We are coming to the end of our teaching. Today (July 30, 2009) is the last day of classes with the closing ceremony tomorrow morning and then a party at the school that Jane, Sonia and I will host for all of our teachers.
The weather is cooler and the last couple of days wetter. However, we have umbrellas so we can keep fairly dry. The only real problem is you have to be extra careful crossing the street.
Last Saturday, our liaison, Mr.Ni took us to the Egret Island International Echo Park about two and a half hours from here. It is truly beautiful with a big lake and walkways and a lookout building where you can see hundreds of white egrets. There is a building development along the lake that is very nice. After lunch we went to the hot springs on the property. Each of the hot springs has a different function but they were all beautiful.
Sunday morning we headed for church. The service has a time before the worship to go over and practice the hymns for the day. As you enter the church, there are a number of people selling on the street. There is everything from food to shoes. They know that there will be well over 1500 people coming to the service and as a result they are there to sell their goods. Following the service there are a number of poor people outside begging for money. The service itself had some hymns I did not know. However they have “Holy, Holy, Holy” and the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed. During the service, we had many people offer us hymn books and Bibles. There were in Chinese but it shows the universality of the Christian community to reach out to the stranger. The pastor provided us with a Chinese-English hymn book and Bible. During the service one of the pastors sat with us and explained the service. Although I did not understand the Chinese, I did feel that it was a great experience to worship with so many people who have a real Christian commitment. Following the service we met the pastor and a couple of the elders who were organizing baptismal certificates. Keeping with Uxbridge tradition, the last two Sunday s we went for a coffee.
I have always found the Chinese very gracious and warm to us “foreigners”. It is no exception here. People from all walks of life acknowledge us and say greetings to us. It is nice to be so far from home but still see warm smiles.
As part of this new Amity program, we are asking our teacher-students to be more involved in the classes. As I mentioned last week, the first week they did a presentation on hobbies or their use of spare time. Last week, each student prepared a short lesson to deliver to their classmates. It was great. This week, today, each student working with a couple of others prepared a full lesson of 30-40 minutes. They did some wonderful teaching with amazing power point presentations. It was a great ending to the classes. In China, it is important to note that they have large classes of 40-75 with 40-45 minute periods. There is a great deal of concern about this matter and work is being done at various levels to lessen this load. Overall, the teachers that we have worked with have been extremely professional and willing to work together in learning from us and teaching us as well.
It has been another wonderful experience with just one day to go.
Good bye for now from Ma’anshan China.
David Phillips
David Phillips works in The Vine: Connecting People, Places and Programs at the national office of The Presbyterian Church in Canada.