Chinese Thanksgiving

So, I was not expecting to have a Thanksgiving in China.  I expected to get a couple people together and try to scrounge up some semblance of a feast worthy of Thanksgiving.

That isn't what happened.

Teaming up with some American students at the foreign dorm down the street, we managed to get quite a Thanksgiving Day party going on.  We had just about every kind of Thanksgiving food you could want.  Turkey, pork, candied carrots, bread and than some non-traditional Thanksgiving food that people kind of improvised (fajitas, Korean kabob things, vegetable dumplings, sushi).  All the food was great.  The story about getting the turkey is great too.  The Turkey Team (West Point kids, I think) just go to Wal-Mart and find the only turkey.  The butcher asks how much they want (because no one would want a whole turkey) and Turkey Team is just like: "No.  All of it.  We want all of it.  Give it to us."  Conquered that.  But we had a couple dozen people at this little shindig.  At its peak, I think we represented the United States, China, Korea (the good part), Argentina, Spain, Russia, Mongolia, Mexico, Jamaica, Niger, Pakistan and probably a couple others that I can't think of right now.  Everyone brought some food or drink, happiness and all that kind of stuff that makes Thanksgiving awesome. Just across the city, there was another Thanksgiving party too (probably representing the other half of the world).  Don't believe anyone that says that Thanksgiving doesn't exist in China.  

We even got on television for our shenanigans.

So, my Chinese Thanksgiving was super fun.  Probably in my like...top three Thanksgivings ever.  In China.  With my giant multi-national family.

Still missed my family in the States though.  This definitely helped.

I'm totally thankful for Chinese pilgrims,

- Andrew 

This lesson got kind of mixed responses, but it was fun for me and a good handful of them got way into it.  Basically, what I decided was that their English was pretty alright when I was speaking - but I have a pretty general, no-accent, American way of speaking.  I don't speak academically, but when I'm not speaking too fast (probably my biggest problem while teaching), I'm fairly clear in my speech.  So I though, huh, I wonder if I could get them to start developing an ear for various English accents (regional American, British, Irish, Australian etc etc).

This took a few hours of preparation, but it was a fun kind of preparation.  I just hunted the internet (I downloaded a fancy program that lets me download streaming video - Relay Media Catcher 4), and downloaded dozens of clips from movies that utilize various accents.  Some were definitely harder than others.  But I started off by showing them this clip:

21 English Accents.avi (13.20 mb)

(I wish that would show up as a movie). 

Most of them think its pretty funny and kind of cool, and its a great start to this lesson.  I explain to them that while their English is improving, there are many accents and its important to have some kind of ear for them or you might end up in a situation where you can't understand someone even though they're speaking "perfect" English.

I would show a clip (typically 30 seconds to 2 minutes long) once or twice and then ask them what they were saying/what the clip was about.  They had a lot more trouble with some of them than I thought they would - especially with British accents (apparently, without subtitles, they have no idea what Harry Potter is saying), but it kept their attention, and I got to feel like I was showing them some awesome movies.   Each time we did an accent, I would open up a big world map I had put on my hard drive and point to where that accent was found.  After the clip, the person that was able to tell me with the most accuracy what went on the clip got the choose the next accent we watched/listened to.

What my students got: Introductions to the accents of the world, developing ear for accents, developing knowledge on figuring out where each accent was from, English conversation comprehension.

Movies/Accents I used:
- Inglorious Basterds: Aldo Raine
- Invictus: South African
- Harry Potter: British
- Snatch: Dirtier British/Pikey (this one was hilarious)
- Crocodile Hunter: Austrailian
- Storm of the Century: New England accent
- Thank Your For Smoking: East-Coast accent/Western-Cowboy accent
- Outlaw Josey Wales: Cowboy
- Matrix: Standard American/French
- Aliens: Military talk. (I used the scene where they were doing that knife game on the table with the Android.  Literally, all of them tried it afterwards.  It was hilarious).

I got a bunch more, but that is all I can remember right now.  Just think of a movie with an accent and seek it out.

Enjoy and g'day mates!
- Andrew

The Weather #1

I'm going to post random snips from weather.com  as the winter progresses on and gets, well....more terrible.  Just so people at home can make graphs or whatever they do for fun besides read my blog.

Note the part where it says "Feels like 4'F"

Yeah, I don't care for that,

- Andrew

English Corner

It took forever for CCUT to organize English Corners for us.  Two months basically.  And I was kind of dreading it the entire time.  Extra work at the end of the day, and on something that was never really explained to us....though it was insisted that we didn't need to prepare.  What the hell is English Corner, anyway?  We just make the kids talk?  Like we do when we teach?  Outside the classroom?  I don't know.
Well, the first one was last night.  Which also corresponded with our first real-life, Chinese snow day.  We were told that we would have a big group of sophomores and to we could do 'whatever we wanted.'

About that time, Carter got a text from one of our friends at Jilin University.

"Snowball fight at 8pm!"

So, we were pretty sad that we were going to miss it doing something that we didn't really understand.  And...y'know, having it be work.  Work with no rules or supervision.  No clear restrictions or guidelines. 


"Hey, wait."

So, for our first English Corner, we rounded up our small army of sophomores and marched them down the road to the Jilin University 'Friendship Hotel'...which is where a lot of our foreign friends live while they are studying in China.  The snowball fight was outside in the huge yard.

Snowball fights are like learning English, right?  They learned English like:

ATTACK!

FIRE!!

HOLD THE LINE!

FRIENDLY FIRE!

DEFEND THE GENERAL!

Overall, it was a pretty fun night.  They got to have fun, talk to other foreigners, make new friends, and in theory, increase their war-time vocabulary.  

Some of the team.

Also had a talk with them about how you're not suppose to attack journalists (aka: Me) unless they have a weapon (snowball).  They...did not listen.

Hopefully we can keep this pace with future English Corners.

'Til Next Time,

- Andrew

Fun Lesson #1

I guess I'm going to start posting the lessons I have that are super fun and/or successful (hopefully both).
I did this one on Monday.  I basically when through my computer/the internet and got tons of pictures that I had taken (friends, family, American college, general things in America) and numbered them 1-whatever.  I also collected a bunch of famous or really influential photographs and labeled them A-Z.

In class, I put the list on the projector and would call on students one by one to pick a photo (I explained the difference between the numbered and lettered ones).  Then, I would bring the photo up and make them tell them at least three things about the photograph (in English, obviously).  It was super fun.  After they finished describing it, I would take time to answer any questions, give them vocab or just explain something in the picture that they may not necessarily have in China. About 95% of the class was into it, they had awesome reactions to photos that came up and I got to feel like they were learning and I was teaching them.

My students got to utilize using English when put on the spot, learned new vocab and learned about American culture.

And it was super fun.

Good stuff,

- Andrew