First Chinese class yesterday. I feel like a kid just starting first grade, trying to learn to pronounce sounds the correct way (with very varying success...). The class is just two people, Griselle and me, with Feng Ying teaching us twice a week. The book we are using is quite ambitious, with homework in written Chinese (i.e. not pinyin) from the first lesson. But I'm really glad to have started proper classes, which is a great compliment to the everyday language i'm learning all the time...survival skills! My students are being great and helping me, writing lists of words and patiently correcting my pronunciation and pretending that they understand what i'm trying to say when i mumble one of the ten words i know.

But back to the same old issue of my classes and the timetable debate. Yesterday after the Chinese class I went with Mrs Feng to meet Mrs Liu to discuss the possibility of teaching more groups, or at least splitting my current group into two smaller groups, to halve the amount of lessons i need to prepare. After a long discussion i think i'm not a great favourite of the post.grad. office people, all i could understand was ching chong wao (or some such thing)...bishi...yao chong...griselle...ping hong...flexible, and a lot of tut-tut and unhappy faces. But in the end, we agreed that i can slit the group on the days we have 4 classes, which would mean 10 lessons to prepare instead of 16. So i said ok, hurray for small victories.

And as a peace offering I agreed to take on 6 extra hours of "English Corner" for BA-students who major in English. This means talking with them four evening a week.

Of course, this particular small victory lasted only until this morning. Coming to class this morning Herbert, who acts as the spokesperson for the class, met me and said that they had discussed the news of being split into two groups and decided that they don't want to do this. I, of course, tried to argue my case and say that in small groups everyone would have the chance to talk more and we could have better conversations with a smaller group. But they said nooooo we all want to be here with you 16 hrs a week. So what can i say. They suggested that we'd use the two afternoon classes on tuesday, wednesday and thursday for more free conversation, and that i wouldn't have to prepare anything so it wouldn't be so much work. "You only talk for 30-40 minutes first and then we can all discuss". Of course I had to point out that a 40 minute presentation every day would indeed take some preparation. So i told them we'd give it a go for a couple of weeks on the condition that the in the afternoon classes they really have to be active and not leave the leading of the conversation to me alone. So here we go, all thus fuss and I'm in square one again. But the students are great, and obviously very motivated, so I'm just gonna go with it and see if we can establish some sort of routine. No more stressing about this now :)

I'm still stuck with the English Corner though...

Speaking of classes, the topic today is 'small talk', i'm trying to teach them the art of it even if it's not necessarily one my own strong points either. We spent the two morning classes learning about how to start a conversation, what to talk about, what NOT to talk about, non-verbal communication...etc. I've noticed that the Chinese have no idea how to do this in English in an informal way so I want to try to get my students used to small talk so that when i ask them 'how are you', they don't go into a long description of their previous evening's activities. And of course all that weather talk...
This afternoon (will only start the new afternoon arrangement from tomorrow) we'll practice this by doing a simulation of a cocktail party (minus the cocktails, unfortunately...), for which i've created characters for each of the students with all kinds of details. Then the point is to let them mingle and chat with each other, let's see how it goes... (thanks Steve for the idea!!)

All in all, I'm beginning to feel really happy here. The sun is shining, people are friendly, I'm learning Chinese, will start taiji today... everything is going well. I guess I'm in the classic 'honeymoon stage' of my cultural adaptation process. Of course, as a perceptive ICC student, I'm already dreading the next stage (culture shock!!), which is bound to hit sooner or later. But right now, after the first week of getting used to my surroundings, I'm happy being right here in Baoding on this sunny October day :)