Rants
Monday, November 24, 2008
OIP Shen Zhen
Finally back from Shen Zhen. Definitely not as good as I thought it would be. In fact, I think it was pretty screwed up.
Days 1-3: We did absolutely nothing. We slept through the whole day on Day 1, went sightseeing and shopping on Day 2 and did more sightseeing on Day 3. Look, we can go check out the Mangrove Swamps and the nuclear power plant ourselves if we ever choose to, so why waste the frigging time from OIP on this??
Moved into my host's home at the end of the third day.Day 4: I cannot remember what we did on that day. Seriously. I think it involves us doing more sightseeing in Shen Zhen Primary school.
Day 5: We do something meaningful for the first time. Woohoo.
First we have English interaction with some special sec 3 class. Their English is actually quite good, especially when its written. It was quite interesting, but then there was a problem. We could have kicked ALL the guys from Shen Zhong out, and the entire session would have been nearly identical because the guys were simply daoing us upside-down. And when we broke down into smaller groups, my first groups that had myself, Nguyen the Vietnamese scholar and 3 Shen Zhong guys simply broke down because the Shen Zhong people started to play Chinese chess. The second group was much better. 2 girls and 1 guy with Nguyen and me. But I thought it was 2 girls only the whole time because the guy was sitting like 50cm away from the table, so I thought he belonged to another table completely. -.-
We sit in a Sec 3 class doing Chinese. I got a guy on my right and a girl on my left. The guy pretty much daoed me for the whole period, then he magically disappeared when I wanted to take a photo. Hmmmm...
We played sports with them, then we joined this funny interaction with sec 2s, which consist of the sec 2s asking questions off a notebook and then stoning at you after they finish all the questions on the notebook. Hmm...
Day 6: Went to Happy Valley.
Day 7: Went to Lian Hua Shan with the host family.
The guy on the right is my host.
Day 8-10: We had lesson observation with the host student. Whilst 3 days is plenty of time for an extrovert to make friends with a whole class, it isn't quite enough for somebody like me. ZZZ. If only I had balls to make conversation with people other than the 5 that my partner knows...
Day 11: Slacking time. Sec 3s were supposed to teach the Primary school kids English, and we were supposed to facilitate and help them do reflection etc etc. Sec 3s chose to use the high school musical song and then teach the more difficult words to them.
Day 12: Went to window of the world. Camwhore...
2 major things happened after that. Somebody was scamed into buying a piece of calligraphy work that he didn't even ask for, and another's buddy was robbed of a 1000 RMB handphone.
First the scaming. A group of us went up the fake Eiffel Tower in the W of the W, and there was this interesting booth for signature design and poem composition. We all went to do a signature design. Then one of the sec 3s decided to let the person compose a poem for his parents. After writing the poem on a small piece of paper, the person manning the booth evidently didn't think that the 100 RMB income was worth his time, so he 'offered' to do a brush version of the poem for 'free'. 'free' became 'material fee' when he started his work, which eventually came up to 600 RMB when he finished.
@#%^$&$%#%^#$^&@#%^@#!^%&#^%*$%
Eventually we paid 400 RMB for it. He had the cheek to tell us he shouldn't be trying to earn from students, and that he had too much money to spend any way.
Not entirely sure about the robbery thing, but apparently 4 teenagers pushed them into an alley and relieved the host of his handphone. Not very sure about the details.
Day 13: Had this interesting camp thing. To clarify: The camp sucks bad. The facilitation is off, the student facilitators obviously never received any proper instructions, the games didn't help build team spirit at all. But the group was definitely interesting and fun, although the group leader went through hell. She cried during a sharing session about one's fears, and then she cried again when her blindfolded partner fell and broke his lips. We heard that a group leader fainted while doing push-ups on Sunday. I have a strong suspicion its her. Shity camp, nice people.
Day 14: Class BBQ with host's class. Love to post photos, but it wasn't taken with my camera, and I have yet to figure out how to download QQ, so I can't get them yet -.-
Day 15: Left Shen Zhen. Host had food poisoning from BBQ, so didn't have chance to say goodbye. Sad.
C H R O N O I Z E D
8:50 PM