the intro

I made this blog on October 3rd, the last official day of the national day celebrations here in China; the three day celebration marking the foundation of the People's Republic of China by Chairman Mao Zedong on October 1st, 1949.

The first day I went downtown and met up with Sarah, another PCV, and we went into the city center to see what was happening. The central park was full of people, and of course we got the usual gawking, pointing, and ever-so-popular high-pitched Chinese girl giggle. Part of the park is more like a carnival than a park and includes several games and amusement rides including bumper cars and a few tame roller coasters. I love bumper cars and immediately went over to check them out. I was surprised to see many mothers with their infants, who could not have been more than a year old, in the bumper cars getting smacked around by all the other cars. Would this ever happen in the United States? I'm not sure. In any event, I took a picture and it gave me the motivation to create this blog: bumper cars with infants.

I'm a teacher at China West Normal University and a Peace Corps volunteer. I teach two classes of writing to sophomores and five classes of advanced oral English to juniors for a total of 14 teaching hours. During the week I hold office hours, help out with a university English radio show, meet up with students, watch movies, study Chinese, and grade papers. The school has about 30,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students with more majors than I could list here. Most of the students will go on to become teachers (hence the "normal" designation) after graduation.

Last Friday was the CCTV cup English speaking contest at China West. There were a total of 8 contestants, all English majors at the university. The winner goes on to Chengdu to compete against other winners from around Sichuan province for a scholarship and an internship with CCTV. Two were students from one of my sophomore writing classes. The topic was "gain and loss". All of the speeches were about some dull and superficial explanation like a loss was actually a gain in disguise or that we shouldn't feel sad when we lose or fail. After a four to five minute memorized speech, the students then had to answer one question from one of the judges which included myself, another foreign teacher, two English department administrators, and a female Chinese English teacher. The student then selected a number from one-to-nine which corresponded to a picture. Of the pictures I can remember, one was of a news story about China entering the WTO, another of an anorexic model, a Chinese space shuttle being launched, a popular Chinese soap opera, and an image from a Chinese internet chat service. The students had 30 seconds to prepare, then were able to talk for two to three minutes.

After the picture response, the rest of the judges and I wrote down a score and handed it to one of the contest hosts. I was advised that (even now I am still unsure of why) the lowest score I should give is an 8.0. Most of the scores I gave were around 8.8 to 9.0. Of the eight contestants, the top two students tied for 9.1 and went onto a playoff round. One of the two finalists (the girl in the picture) whose name is Joy, is in my writing class. I was asked by one of the hosts to propose a question to each of the contestants, and I said something to the effect of, "Is there such a thing as a loss with no gain, for example losing a family member?" In retrospect it was as superficial as most of the speeches, but how many questions can you really ask about gain and loss? The Chinese English teacher also asked a question before the judges panel wrote down their choice as the winner. I thought Joy had done a much better job, despite the fact that I had something vested in the result (I was the winner's teacher! haha), but the other student won 3-2. Afterwards I presented some awards to the runner-ups and took pictures. It was a fun initiation to these contests which apparently happen several times a year.