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Published: February 12th 2009
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Greeting from Leshan, China.
I moved to Leshan a few weeks ago to start a new job. I will teach Oral English to nursing students at Leshan Vocational and Technical College. School starts next Monday and I still do not have my schedule of where and when my classes. This is typical in China. In my last job in Chengdu I was never informed that I will have 7 weeks off from Dec. 26 until Feb. 16th!!! It is rather difficult to plan anything here!!! Some students have to wait in line at train stations for 2 days to get a ticket home!!! I have to give a final examination in my classes and everyone expects a written examination. Chinese students typical had English classes for over 5 years and they are exclusively grammar, reading and writing. Classes are taught by the old drill method of teacher says and students follow. Yet I teach Oral English where we work on spontaneous informal talking of English. SO my final examination was a Waltzing dance party. I taught basic dance moves, brought snacks (which where gone in 5 minutes!!!) and we talked English, of course, as we danced and played. Needless
to say they loved this final examination! It is very frustrated to teach a language class once a week- all of the research and common sense shows that to really learn a language you have to practice many times a week to fully develop the new habits. Yet in schools in China it is only done once a week and when the students leave class they rarely speak English to each other unless they want to leave China for Graduate school some day.
In Leshan, I have a wonderful neighbor who is in all of travel guide books to Leshan. His little one bedroom apartment is a Chinese restaurant and he can help as a tour guide and very knowledge local man. He has 400 relatives in this town. His name is Richard Yang and he is about 80 years old. He went to the finest foreign language in China in 1948 and speaks English and Russian. He started speaking English when he met American and Canadian WWII soldiers on vacation in Leshan. It is so nice to have a local neighbor who speaks perfect English!!!
In mid-January I went to Aba and Hongyuan to visit Lama Yonten
and family. The bus from Chengdu was scheduled to take 10 to 12 hours… well 23 hours later we arrived in beautiful Aba quite exhausted.
I went with two friends- Sophia, who I have known for one and a half years and my translator (and is planning to be a Waldorf teacher soon..) and Buddharain, a Chinese University student studying Law who always wanted to practice Buddhism and maybe become a nun someday…). Buddharain became a student of Lama Yonten and they spend 5 days talking about Buddhism and how to practice Buddhism. After two days in Aba we were told by hotel personnel that foreigners were not allowed in Aba at this time. Two Europeans get kicked out the morning I arrived. It was strange because I had no problem buying the bus ticket to Aba. Maybe I got some attention when 2 Chinese women(Sophia and Buddharain), 2 Tibetan women( Buday and Dechen Kharmo) and 1 American man were joyfully singing and walking around town enjoying the sunshine!!! Just thier names alone will scare the military police!!!!
We decided to hire a driver to take us back to Chengdu. The driver had his family (two adults and two children
in the front seat and the three of us sat in the backseat. The car was a small Volkswagen and we had a total of 23 bags, suitcases and luggage containers. The ride only took 10 hours and we drove right through the earthquake hit area. It was amazing to see the crumbling of mountains and people living in metal huts that are waiting for houses to be rebuilt.
I am excited about living in Leshan. It is only 4 million people. Chengdu is about 13 million people!!! I do not like dealing with banks, phone companies or any other governmental offices. Banks and phone companies are controlled by the government and it is difficult to understand the procedures. Your phone or bank account is only good in your home town- if you leave your home town and run out of money on your phone, you have to tell someone in your hometown to put money into the account or else you could buy a local phone call and use your phone which will be twice the price! I discovered in Leshan that there is some money in my Bank of China account in Chengdu after I closed the
account!!! I cannot just transfer the money- I have to go back to Chengdu and get it out in person!!!! WOW. Yes many things here seem about 30 to 50 years behind the usually American way to doing things (example-plumbing, electric technology) - some things you adopt to YET some things can drive you crazy!!!
They are many beautiful natural areas around the city of Leshan, and the biggest Buddha statute in the world was craved into a mountain some 1200 years ago, is right down the block from where I live. By my school is a public park where I am learning Tai Chi every morning. At night this park has about 100 people dancing to music every night. It is 70 degrees here in the day time! Please write to me or even call me. I am 13 hours ahead of you. My new phone number in Leshan is 011 86 15281980460.
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