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Published: March 21st 2011
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朋友你好! (Péngyǒu nǐ hǎo/Hello friends!) Yet another week has passed here in China. Most of my weekday mornings and afternoons are spent in the lab, where I have finally finished testing all my adult participants (83!) and have finished creating the 2-D and 3-D face databases. I still would like to add children's photos to the database, but that will have to happen later on in the month because it will involve taking apart the whole 3-D system and relocating it to a primary school off-campus. In other words, not something I am particularly looking forward to doing! This past week, I trained three research assistants to help me test 5-year-olds in the local kindergartens on one of my dissertation experiments. We will be going in to the schools each morning of this week to test from 9 to 11 am. Then, in the afternoons, I'll score the data and work on setting up a second task and analyzing the adult data.
The weather here has been pretty cold and rainy each day, but thankfully not horrible enough that it has kept me inside too much. On Friday afternoon, I went with a group of students from the Bible Study
group to a local school for the deaf here in Jinhua. We planned some activities for the kids to do and spent the afternoon playing with them and helping their teacher out with their care. The children were between ages 2 and 7, and most could not speak at all. The school actually forbids the use of sign language because they want to encourage the children to verbally communicate, but I imagine it must be frustrating for the kids. When they have their hearing aids in, they are able to hear a bit better, but the teacher said everything is still very muffled. It was probably the place where I could be of most help here in Jinhua, because it is one place where you don't need to know Chinese to be able to communicate! We had a great time playing games and doing some crafts with the children, and then we all took a bus back to the university. In the evening, I then went out with my friend Clover and another American, Liz, who is an English teacher here at Zhejiang Normal. We went to downtown Jinhua, and Liz showed me a small European bistro near the river
that serves Italian food. I was in heaven! It was rather expensive relative to the Chinese food, but it was worth every penny to be able to eat fetticine alfredo!
On Saturday, I went to the lab in the morning and did some work and then came back to the dorm to do laundry and work on organizing my trip to Beijing. The hotel is officially booked and now we just need to book our flight! Cathy and I will be going to Beijing from April 7th to 10th, then flying to Hangzhou to attend the conference on social cognition and neuroscience from the 10th to the 13th. It will be a busy week, and I still need to put the finishing touches on my presentation! Cathy will be presenting some of Jasmine's data from our lab (Garner interference task and identity-expression aftereffects) and I will be presenting two studies from my Masters and two follow-up studies I have done as part of my PhD work.
Saturday night I went shopping with my friend Angela. A friend of hers is loaning her a motorized scooter for the week, so we took it out on a test drive all
around the university and then zoomed around on some back roads behind campus. It was really fun, even though she's not the best at breaking and thus we hit the speed bumps on the road pretty hard! She's also not the best at parking, and every time she tries to park the scooter, it seems to fall over and pieces of it fall off. I told her I would always know where to find her because she is like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs behind (only in her case, scooter pieces).
Yesterday (Sunday), I went to church in the morning and then a group of us went out for lunch afterward. It was pouring all day, so I spent much of the afternoon inside watching tv on my laptop (not particularly exciting!). After a few hours of that, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and that I needed to get out of the dorm. Given that I didn't have much else to do that afternoon, I decided it would be a good time to explore Jinhua on my own. I'm finally beginning to feel a bit more confident in my ability to navigate the city, so I
took the bus downtown on my own for the very first time. Once I got downtown, I was feeling very proud of myself for figuring out which bus to take and what stop to get off on and then did a bit of exploring some of the stops and markets. Around 6:00, I decided I should probably head back to campus. Rather than hailing a cab, I figured I could save some money and ride the bus back instead. So, I went to the bus stop and waited and waited for my bus number to arrive. However, it never showed up! There is an alternate bus that did show up, but it was one that although I knew it eventually went to the university, I didn't know the route it would take. But, it looked like I had no other option, so I hopped on that bus instead. Big mistake. Apparently, that bus goes across the entire city! I was on the bus for so long, that at one point, every other person on the bus got off and it was just me and the driver. Then, he even stopped over at the main bus terminal and took a break
and cleaned the bus! I didn't want to get off because I had no clue where we were, so I just waited for him and told him the only transportation-relevant phrase in Chinese I know- "Zhejiang Normal University, North Gate." He eventually started up the bus again and began picking up more passengers, and I FINALLY made it back to the university late that evening. The whole situation made for a very long night! I suppose one good thing came out of it- I now know the entire city's main bus route really well, which will come in handy in the future I suppose! I was telling one of my American friends here this story and she said that if that situation would have happened to her, she would be too scared to go off on her own again. However, I am determined to not let this bus route defeat me and I will go again in a few days and learn a faster route!
Today, I began testing on the race-contingent opposing aftereffects task in the kindergarten. A research assistant and I hauled the lab laptop and 24-inch screen to a primary school in the downtown Jinhua area
and have set up shop there for the remainder of the week. There are over 200 children ages 3 to 7 in this school! In other words, a developmental psychologist's dream testing location! Fang does all the speaking in the experiment (aka reading the storybook) and I monitor and make sure everything runs properly. She is a really great research assistant and does a very good job making sure the participants don't see a single undistorted face during the entire task (crucial to the success of the experiment). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get some really interesting results!
Well, it is getting late here and I should be getting to bed fairly soon as I need to get up early again tomorrow for testing in the schools. If you have any questions for me, leave them in a message or an e-mail and I will answer them in the next post. It's great to hear from people back home! Much love from the other side of the world! 再见! (Zàijiàn/Goodbye!)
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William Tays
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Hi Lindsey, That bus adventure sounds kind of fun if you knew you would get back to the university eventually. But are there parts of town the bus goes through that you would really not want to get out and explore? How are people and crowds when you're out and about? Does it feel much different from Canada/USA? Do locals do a double take at the sight of the tall blonde women?; Sounds like there are quite a few internationals in your area, so maybe not? Take care. wt