After a couple of weeks in China, I am back home and enjoying some warmer Indiana weather. To be honest with you, arriving back home was almost like waking up from a dream - a wonderful, wonderful dream. I had the best time meeting new people, seeing new sights, trying new food, and attempting to speak some phrases in Mandarin as well as learning a couple more. The worst part about the trip has been attempting to get back on the right schedule. Its currently 4:30 am and I've been up for over an hour after sleeping something like 15 hours yesterday. It'll probably take the weekend to get this right but I am enjoying being home, visiting with family, and unloading all the gifts I've purchased and received.
To give you a bit of an update on our trip (as blogger is apparently outlawed in China), we spent about four days in Xi'an and another two in Beijing playing tourists. We (six teachers/an administrator from my school corporation) biked the old Xi'an city wall, went to the local Mosque and Muslim Bazaar, visited Pangliu - a village and school that our tour guide is helping develop, enjoyed museum visits, the Terra Cotta warriors historic sight, the "peasant artists' gallery," ate dumplings and many other yummy dishes (I loved the peanut dishes!), the Forbidden City, Summer Place, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, enjoyed Peking duck, and so much more! I'll try to update photos sometime soon.
However, the main purpose of our trip was to build a cross-cultural exchange between ourselves and Anshan Angang Senior High School in Anshan, China. We spent the second half of our trip reconnecting with teachers/administrators from this school who visited in February and working towards signing the agreements. We visited numerous schools in Anshan at the primary, middle, and high school levels and by the time we left had signed agreements to establish a further exchange program (accepting our first Chinese exchange students in June for two weeks - thank goodness for make up days!) and also establish a Confucius Institute classroom at our school. During this portion of our trip, I gave a couple of short team-taught lessons on our school and the differences between the two education systems.
The most rewarding part of the trip was conversing with the students about their lives, future plans, and answering their questions about the U.S. throughout this portion of the trip. The students were extremely inquisitive. We were asked about freedoms and democracy, how students in America balance work, play, and academics, opportunities in the U.S. - academically and otherwise, and the list goes on and on. It saddens me to think that my students, given the same opportunity, may not be as interested in asking Chinese teachers questions about life in China, the differences between the U.S. and China, etc. I'm hoping that when I get back to school on Monday that my stories will interest them and hopefully instill an interest in knowing more about China and the world.
On a side note, while in China I read an editorial in an English Chinese newspaper - perhaps China Daily. It was a response to a new story in California. Apparently a school has decided to stop teaching Chinese in their curriculum because it is not American enough for their students and have decided instead to focus on an "Americanization" curriculum. It was an extremely nativist policy, but one they felt would best serve their students. Interestingly the author said nothing in the article about whether the school was ending other foreign language programs (if they are offered or if they were also affected by this decision) and noted that the school seemed to forget that we live in a global world that is rapidly shrinking. What harm comes from learning another language and about another culture? Should we focus only inward and ignore our global neighbors? What will that gain for our students? I feel sorry for those students and hope that if they are still interested in learning about China (and other nations) that they are able to do so through another medium. One of my traveling companions picked up the paper, I'll try to get a copy of the editorial in the next couple of weeks in case anyone is interested.
Teaching in China. We (Devon and myself) team "taught" about our school district, school, and student life during our last day in Anshan. It was mostly a Q&A session, but it was enjoyable interaction with the students from our sister school. Only myself and one other teacher "taught" while at the school due to time restraints, and I felt very fortunate to be chosen to share about what their students should expect when they come to JC.
Signing agreements with our sister school. We had students from Anshan Angang Senior High School come to visit us in June and we're anticipating sending a group of students back to China in April 2011.
