Sent Sept. 16, 2007
Hello all,
I am back in China now and already have some exciting news to share.
David made a short film here last term with some of his students and
entered it in the FilminuteFilm Festival.
Film News
Well his little film, "Global Warming Vacation", is one of 25 finalists
in the Film Festival, out of over 800 submissions from all over the
world! The final winner of the Filminute Festival is chosen by popular
vote,
Classroom Navigation
I have started teaching again. Unfortunately I was late for my very
first class. Who would have expected that room 1433 would not be in the
area with signage designating 1432-1441 and that I would have to go down
a flight of stairs before I could cross over to the other section of
building it was in where I then had to go up a floor again to find it. I
am not sure if I am more annoyed at the building designers or the sign
painters. I guess that's what I get for not having scouted out the
specific room location in advance.
And Courses Begin
The school did flesh out David's and my schedules as we expected they
would so we are now both at our 14 hours/week maximum. I have 2 sections
(each section is a 2 hour class) of American Culture (for sophomores), 2
sections of writing (also sophomores) and 3 sections of Oral English (to
freshmen). These Oral classes are the same thing as the Speaking and
Listening classes we taught last year so that means that all of the
course that I am teaching I have taught before – now this is a first.
David has also got 3 sections of Oral English (freshmen), 1 section of
writing (sophomores), 1 section of Movies (seniors) and 2 sections of
News Publication Reading (juniors). I taught the News Publication
Reading course last year so David is raiding my prep from last year to
put together his course. So it looks like it will all go well for both
of us.
The freshmen who are in the Oral classes have all been doing military
training for their first two weeks so our full course load actually
doesn't start until this week. My other classes are all with sophomores
and I taught all but 25 of the 150 sophomores last year. It is pretty
nice to have familiar faces in my classes.
GouGou Goings On
It is good to be back with GouGou again. I certainly had missed her
during the summer. She seems to have survived very well and is just as
energetic and friendly as ever. She did have a scratch above one eye
though. She probably got it from playing with Zhai Zhen (our
dogsitter)'s kitten. The scratch would have healed fine if she hadn't
kept scratching at it herself with her back paw. We had to get her a
Victorian collar again to protect her from herself. It has done the
trick, and after a week and a half of the indignity she is out of the
collar again. I am trying to get in the habit of taking her out for a
run (she runs, I bike) first thing in the morning to get us both up and
about. So far my track record is pretty good, I have only missed a
couple of days when it was raining.
Return to Friends
We have gotten together with a few friends here since our return and
that has made coming back to the same school rather nice. One of the
things I am looking forward to is getting to teach many students I got
to know last year.
The Weather is Grand
I am rather happy to note that the temperature here has actually been
pretty nice overall. Some days it has gotten a bit too hot during the
day, but it is cooling comfortably at night. This is a big improvement
over the oven like temperatures we arrived to last summer (and how hot
it was this summer in Wuxi from what I hear from people who were here
over the summer). I am hoping the comfortable temperatures last.
Power Struggle
We're having fun here with our electricity. Since the school knows that
we are (theoretically) moving in a few weeks into the new rooms they are
only putting a small amount of funds into our electricity at a time as
they don't want there to be extra when we do move. So this means that we
have run out of power a couple of times and had to get them to pump in a
little bit more. It is more annoying than a real problem, but when we
are trying to do our class prep on our computers and suddenly the power
goes out it can be a pain -- more so for David than me though as my
laptop just switches to its battery. Cutting out in the middle of
cooking dinner was bad timing one night, but it did get us deciding to
go for a walk while we awaited the recharge and it turned out it was a
beautiful evening for a walk. I do miss the long prairie summer evenings
though -- it is getting dark here between 6 and 6:30pm and getting
earlier.
Thai'ing One On
I had a wonderful birthday celebration. David took me to a great Thai
restaurant for dinner and we had a simply delicious meal. We even got
pulled up to dance with the restaurant's entertainers and then they sang
me happy birthday. After dinner David treated me to a massage at a local
spa. It was quite decadent indeed.
Let Them Eat Cake
Then on the Saturday after my birthday we had the actual party. We
discovered that our apartment can comfortably handle 17, though we may
need to invest in some more chairs, or at least stools. We had cake, I
opened prezzies, everybody sang a song together (no, not 'Happy
Birthday', though they did that too in both English and Chinese) and
there was much talking and visiting. We had a few other foreign teachers
come, but everyone else was Chinese, many of them students. After a
while celebrating at our apartment, 14 of us went out to dinner together
and David got a chance to feel rich as he treated everyone. The
wonderful thing about China is that that kind of generosity won't break
the bank here. It was probably cheaper than if he had just taken me out
to dinner in Winnipeg.
Chinese Practice
We made some new friends last night. We were sitting at a table at one
of the outdoor bbq places in the nearby village and a trio of students
(two gals and a fellow) sat down at the other end of our table as it was
the only seating space available. We started talking with them in a
mixture of Chinese and English and had a ball. Though none of them were
English majors, they all spoke better English than we spoke Chinese, but
the conversation would still drift into Chinese between themselves and
sometimes with us. It was great and gave us a chance to practice our
oral Chinese. I particularly like hanging out with my Chinese friends in
groups. When there are several of them it increases the amount of
Chinese that gets spoken. And it's even better in such a social
circumstance.
Well, you may not believe it, but that is all for now. I am going to try
and write shorter updates and get them out a little more often this
year. Let's see how I do.
Many hugs,
RuthFor anyone who wants to send snail mail, I am told my address here is:
My mailing address here is:
Ruth Anderson
Rm. 202, No. 4, Teacher's Apartment
Lihu Campus, Southern Yangtze University
1800 Lihu Road, Wuxi, Jiangsu
China 214122
And yet another reminder that I have photos on the web. You can see them
at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/canadiandragon/
I love comments, so don’t be shy.
Ruth's China Report January/2007
Ruth's China Report April/2007
Ruth's China Report June/2007
Ruth's China Report July/2007
Ruth's China Report November/2007
Ruth's China Report January/2008
Ruth's China Report February/2008
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