The First Weekend, July 14-15

Last Friday evening we were warmly welcomed by our hosts at the Baotou airport and then driven to our hotel where we are comfortably accommodated. Our rooms are air-conditioned and there is a computer and a flat screen TV in each of them. Unfortunately the internet connection is not always working, but we now have access to the school’s computer lab, equipped with about 75 desktop computers.

Last weekend we settled into our “home” for the next three weeks, went for walks on Saturday to orient ourselves and on Sunday morning we attended a one hour Chinese church service – along with perhaps 1000 other people! The first hymn was the familiar sound of “Praise Him, Praise Him.” We felt warmly welcomed as other worshippers gave us Chinese hymn books, opened to the Chinese words and showing the music in the tonic sol-fa format, and afterwards a choir member who spoke some English talked with us.

On Sunday afternoon in the school’s large auditorium, the opening ceremony was held for the 2012 Baotou Amity Summer English Program. After this we went to our classrooms and interviewed the 100 Chinese teachers to assess language ability and to divide them into four classes. Finally we were in the school and meeting the people we would be working closely with for three weeks!

On Sunday evening our hosts organized a visit to a Mongolian cultural theme park . We saw deer as we drove into this grassland area, and then yurts in which people were dining, and male and female hosts in Mongolian traditional dress. We walked around the area which included a small lake, an archery range, a horse corral, two camels, views of fields of grassland with the cityscape of highrises in the distance, and a memorial to the Mongolians. When we sat down to dine there were 14 of us including two school personnel who could speak English and translate. We were entertained by Mongolian singers and dancers and enjoyed a delicious Mongolian banquet with many toasts to each other!