Teaching - What a Joy!

The highlight of our week is teaching.  We have about 180 students.  We have 4 classes of medical students and 4 classes of  graduate students ranging from public administration majors to mechanical engineering majors. We are teaching the same subject to each of our 8 classes - oral presentation.  Last week we were working on the pair pronunciation of mouth – mouse.   When the students recited, the two words sounded exactly the same.  We spent some time on teaching them how to stick out their tongue to say the th sound.  When they finally got it, I got excited and said, “We did it.”  They cheered and smiled and clapped.  It was at that moment that I realized how much I love teaching them.  By the 8^th class our dog and pony show got old.  When we showed the picture of Ashley and Adam, and said, “See Adam’s cowboy hat, he is a cowboy,” I really laughed out loud.  The students ooh and aah.  We had our family picture on the PowerPoint and had the tallest student come up and the shortest student come up and see where they fit in our family.  The picture is a few years old, so most of the tall students were Morgan’s size, the shortest Trey’s size.  They would all laugh when we told them Trey was 10 years old.   To end our lesson we played 20 questions.  Doug was thinking of President Xi.  It took them awhile to figure out how to ask broad questions.  One of the first five questions was, "Do they wear glasses?"  In one of the classes the students guessed President Xi on question 19.  Now that was a fun way to end a class, with the students clapping for the lesson!

Lunch with a few of our students

It was the Mid-Autumn Festival this week.  We traveled with Dr. Feng and his family.  We visited an ancient town named Chenlu, which is famous for their use of porcelain.  Ceramics have been continuously produced since the Tang Dynasty (618 -907) and the fire in the kilns has been on for over one-thousand years.  It was fascinating waking through the town.  They use discarded pots to make houses, walls, and roads.  The highlight was getting a tour of the ceramic workshop.

We visited Zhaojin Danxia National Park.  We hiked up the mountain and rode a cable car down.  It is the setting for a famous painting.  We enjoyed traveling with new friends.  Their 7-year old daughter was too shy to hold Doug's hand so she kept a water bottle between them.  

Our last stop was Da Xiangshan Si Temple, a famous small Buddhist temple.  It is at the top of a mountain.  We really enjoyed seeing this sacred place for so many people.