The Doctors have left Chengde...

So, as mentioned in my last blog entry, there was a group of American doctors here for the past 10 days working at a private hospital and volunteering their time for some surgeries. They were all awesome. There was one day last week where we went to meet Adam and Rom (the two youngest doctors in this group) and they invited us up to the hospitality room where the other doctors were having a glass of wine. Meghan and I were in a room with 12 Americans. It was so exciting! This is the largest group of Americans we have been around in over 2 months. It was also weird, becuase we have gotten used to speaking so slowly. I felt like I was speaking so incredibly fast when I was talking at my normal speed with these doctors. I actually stopped once and said, "I feel like I am speaking so fast...can you understand me?" She thought it was hilarious once I explained why I felt that way.

For the past days we've been meeting up with Rom and Adam and recently Alan (one of the other dcotors). We took Rom one day around the summer mountain resort, which was a lot of fun. The doctors all left today though. So, that means that the foreigner population in our city is back down to 12.

Classes and everything are going really well. Meghan and I have been doing English corner on fridays and have been enjoying a great turnout of enthusiastic students that want to improve their English. However, we have requested that in the upcoming English Corners that we have a computer and projector so we can do some multimedia presentations too becuase our students are very interested in American culture. The student who helps organize English corner every week (her English name is Amy) has told us we will move it into a large lecture room for the remainder of the year. According to some of the students that have come to English corner, we are the first foreign teachers to regularly attend. That made me excited, becasue it shows that the students are coming to the event becuase they are eager to practice their English with Meghan and me.

At English Corner a couple weeks ago, a student named Candy, asked if she could help teach me Chinese. I agreed and told her that I would help teach her more English in return. So, I am meeting with her tomorrow for lunch and we are giong to set up a time. We are going to work on my Chinese for two hours per week and her English for two hours. That means that I have Candy as a private teacher along with my group of friends on campus (Vince, Ted, Arwen, Michael, Winter and Max) that are helping with my Chinese. This is a hard language, but I am really eager to learn as much of it as possible. It is great that so many students are willing to help me learn Chinese!

That's about it here. It's Sunday afternoon, so that means that I will have my weekly trip to the super market. Then, dinner with Meghan and the rest of the night finishing up lesson plans for the week and getting all of the materials ready. The nice thing is that since I am only teaching Enlgish Nursing students now, and all of my classes are at a similiar English speaking level, I really don't have to change my lesson plans very much from class to class. It makes preparing for my classes a lot less time consuming.

Oh yea, so for Election day I watched the results and live news feed from MSNBC and CNN.com. It was kind of a fun experience watching American election results from a foreign country. Meghan received her absentee ballot in the mail, but it came too late for her to get it back to the US on time. Oh well....I guess.


Hope all is well...