Day 67 - English Sunday

Day 67

We left for Church with the two small chocolate cake in a bag, but they were pretty heavy and precarious, that we decided to get a taxi to take get there.  We were a little late getting started, so it was a good thing to get us there on time. 

After potluck dinner, we had a knock on the door and in walked ten Chinese students.  They were from the Architectural College here in Ji’nan.  They were part of an English class and they were looking for foreign English speakers to test their new found knowledge out on.  They had heard there were a bunch of us in the hotel so they came looking for us.  We brought them into the room; they introduced themselves and said what they wanted.  We stood around in small groups conversing with different ones.  I had one girl kind of take me aside by herself and we had a good conversation.  She talked about her family and her dreams and I showed her a picture of my family.  The reaction is always the same and I love it!  After about a half an hour or 45 minutes, we sang the song, “Love at Home” for them.  Then they sang a couple of songs, one in Chinese and one in English.  Their teacher challenged them to only speak English for the next two months.  They are having a hard time when it comes to talking to their families.  However, it seems to be working because they have made a lot of progress in the last few months. 

This is the girl that I spent most of the time talking to.  I think she said her English name was Alice.

The students singing to us.

After they sang to us.

We all had to get pictures!

David and I rode the bus home and as we got on campus, we saw a group of young people sitting on the steps by the fountains.  When they saw us, they all stood up and got very excited and asked if we had a moment to talk to them.  We didn’t have much time, but we did spare a few minutes.  They, like the group at the hotel, had come to our campus in search of foreigners that they could talk with.  They were pretty excited because their search for foreign English speakers had not been successful today, we were the first they had seen and were so happy that we had taken a few minutes that we had to speak with them.  We gave them our card and said we would be happy to join an “English Corner” with them sometime.  An “English Corner” is where they get together and talk only English.  They try to have it student led and if the foreign teachers come they jump for joy. 

We had to hurry on home and drop off our stuff because we had been invited to a masquerade ball that the University’s English Broadcasting Station was sponsoring.  One of my students, who is a part of that organization, invited me and David to go, so we did.  We were a little late because just as we were getting on the bus to get there, Eva called and wanted to know if we were available to go see the hotel that we live behind.  She ended up picking us up and taking us to the campus where the ball was being held.  We had lots of pictures taken of us.

The students had a program, some music and dancing going on.  Some professional dancers were showing them how to dance a waltz.  We did some dancing and we had quite a crowd watching, taking pictures and trying to copy ours steps from us dancing.    The professional dancer’s steps were quite complicated for beginner dancers and what we were doing was simple enough for some of them to catch on from seeing us dance.  It was a nice evening.