Buddhist's and cell phones

Thursday, June 21, 2007
Today our day was not so full so I got to sleep a little later. Before our class for the day we went to a Buddhist temple by New Oriental. It was 10 Yuan to get in so I was hesitant to go in at first, but I decided to go in. I was glad that I did because it was beautiful. The inside of the temple was like nothing I have ever seen before. When we were leaving we saw two young Buddhist playing with their cell phones and they let us take pictures of them, I thought that it was odd, but cool to say the least. In the afternoon we had a Chinese cultural class lead by one of the New Oriental teachers that is part of a Chinese cultural revival movement. He talked about how some people are starting to wear traditional Chinese clothing and how many Chinese do not know about the past in China. He also talked about the many festivals that China has and what they all are for. After the presentation, some of the interns tried on some traditional Chinese clothing that he brought in and we took pictures. Then we went to observe a demo class. A demo class is a class that if you are interested in taking this class, they offer this demo for free and from that you can decide if you want to take the class or not. The class was taught by Paul and Yoyo. Both Paul and Yoyo are very energetic teachers and the students enjoy classes with them. I think I will be teaching with Yoyo—well I hope so because she is really good. They allowed us to participate in the class by talking with the students so that they can practice past tense, but that didn’t do so well. Most of the questions that the students asked were related to the present. We enjoyed the interaction with the students very much and it made me more excited about teaching.