Arrival, Food, and Class

Hello! My name is Tessa, and I'll be your guest blogger for today.

After a long day of travel, my dad and I made it to Will’s town! Traveling for over 31 hours is, of course, easy for such seasoned travelers as ourselves, and we soon found ourselves happily chowing down on pigs’ feet and other delicious things. So far, everything we eat is absurdly delicious, although I don’t think that we have once finished a dish. So much food!

Today we also visited Will’s class (before eating a yummy freshly-dead fish in a broth with a strange spicy/numbing/what’s-going-on-in-my-mouth? spice in it) and it was fantastic. We introduced ourselves at the front of the room, using only present tense, and then Will asked them questions in Chinese about what we had said, to see how much they had understood. Students offered answers enthusiastically, and I think that they understood almost everything.

 Will’s students were wonderful, and Will is a fantastic teacher. The kids willingly read words from the board en masse, and respond to every question he asks. And they obviously like and respect Will (of course!) and are actively engaged in the class. It was a fun class, and one that I know I would enjoy being in as a student. I have more compliments for Will's teaching, but I'll save them for later. I don't want to embarrass him on his own blog. :)

The classroom only a little bigger than a classroom one might expect to see in an American middle school, but there are many, many more students in the room. The classroom has white walls and huge multi-pane glass windows. A big chalkboard in the front of the room is under a pasted-on Chinese flag. There is a slight dais underneath the chalkboard, I assume for visibility. 60 kids sit two to a bench on what look more like sawhorses than anything else. Each pair shares a big desk with workbooks in it and on top of it and generally everywhere. We sat at the back of the class at one of the desks; I was quite a fan of the benches—way more comfortable than those silly little chairs with the mini-desk attached. Plus, when I sit in a chair, I tend to sit lower and lower until I'm practically lying on my lumbar, which is comfortable, but not the best I'm-paying-attention position one could be in. Yay benches!

Will has another period today, and then we'll out for dinner, which I expect will be really good. Bye!