China: Day Six - English Camp Day One

Not having water means you don't get to take a shower, which means you can sleep in more. (You gotta look on the bright side of things.)

We also woke up to sunshine and blue skies. Just one of the advantages of being out of the big city.

The school was just straight down the hill from the restaurant where we ate all of our meals. We were "ordered" to sit with the teachers so they can practice their English.

When we arrived at class just before 9:00, all of our students were already there. From then on, class started at 8:30 instead. Not too bad, since it was pretty hot in the afternoons and it meant we got done a half hour earlier.

The first thing we had everyone do is make nametags with their English names on them. Many of them also wrote their Chinese names on the back. They were beautiful!

Emily's was very pretty

The morning session went well. Everyone participated and especially enjoyed the icebreaker Bingo game. We learned a lot about one another, including that hardly any of the teachers can swim or drive a car.

Tony and I also shared a love of rock music :) 

Lunch means a walk all the way back up to the top of the hill. But we had a rest stop to take a picture with some of the English Camp kids and to take pictures of locals we met along the way... 

carrying water back home

enjoying a cool treat on a hot afternoon

In the afternoon, we broke into small discussion groups to answer questions to get to know about our students and Chinese culture.

When we arrived at dinner, Susan and Daisy were enjoying ice cream. It looked so delicious and refreshing after the long hike up the hill. Sue and I asked about them and the next thing we knew, we both had our dessert before dinner came. Good thing that grown-ups can have ice cream before dinner. :)

Jack photobombed our shot LOL

At dinner I sat next to two teachers my age: Sherry and Cindy. They were very shy but so nice to answer all my questions about our food...

they made french fries and served them with a sweet sauce for dipping

Came back to my room to find my toilet tank full for my once daily flush and my hot pot filled. Obviously the hotel had water while we were gone and our very sweet housekeeper filled it. Right after I took a cold Navy shower using my hot pot and bottled water, the water came back on in the sink for about 20 minutes. I took the opportunity to fill up my water jugs and hot pot again.

 

Spent the rest of the evening going over our lesson plans for the next day and making game boards and discussion questions for the overhead projector.