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.)