Donkey!

So, this afternoon/evening ended up being more eventful than I had planned for it to be. As you all already know, we had our meeting at the university today. So, picking back up where I left off.....

The afternoon was spent creating course outlines and discussion/activity ideas for class. Then, Megan, Chris and Travis came over to Meghan's apartment. I met up with them. Maggie then stopped by with Meghan and my schedule. We are teaching seven periods of oral English to different medical classes. Each class meets with us once per week for 1 hour and 40minute class sessions. Here is my class schedule:

Mondays- 3:20-5 pm

Tuesdays: 1010 am - 1150 am
320 pm - 5 pm

Wednesdays: 320-5 pm

Thursdays: 1010-1150 am


Friday 130 pm - 310 pm
320-5 pm

Then, after Maggie left, we decided to go and get dinner. We walked around aimlessly using the same standard for restaurant choosing as previous days. It must have guests in it and look relatively non-sketcy compared to the surrounding restaurants. We chose one that ended up being a fantastic choice (mostly). As we walked in, all of the female waitresses said "hello" to us. We were surprised that they knew that much English. Then, a waitresstook us to a private room with a round table, air conditioner unit and a lazy suzan on the table. And guess what!?!? She spoke English very flunetly. Also, the menu had pictures. It was more than we could've asked for! We asked the waitress for recomendations. She recomended two dishes that were like a stew. One had donkey and potoes, the other had pigs feet and potatoes. We also ordered cold noodles. The dishes came and the food smelled terrific. I did not eat the pig feet. The donke was amazing. It was very tender. The potatoes were fantastic. Being a meat and potatoes boy, this was an amazing meal. It ended costing each of us 17 rmb, which is less than $2.5 US. Not bad....

After this, Chris, Travis and Megan were saying that they have found our new Perkins for while in Chengde. It is a 3-story McDonalds that was open 24 hours. We decided to go for desert. It was fantastic. They also had star-wars toys, so I had to get one for fun. (Dad--if you want it when I get home, it's yours!!).

While at McDonalds, we were discussing teaching ideas and found some good ones. Chris mentioned an idea that I think we are all going to run with. He thought that it would be fun to break our classes into groups of 4 or 5 and have them make commercials. We would give each group a random item (such as a McDonalds toy) and have them prepare a 1-minute "infomercial" type speech, to persuade us to buy that product.

After this awesome brainstorming session at McDonalds, we decided to head back to our apartments and call it a night.

Oh yea, since ive of my classes are freshman classes, I don't have to teach a full schedule next week. Freshman arrive to campus tomorrow, then have military training. Therefore, their classes don't start until Monday the 23rd. Therefore, next week I only teach one class on Tuesday and one class on Friday. Pretty nice, huh?