More about the Ningxia project

I was looking through my journal entries while in Ningxia and thought I would share a couple of them. One from the beginning of the trip and then one from the end.

July 13-
1st day of teaching English today. The school buildings look relatively old and the classrooms remind me of what American classrooms might have looked like many many years ago. The teacher's desk is on a raised platform in the front of the classroom with the chalkboard directly behind it. Through my classroom window, you can see the large bathroom...because of this...our classrooms are full of large flies with which we have to contend with while teaching. All four of my classes went well.

July 29-
I was honored with an invitation to go out to eat with some of my students tonight. They took me out to a Hui owned restaurant and ordered a couple of cold dishes to begin the meal. One of the dishes was spinach and garlic. Nothing strange about that one. The other cold dish was sliced cow's hoof. Now, I won't lie, that one took everything in me to try it let alone get it down. The rest of the meal included some very tender spicy mutton and some meat stuffed eggplant that was battered, fried, and then cooked in a tomato sauce. Very tasty stuff. The dinner conversation ranged from talking about learning languages to talking about religions and beliefs. I had a good and memorable time talking with my new found friends. I feel humbled to be able to come to this small town and to get to know the wonderfully friendly people who live here.

Wow! What a great time we had in Ningxia! I was apprehensive at first about teaching English to a bunch of Chinese English teachers, but it turned out to be a wonderful experience. Now that we have been back home in Xi'an for a few days we've had time to reflect on the experience. The area we were in was probably 70 percent Hui (Chinese Muslim minority). The entire town accepted us as if we were long lost friends.
Nicole, William, Josiah, and Caleb all did extremely well for the three weeks we were there. They did wonderful eating the Chinese food for every meal everyday (and some of it was not typical either such as FISH EYEBALLS-way to go Nicole for trying that one!) The last week of the seminar, however, we trapped 4 mice in our hotel room on the 1st floor, so we moved to a room on the second floor for the last few nights.
During the seminar we held two English corners (an event that allows people to come and practice speaking English with native English speakers) in the town square. The first one was attended by well over 1,000 people who came to say "hello" and marvel at the foreigners. Each of us had a crowd of people gathered around listening to us and trying to practice their oral English. Everyone who attended them were extremely friendly and welcoming.
In the seminar itself where we had smaller groups for practicing conversational English, we had the opportunity to discuss several cultural topics such as holidays. It was during these small group sessions that we were able to share about such holidays as Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. Opportunities like this to share about Western culture were abundant.
We are very thankful to be back home, but are also very thankful for all the experiences we had while we were there (such as the last night of the seminar when one of my students took me out to eat and served me COLD COW HOOF as an appetizer). We want to thank all of you back in the states who enabled us to take part in a project that had such a great impact on an entire community here in the heart of China.
I want to leave you with a couple of pictures. One of them is my new friend Mark and the other is a picture of the gorgeous scenery that surrounded the small town that we were staying in (Mark and his friend Tony took several of us teachers to take pictures in the mountains during the last week of the seminar.)

Back Home in Xi'an!

We made it back home to Xi'an on Sunday evening. We are very glad to get back into our "normal" daily routine.

Our Ningxia project went extremely well. We had a almost 100 primary and high school teachers enrolled in the three week English seminar. Our team consisted of about 20 people including children. We got to know some of the participants quite well and will try and keep in contact with them in the months and years to come. Thank you for remembering us while we were there. I will post more details whenever I can since the internet at our house is having some issues. Blessings to all!