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