bits & pieces

We continue chipping away at our various projects aimed at promoting our program and creating resources that we hope will help Chinese English teachers learn and employ new teaching methods.

Krista is working with the president of our organization to prepare materials – a speech and scholarly paper – that will be presented at an event in late June celebrating the organization’s 30 years of service in China. It is a tremendous opportunity to showcase the success of our Total Immersion Program and build relationships with the educators and leaders who can send more teachers for training.

Preston continues to work on a series of teacher training videos that hopefully will be valuable resources as follow-up training for teachers and for those unable to attend our program. While our current workload is keeping us out of the classroom, we continue building relationships through weekly meetings with our Chinese staff and organizing visits with students here in Beijing.

While a majority of our time is spent focused on computer screens, we have been fascinated to note the many changes taking place on the street outside our campus.

Just outside the campus gate, a new vendor selling Chinese bread products has proven irresistible as we return from our morning walks. The sellers are friendly and excited about talking with foreigners and the wares include warm buns filled with red bean and flatbread covered in egg and vegetables. Of course they are also fried in oil!

Up the street, we found our favorite restaurant gutted and gone without warning. We will miss the delicious and inexpensive food as well as the friendly owner who patiently spoke Chinese with us and didn’t mind repeating the names of the dishes every time we stopped by. Sadly, we wonder if we had smiled and nodded when she told us the restaurant was closing.

While we contemplate the question of the disappearing restaurant, the mystery of Internet shopping in Beijing has been solved. We have discovered that we can translate into English the website of a local shopping network, order online and have the item delivered for free by a bicycle courier, who can be paid in cash! Krista is enjoying a new ergonomic computer keyboard – remember the speech and paper – and no one had to venture into the electronics market, where all manner of electronic gear is available from aggressive, bargaining vendors.

The current session comes to end Friday and the next group of students will arrive June 10. We are planning to use the time to visit students around Beijing, visit the American Embassy to renew our passports, press on with our projects and prepare for the arrival of the summer volunteers. We continue to look to Him for strength and perseverance and remain thankful for the opportunities to serve.