Saturday, November 2, 2013

Day 66 Elementary Class, "Grandma" and Football

Day 66

We went with Gilbert to teach our elementary age class.  It was fun, but I wonder how much progress the children make when there isn’t much practice going on during the week.  They do have English classes at school, where they learn to recognize things like fruits and such, but unless the English teachers are natural English speakers, their pronunciation is not usually correct.  I think that is what Gilbert wants us to have them learn most.  He is very conscience himself of pronouncing his English correctly.  We are trying.  It is fun to work with the children that age.

After we are done with the two hours of children, Gilbert sits David and me down for about an hour of Chinese instruction.  We made some progress today because I can still remember the sentences that we learned.  He wanted us to make sure we pronounce the Chinese words correctly because one small accent sound made the wrong way can really change what you said.  Instead of asking for something that is good, you may be asking for something that is not good.  David was trying to get the pronunciation of one word down and the teacher aide, Zinia, that they hired to work at the school with us and Gilbert’s friends, Leo, started laughing pretty hard. 

They treated us to lunch and on the way there, we walked by a playground.  It really is more like an outdoor gym with equipment for adults to use that will strengthen muscles and also work aerobically.  We went over and started using the equipment and there was a grandmother there with her granddaughter.  It was starting to get pretty cold so she was going to take her in and the granddaughter points to me and said, “Grandmother” in Chinese!  Zinia said this to me so I had to go over and get to know this little sweetheart!  She as a super cutie and I would have a picture of her, except my purse was locked in Gilbert’s trunk.  After lunch, they drove us to In Zone, a shopping mall and we got a few things we needed. 

David had another football game with his students this afternoon.  When he got home, we went out in search of more persimmons.  It seems to be the ending of the season for getting them because we found a lot of mushy ones.  We finally found enough good ones and sampled food from some of the local bakers that were on the market street.  Some of the people we had purchased vegetables from the other day recognized us and said, “Ni hao.”  As we were walking back, we decided to stop at a restaurant that looked like it had enough pictures for us to decide what we wanted.  It turned out it was cafeteria style so we could just point to what we wanted. 


I made chocolate cake for the potluck dinner tomorrow.  

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