Teaching English? Day 3

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(excerpt from an email I sent to my friend Michelle)

This is my third day here in Ledu County, but we still haven't started teaching English because the students are taking exams or something. Instead we've been going to a ton of official dinners and lunches with people in charge of the schools and the government here. I'm not really sure what we're accomplishing by doing that..... Plus today at lunch they insisted on toasting with tons of baijiu. I refused to drink much and got away with it because I was the American girl, but the Tsinghua students were not able to refuse and they all got drunk! One of them even threw up! I don't think they'd ever been that drunk before. After lunch we were supposed to go to a local hospital because the Tsinghua students are doing research on the success/failures of a government health program, but all of them were drunk! The American professor that's here with us got really upset with them and said she was going to talk to Tsinghua because they shouldn't have had that much to drink and it was really unprofessional for them to conduct an interview in their current condition. I felt bad for the Tsinghua students because they didn't want to get drunk, but they just didn't know how to refuse the hospitality of our hosts. Anyways, two or three of them were somewhat sober enough to conduct the interview so they went in and did it. Oh baijiu.......

On the way home we stopped at a local school and just went in for 30 minutes to say hello and speak some English with them. It's the closest we've come to teaching the whole time we've been here. Maybe we'll start teaching soon....

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