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Published: October 27th 2008
Laurie
Laurie up to his eyes in students!I feel at this point we should talk a bit more about VET or Laurie and Bets Mackenzie to be precise.
After retiring as principal of the local English college Laurie persuaded his chairman to support a project to give children in rural schools exposure to native English speakers.
Consequently Owen college provides food and accommodation in exchange for a few hours teaching local schoolchildren and occasional after dinner conversations with college students.
Laurie runs the volunteer programme and Bets is the indefatigueable administrator whilst also holding down her position training native Chinese English teachers.
The opportunity attracts both students and people our age too and Laurie is a sprightly octenagarian so you never feel alienated due to your age. Also there are several English colleges in town so you often bump into more mature English teachers here for longer periods of time.
Yangshuou as you will see from the photographs (but even they don't prepare you for the landscapes dominating presence) is a truly beautiful part of the country. It is one of the most visited places in China and consequently quite a cosmopolitan town.
You could
Apartment
Chez Hall for 2 weeks spend a month here and only eat western food, but what's the point?
If you want to get a little under the skin of this facinating country and get to see the extraordinary countryside at the same time Laurie would be pleased to hear from you even if you can only afford to give up a couple of weeks. www.vet-china.org
You will be surprised how rewarding it can be and I bet you will soon be wishing you could have stayed longer.
Our time here has sped by and our first Friday was an unexpected bonus; we went to teach at a vocational school. Our other classes are with juniors but these were teenagers with quite a good grasp of English so we able to push them a bit harder introducing new words and having fun with them enacting role plays. We taught in the morning and had the rest of the day and the weekend to ourselves so we finished the week on a high.
We have been helped through the first week by Micheal Mark Kyle and Richard but Micheal and Kyle are off to Chengdu and Mark and Richard
My Class
Please sir!! are teaching elsewhere so we are solo next week but this also means we can move from our room into an apartment nearer to the college which has all the resources stored in it (and we suspect a couple of mice!). We have now added Monday and Tuesday to our weeks teaching and spend time discussing who and what subjects we will cover through experience rather than guess work.
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bev
non-member comment
gord
think you have found your vocation!!!!!. loveing this diary it sounds fab, love to xxxxxxxxxxxxxx