Happy Singles' Day!

Or Happy Bachelor's Day...whichever you prefer. Yes, November 11 (11/11 - all singles, get it?!) is Singles Day in China. Haha Les and I had a good laugh when we heard this - it's the greatest thing ever! Kind of like a big F*** you to Valentine's day, huh? We taught all day long so no celebrating for us girls, but some of my students told me they will celebrate by having a BBQ tonight. So innocent of them!

There was a random mid-autumn monsoon in Changsha (and most of southern China from what I understand) last week (Wanted: rainboots) but now it has cooled off significantly and has been sunny and beautiful the last few days. We've even had blue skies with coulds (you may laugh, but that is rather rare here!) We've been spending our spare time pretending to be professional photographers (Wanted: actual nice camera) so you all can see what life's like here.

Hm, what else? Chinese lessons are going well! We've graduated from Pronunciation (hold the applause, please) and are on to the basics of the language. The characters are VERY hard to learn - we will not learn them in a year - but the pin yin is actually fairly simple to learn. We've found that taxi drivers and the people at our local markets are great people to practice with! I am sure we have made some people's days by our attempts at holding conversations. Our students would be ideal teachers but they are so intent on improving their English whenever they are around us that speaking Chinese with them would just be a joke. Oh well...taxi drivers it is then!

Speaking of students, we were asked to be judges for an English Speech Competition last night! Me, a judge?! What?! I'm no expert in my own language but I pretended to be last night :) Okay, so it wasn't that bad, but I do have a newfound respect for judges of all kind. I felt so bad for those who choked in the spotlight but we had to judge fairly! It was fun to see our students practicing their English in a different environment, and fun to see the skills of the other majors (there were broadcast majors in the competition, engineer majors, etc...it was open to anyone on campus). The most difficult part was remaining unbiased white still keeping up our guanxi (relationship building). Some students who come to us for help often and who have taken us out to eat and show us around (oh, and on a 4-day vacation) were in the competition!! None-the-less I think we remained pretty unbiased. Our students are SO smart and had some great things to say about the topic - What my University means to me. Only downside was we were gone for 14.5 hours (relying on busses is getting a bit inconvenient!)

Teaching is going well all-in-all. I have a group of 5 girls who come into my office hours every Wednesday morning who are just adorable. They stay there the whole 1.5 hours (Im not able to get any work done but it's okay!) and talk about anything from traveling and places I need to go, to recommending good spices for me to cook with, to looking in awe at my American magazines and getting to know me. One of them, Maggie, really wants to study abroad in America and I've made it my newfound mission in my spare time to find some charities/organizations in the states who have scholarships for Chinese students studying abroad in the US. In fact, I have several students who have actively sought out my help in how to study abroad. The cost of their education here is ¥28,000 for 4 years (¥7,000/year). When I tell them the average US yearly tuition is $20,000 (or ¥130,000) they are really crushed. We'll see if I'm successful, but if I could even help one student get a scholarship to go abroad it would make my year. So, if anyone knows of such organizations, please let me know!