Teaching Mathematics to the Chinese ....... Who Me??

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Today’s seminar at the JJL education agency was fantastic. It started off with my Mathematics lesson. Not bad for someone who couldn’t stand maths at school to find themselves teaching maths to the Chinese!!

My class was made up of seven students, two eight year olds and the rest senior high school students. What to do with such a diverse group? Total surface area of a Mars bar of course. Remember to always include the bribes!! The students were fantastic. Could I please always have a class to teach who is so cooperative and engaged? The young girls were so cute and quickly understood how to calculate area, while the older students quickly grasped the idea of total surface area and helped the younger students to complete the calculation. With a focus on the language being used, the time passed very quickly and all of the students had a fantastic time. They absolutely loved eating the chocolate at the end and the cute clip on koala’s we gave them. Overall, a very successful lesson! Lucky I slept well last night and didn’t spend the night worrying about what to teach. The trickiest part is not knowing how many students will be there and their ages.

After another amazing lunch courtesy of JJL off to catch our flight to Chengdu, the city of panda’s. I watched a great show about this gorgeous young panda that was released back into the wild this week. The hilarious thing about the panda’s care was that the panda had never been able to see a human and all of its handlers always wore panda suits. The handlers looked absolutely ridiculous. The point is, without having ever seen a human face they will be wary of humans in the wild which will help keep them safe and allow them to survive.

So what to do in Chengdu on a Saturday night? Dinner of course and for about $1.40AUD for a delicious bowls of soup with dumplings, who could complain. Off to find a flat pair of shoes for our trip to the panda’s tomorrow (can you tell I’m excited?) and then by chance a stop off for a foot massage. Now this was the weirdest massage I’ve ever had. I felt like I was totally exploiting this poor blind guy and his sister but what a great massage! First the foot soak in what looked like very hot tea and then the foot scraping. Well a blind guy with what looked like a kitchen knife didn’t give you much confidence in what would happen next but surprisingly he did an excellent job. Not a drop of blood in sight. Perhaps we’ll go back for a full body massage tomorrow? This is becoming more a blog about the massages of China rather than our education agency visits. They’re definitely more relaxing!!

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