KICKBALL!

A few weeks back, the university asked us foreign teacher's to cover for one of the Chinese teacher's that was sick. We had to be creative to figure out how we'd cover it and still be following our contract which only allows for us to teach 16 course hours each week. We ended up splitting up the classes and each picking lessons we wanted to cover. The course? American culture!

I chose to cover families, weddings, and sports in America.

For the wedding lesson we actually had a pretend ceremony. I had the students pick cards to decide who would play what role... except I ran into a problem when it came to groom's men - as there were only 3 boys in this class of 30. One had to be the groom, one the father of the bride, and the other, the best man. Afterward we had some "wedding cake" as I explained more about weddings in America.

And for the sports lesson, what's more all-American than kickball? Well, I guess you could say baseball, but kickball's a lot easier to play and teach. A few people had trouble knowing when and where to run (or to stop after you get to home plate). After about the 3rd inning they started to get the hang of it.

MAY SNAPSHOTS

When it comes to spring in Harbin, the two most beautiful places in the whole city are 林大 (the university where I teach) and the 植物园 (the botanical gardens which happens to be right next to my university). I'm not kidding, either. Check out these pictures!

Too bad the smell-o-net (smell-o-vision over the internet) has't been invented yet...If it had, I'd capture the smell of all the lilacs around campus and post them here for you.