeteria the
day before yesterday at the training, I was really looking forward to having special cafe food
again. ALSO, I'd get to talk to the other foreign teachers again - unfortunately, I don't see them as much as I'd like too. Friends and
food? How could I say no to that. Well, it turned out the food was actually regular cafeteria
food – disappointing. But at least there were other foreign teachers there.
Anyway, the real reason the staff invited us out for lunch was not to get our opinion, but to encourage us to participate in the open house. They wanted us to give a fake lesson and actually teach prospect students and their parents about
Western culture during the school open houses. The school wanted to show off the foreign teachers who bring culture into the school. After throwing activity ideas back and forth (pumpkin carving, mask
decorating, rapping, painting easter eggs…), Kristie and I decided to pair up
and teach the future students and their parents about....wait for it.......Cinco De Mayo. Kristie likes salsa dancing, I like
saying “cinco de mayo”, and we both like salsa. The school is going to pay me
to salsa dance and make salsa. This is very exciting.
We had our first calligraphy class and first real mandarin
class today.
We were taught how to hold a brush and draw lines in calligraphy today:
 |
| I collected all the sheets to make wallpaper for our room. |
We were taught basic phrases and sounds in Mandarin today.
What I really learned in calligraphy was I still can’t have
a proper posture and in Mandarin I learned my pronunciation sucks. I’m feeling
less Chinese with every lesson, which leads me to
believe I’m actually Korean…
If you believe, then you are! Korean it is. But just keep practicing Angel, do it for your students!
ReplyDeleteYour love for everything Korean has made you Korean now :) I love you adventure!
ReplyDeleteI find it funny that they exploited the fact that you are foreign instead of asking for "opinions" as they made you believe. Cinco de mayo lessons sounds like fun though :D