This morning we had another Chinese language class. We continued to work on learning the vowel
and consonant sounds along with learning a few phrases in Mandarin. The class was almost painful as we
mispronounced and stuttered over the unfamiliar language. But, our teacher continued to shower praise,
“So good, you got it!”, when we clearly did not get it.
This afternoon an elementary school visit was planned by our
cultural exchange program. Over 30
university students crammed into a bus with us to serve as our
translators. We arrived at the largest
high school I have ever seen. Students
stood holding signs with their classroom number. The students cheered as we climbed off the
bus. It was mass confusion until we broke off into groups of 3 Americans and 3
Chinese translators. Emilie, James, and
I were led to a classroom where we received loud applause. We learned that 30 boys and 33 girls make up
classroom number 53. The desks were crammed into any open space in the
room. The students in the back of the
room had to climb over other students and desks in order to move about the
room.
We stood in front of the class and waited to be told what
was going on. The translators asked us
to introduce ourselves, so we did. Then
they asked us to join them in a game. We
were to clap and say the name of a food.
If anyone made a mistake they had to do a performance in front of the
class. Emilie, James, and I played along
and made no mistakes, but they still made James and I do a performance. James sang and I whistled using my
hands. I don’t think they were very
satisfied with my whistle and would have preferred a song. We played a few more games where the point
was to embarrass the loser. Since they
kept cheating to make us the losers we decided it was time to introduce some
American favorites. We played Heads Up 7
Up, Pictionary, and Simon Says. It was loud mass chaos for over 2 hours. The translators kept looking at us with eager
faces, “Now what?” Students with cell
phones kept sneaking pictures of us and many ran up to pose in a picture with
us. At the end of our time the students
crowded around us for more pictures with cell phones and asked us to sign
books, tablets, and notebooks. I felt
like they thought we were famous. As we
left the class and walked the halls, students spilled out of their classes to
say goodbye, shake our hands, or take our pictures with cell phones.
After the stressful and overwhelming afternoon one of the
girls climbed on the bus and said, “I need KFC.” A group of us agreed to go to the only
American Restaurant in the city for some comfort food. I said, “You know we are stressed when we say
we need KFC.” I have had KFC a handful
of times in my life, but it never tasted so good.
