Weekend adventures

Last Sunday I was invited to be a judge in a Film night which the students do every year. What they do is play clips from movies without the sound and they provide the dialogue. It is so interesting to see what they choose. What I found out is that these kids do know how to have fun - even though they attack things with a sense of purpose and determination, I think they do enjoy what they do outside of class. I also get the sense that they like to perform and don't feel very self conscious about performing. They are very self conscious about participating in class and in class are very hesitant to speak English out loud. Yet at this event they seemed not at all hesitant to speak.




The movie choices were very interesting as well. Of 15 "acts" there were 3 from "Forest
Gump", 3 or 4 Harry Potters (not all the same movie), 2 Princess Diaries (one skit from each movie), "The Sound of Music" and "The Devil Wears Prada", and a couple of others. The really interesting thing to me is that all 3 "Forest Gump" scenes included Forest's mothers death. They contained other scenes and they were not all the same but they all had the scene between Sally Field and Tom Hanks on the mothers death bed.




Some of the talk overs were pretty good - I could understand them and they were pretty well synchronized with the actual dialogue, some I could not understatnd very well, and some were not synched very well. They got through the 15 scenes (5 minutes or less) in about an hour and a half so they really moved. I didn't get a good chance to think about how to score them so I'm afraid my judging was a little uneven and I had one group ask me why I gave them low scores - we had to sign our judging forms.




Then all the judges had to have our pictures taken with all the MCs for the night - there were 4. We were treated very royally and with a great deal of respect by the students. I'm not very good at receiving the royal treatment so I try to be informal much of the time. Here that's a little harder.

Saturday we set off to find the Zhou Enlai museum. He went to university in Tianjin - Nankai University where we go to English corner every Sunday morning. He is well loved by the Chinese people as one who was very concerned with the well being of China and the development of its people. He died in 1976, the same year Mao died and the Cultural Revolution ended. His museum or memorial is actually to both he and his wife who worked for the advancement of women in China. She is also revered in China. The museum has many panels about their lives that are translated into English but the captions of the pictures are only in Chinese - and there are hundreds of pictures. There were also thousands of Chinese people there. Its great how they organize the different tours. Each tour had on a different colored baseball cap. I thought that was an inovative way to organize so many people. We had a little trouble getting in because, although there is no charge to get in we still needed a ticket and they needed something from us before we could get a ticket and they couldn't explain in English and we couldn't understand Chinese. Someone finally helped us and we got the ticket we needed. We showed them our teachers ID and got the ticket. Once inside, no one asked to see our ticket. We also tried to wander around the building outside. A guard stopped us at one point, so we wandered in the opposite direction. The museum was very nice, new, set up like one we would visit in the US, a good place to take visitors if they are interested.

Saturday afternoon we went with someone I had met at English corner to find a bicycle. We went to his old neighborhood and met with a man who fixes up bikes for a living. We think we'll be able to get a couple of used bikes for not too much. We have been advised by several people that getting a new bike may not be a good idea because new bikes often get stolen. So today or tomorrow (Monday or Tuesday) we should have a bike to ride around Tianjin. Now I'm excited. We'll see how excited I am after trying to negotiate the traffic in Tianjin for a while. Maybe I can hook the camera up to my chest and take pictures as I ride. I probably won't do that for a while. I think this will help our range as far as how far we go. Walking is great but it just doesn't cover enough ground. The only problem with riding verses walking it won't be as easy to pop into interesting looking stores, food places. I think that is part of James' motivation! People do not wear bike shorts, shoes, or helmets here so I am sure we aren't going to. That kind of a fashion statement may not be appreciated!

Sunday evening we had dinner with Sarmad Aflatooni (guess what nationality he is). Sarmad is a physician who finally has a job as a physician in Beijing begining in May. He is taking Mandarin lessons from a young lady he thought was a good teacher and he wanted to introduce us to her in case we might want to use her as a tutor. So last night we had dinner and met Li Lingzhi who is going to be our Mandarin tutor for the time being. She seems like a very nice person and Sarmad assures us that she is very patient. She also had a great sense of humor and seemed to be teasing Sarmad which I have not seen much from Chinese people. I pointed at his shoes and commented that he has as many as women do. She commented back that maybe he is a playboy! She is about 30 and is very lively and laughs alot. She seems to think that in 3 months (with study, maybe?) we may be able to ask for and get what we want and need in Tianjin. I also hope I can have a decent conversation with a cab driver but that remains to be seen.
After English corner yesterday, Sunday, we ate at TGIF with 2 other expat couples. The menu was just like in the US and the food was, too. Another nice place to bring visitors. The only thing different with my ceasar salad was the dressing and they always serve the water hot here, probably for health reasons. The price was also like in the US, though, so that will be a place to visit when we want a salad which we don't really eat here.
One thing I am learning here, or have learned here is we are stretching ourselves daily and to do that we or I have fear daily. So, I am in the process of developing the virtue of courage and ridding myself in the process of the veil of fear. How about that! Thanks to my Divine Teacher!
More to come on Grayson James. He is home and doing fine. Can you see our smiles?