Summer Vacation

            This summer was a pretty big spread of experiences.  First, I went to Guilin for two-weeks to study Chinese. It was such a great atmosphere for studying and just living in China.  The most remarkable thing about Guilin was that I could clearly understand and communicate with others in Chinese. The most unremarkable thing was the food.

After coming back to Kaili, I realized how “rural” my site actually was. Guilin is in the neighboring province, but the level of development is totally different. It was a shock that definitely left an impression on me. Fortunately, I was only shocked for about 14 hours before going to teach in Rongjiang.

In Rongjiang, a nearby town, two other volunteers and I taught English teachers how to better teach English. After arriving, I scratched out 85% of my lesson plans based on the realization that these teachers needed more instruction on WHAT English was rather than HOW to teach it. This is a problem we share in America, but to a lesser degree. Teachers are becoming less and less a career for talented people. In the elementary and middle school levels, many teachers are those who have failed at everything else and have resigned to living of a low-salary teaching job. Teaching well can make all the difference, and the bar needs to be raised worldwide. How can you teach what you don’t know? I have no answer to this question, but apparently Guizhou province does, because many of its teachers don’t know what they are supposed to be teaching, but they’ve been doing so for 10-15 years already.

After Rongjiang, I went to an organic farm outside Chengdu to lead and English Environmental camp. There were 6 volunteers there with 30 students, and we spent 4 days together working, cooking, cleaning, studying, having seminars, and organizing local projects to help the environment. It was great to spend this time with such interest(ED/ING) students. I even met one who influenced the next two weeks of my summer.

This student, Wanda, had been planning a bike trip through Sichuan province and invited a fellow volunteer and me to go with her. Also on this trip was a French study abroad student who did most of the planning for the trip. Our adventure took us from Chengdu to Emeishan to Ya’an, a total of about 200km. We bought bikes, tents, and sleeping bags in Chengdu ($60 per person total) and then rode, hiked, and camped our way to Ya’an.  After that, I just came back to Kaili and started teaching again feeling refreshed and ready to go.