Week 41
on Tina's Journal (China), 04/Dec/2009 10:22, 34 days ago
This week I have been writing up my report about last week's school visits. I still haven't finished it as working in the office it is easy to get distracted by a visitor or two or just having a chat with Lesley! The good news is, that Hou Wan Xia (in the photo in office) has been made the official Leader of theTraining Development Centre(TDC) which takes it one more step to being a reputable department. Hou Wan Xia has been training for many years, but only starting learning more student-centred methods in recent years. Good luck to her. I wish I was going to be around a bit longer to be part of it all, but will leave in four weeks time..where has the time gone?The other photo shows the lady in the local college shop which sells everything you need! Of course she knows everything about everyone, and judges you based on what you buy. She knows I have a sweet tooth as I go into to get my regular fix of biscuits, chocolate and the soft sponge cakes which I have for breakfast. The communication with her is based on body language and the odd word thrown in and I pretty much guess what she's saying to me most of the time. Well, I have to cut this short as I have just been asked to judge a competition some students are doing talking about'Western' culture. I am used to judging competitions now as I have already done a few. I'll have to ask a few questions once the student has finished his/her speech, make an evaluation and will more than likely get asked myself to say something at the end. If I was really bold and brazen I could say something about how proud we are in the'West' to have free speech, democracy and blatantly criticize our politicians if we so like! But of course I won't, as I do not want to upset any of the lovely students and teachers. I do believe there is a time and place to discuss such issues :-)