Adventures in Guangzhou!

For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, this is a lesson in which you need to write down, in detail, how to make a pb & j sandwich, to someone who has never made one before. It sounds like a piece of cake but if presented well, the teacher quickly shows the student how much they're leaving out. For example, if the student writes step 1 as "slice two pieces of bread," the teacher needs to respond with, "how? with what? how big? I've never sliced bread," and so on. I thought it would be a fun exercise to try since I learned so much from it years ago.

The first issue though, was what to describe. They don't exactly eat pb&j here on a daily basis. In fact, when I asked Robin (the older Korean boy) if he knew what it was, he laughed and said he had never heard of a sandwich with peanut butter *or* jelly. Indeed. Okay, so what else? I thought about having him describe the process of making sushi but I didn't think I knew enough about it to guide him. After chatting with him about what kind of sandwiches he ate, we settled on a tuna fish sub. I have no idea if this is a common meal (or snack) for him, but he seemed excited about it so whatever.

I gave him ten minutes to write out draft number one of directions and he finished in about six, including roughly eight steps. I chuckled to myself and went to town on it. "How do I use a knife?," I inquired, "do I hold it by the sharp edge?" He started to figure out his shortcomings rather quickly and worked hard to correct his mistakes which was great. He was supposed to edit the whole thing for homework (which he did), but even after two one hour sessions, we haven't gotten past opening the can of tuna fish, and we're around step fourteen or fifteen. I love it.

On a separate note, I must give credit where credit is due. I think I mentioned before that I bought a "Lonely Planet" mandarin phrasebook in Dali when I was there a month ago. I was excited about my purchase... until I unwrapped it and discovered that it did not use pinyin, the standard romanization system for words here, but rather something completely different. Learning pinyin is not difficult, but it takes some serious time and I suppose they were aiming to please people who had no background in the language. For me though, this was a disaster. On a whim, I decided to email the company and ask them if I could exchange it for one of the earlier editions. Lo and behold, I got a personalized email right back and the coordinator promised me she'd do her best. I sort of forgot about it until today when I checked the mail and saw I had a package from Lonely Planet Australia. Woohoo! They came through alright, which is extremely impressive to me. They never asked for proof of purchase from me or anything (not that I had one, since I didn't get a receipt)! So thumbs up for Lonely Planet. Don't buy their 5th edition mandarin phrasebook, but support them whenever you can.

On yet another completely separate note, we had another soccer match yesterday. Once again I had no idea until I jogged out to the field and saw everyone in full uniform. Interesting. I didn't see another team around though--a bit odd. As we were warming up, I discovered that we were going to play the student team that won the school championship. I couldn't quite understand which side challenged which, but there was definitely some sort of challenge involved. We started off playing really well and quickly went up 2-0. The score was 2-1 at the half and I was feeling pretty good about our chances.

Alas, it was not to be. We sub-ed out two of our best players and the student team went to town, scoring another SIX unanswered goals. This, mind you, was humiliating to me. I hate losing anytime (have I mentioned that?) and I sure as heck did not want to lose to my own students! I was playing right fullback but since we had virtually no talent on offense (not to mention a serious lack of conditioning in the front field), I started running the length of the field playing both ends. I didn't score a goal but I did set up our 3rd score--too little, too late. Oy. Naturally, today in class I had several kids ask me what happened in a cocky sort of way. I told them we wanted a rematch.

Other than that, we are approaching t-minus 9 days until the Wolfe clan arrives in China. Wow. I hope they're excited because I know I am!