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Written by Al Wong
(Write to me)
This is my experience in Beijing, China in the Summer of 1999. If you came to this webpage first, it's better if you start from the beginning of the story.
Four people in my group are feeling ill today. I think it's
because we are not getting enough sleep and it's beginning
to show. I have a mild sore throat but I seem to always get
a mild sore throat when I am in East Asia so I don't think
much about it.
Today's activities include:
Our homework is to learn the street map handout well so we can
give faster directions, ask directions to a place with a native
Chinese, and learn the names of two Chinese dishes.
They should get new chairs for the classroom. The chairs we
are using now are big and unwielding. You don't feel comfortable
sitting on them either leaning in front or leaning back.
They don't have wheels on their legs
to move freely on the floor. And there are too many chairs in
the room which makes the place seem crowded.
As I was waiting in the meeting room, one of the teachers asked
me if I liked to do anything. I asked if I could play one of their
pianos. I haven't played a piano since I arrived to Beijing and
more than a month before that in the US. Most of the rooms with
pianos were locked because the students were now taking their
finals. They did manage to find an open room with a piano in
their grade school! However, four music teachers sat right
in front to hear me play! I didn't even get a chance for
warmup let alone practice. I think I played for less than
5 minutes when my whole group arrived and Cathy asked me
to play something. I gave them the first two themes of
Roberto Clemente by a friend of mine, David Thomas Roberts.
It's a pretty song.
I wish I had time to practice a little more.
The students liked it though.
As we were leaving, Andrew Chang drove the minibus around the
school's front yard. I don't know why he did it but it was funny.
Mr. Zhan passed around three of his painting books. They were
very nice to look at and demonstrated his qualifications.
He then had us buy brushes from him and charged us $200.00RMB
for the brushes.
I thought this was kind of high but I figured
he was a famous painter and I may not come this way again so I
went for it.
As a first lesson, we learned how to paint ducks swimming
in water! I think I did pretty well. I understand we will continue
tomorrow with calligraphy.
At the cyber cafe,
I managed to upload the webpages of the last
two days and part of today and I checked my email.
I also sent an email broadcast to my friends
that my China webpage
is now on-line! While I was there I heard English voices
and struck up a brief conversation with two students,
one from Orange County, CA and one from England.
I got back to the language academy at 11:10pm but
the gates were still open. I guess they don't
close the gates until 11:30pm.
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