I am switching back to Blogspot. Not a fan of alternet, I have to say. I may try to import the posts from there to here but not quite yet.
By the way, I am home now but will finish this if only to have a place to put my photos.
Anyway, back to Baotou.
We started the day early at 8am for a Faculty/Staff exchange. Michael and I met with Mr. Sun, the Director of Student Affairs. He gave us a 24 point list of all of his responsibilities. The first three had to do with teaching students about 'the party' and identifying the best students to join the Student League (communist party junior) and identifying the best League members to join 'the party'. BTW, Mr. Sun is a member of the party. I didn't quite know how to build off of that but fortunately, Michael is way better at asking questions.
We toured the student counselling department. It was very similar to the one in Xuzhou, right down to the sand boxes with little toys and the 'relaxation chairs' which Mr. Sun called hypnosis chairs. It was kind of weird to see the state's hand so clearly involved. These are two very different Post Secondary institutions (university vs Technical College) in different provinces with different students but with
exactly the same services.
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| Relaxation room, just like in Xuzhou |
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| More grads wandering around campus. |
We also visited the dormitories but we didn't get to go into a room. Six students to a room. Yikes!. The list of rules and expectations took up half a wall in the lobby.
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| Dorm room occupants (in 6 packs) |
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| The rules |
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Men's dorms (complete with cop shop on the ground floor - these students
are so well behaved, I don't even want to hazard a guess what they do there) |
At 10am, we were booked for a group discussion. Knowing from the last time we had a group discussion, this was time for just the group to meet and discuss what we had learned. All we wanted at this point was some coffee. Coffee as we know it in North America just isn't common in China. And some of us really wanted some coffee, unsweetened, no powdered milk, coffee. So Niya, sweet sweet Niya, organized a bus so we could have our meeting at Starbucks! At the mall!! Where we discussed intensely what we had learned (we learned that Starbucks is the only place in China with decent coffee and we discuss that - intensely).
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| Starbucks China has way better looking snacks. Alas, I was too full to try any. |
Then we had our lunch break in the mall (or if you were the guys, outside of the mall). A quick spin around the stores, including a place where I bought a t-shirt and didn't buy the million coffee mugs I wanted. Then Niya and I went to find some lunch. I broke down and ordered a pizza, I just wanted something familiar. cut to a picture of my 'familiar' pizza, with raisins on top.
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| Durian pizza, just awful! |
Turns out, they brought me the wrong pizza. No worries, I don't care, I will eat it anyway. I took one bite. Durian!!! A durian pizza. That is wrong on so many levels, I barely know where to start. For those of you who haven't enjoyed the far east, Durian is a fruit that smells like decaying flesh. Yum. They tell me it tastes better than it smells but I can say for sure, that that pizza was disgusting. or at least the one bite I managed to gag down.
Back on the bus at 2:10 for our 3pm Perspectives in Learning, Visit to Early Learning Centre, Kindergarten and Children's Palace.
This wasn't like a kindergarten in Canada. This is a private school where kids can go, for a fee, for after school and weekend classes. They may have all day school too but that was unclear. Basically, little kids can take extra classes at the Children's Palace. Sally was taking her English classes there. We started in the bookstore. It was like a college bookstore. downstairs is a grocery store so busy parents can shop while their kids are in class! Kids don't have down time. They take classes at school and then more classes after school and sometimes on weekends. Sally is in dance, English, music. She is probably getting off light compared to some kids.
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| The 'kindergarten' bookstore. I bought some postcards while we were waiting. |
The Children's Palace was unreal. For older kids (up to 14) there were classrooms for 3D printing, aeronautics, electronics, robotics.
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| I just loved this. they are building robots but they spelled it Roberts. Still kids, |
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| Aeronautics lab |
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| Examples of 3D printing (on a cool wall) |
For the little kids (5-7?), they had experience rooms where kids could try out different jobs. I have a million pictures. They could learn to be cooks, police, fire fighters, tea services, doctors, lawyers, clothing designers, craftspeople, etc. I can tell you a bunch of 5 year olds playing 'court' is about the cutest thing you will see, as long as you don't think about it too much.
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| Niya and Lynette learning how to be newscasters. They even had tiny suits in the room. |
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| Tiny police officers learning how to salute |
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| Tiny tea service |
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Tiny fashion designers
(no, they are not just playing with dolls, don't be ridiculous) |
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| Tiny court |
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| Tiny drummers |
This reminds me of the several conversations we had with faculty, families and students about how students chose their majors. Majority seem to have it chosen for them by the parents. I sense that may be changing and maybe this type of early exposure to jobs will help future high school grads make their own decisions. I can't say that Canadian students have a prefect track record of choosing the best program right out of HS either. Anyway, pictures:
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| Our kindergarten hosts. |
After touring the 'kindergarten' and meeting with the faculty for some questions and tea, our host families picked us up directly from there. My host family had a special dinner planned. As we were just pulling into the complex, Lily got a phone call. John was missing! General panic from the hosts. We lost a Canadian! Apparently, one of the other families had agreed to pick him up but forgot (?) and nobody else knew that, and John had wandered off to find a bathroom. When he came out, we had all left. So there he was, far from anywhere, with no ride. He got to make the only adult decision any of us got to make that whole week, he waited a bit then called a cab and went home.
We did get to ask "Where's John? Is John missing or just in the bathroom?' every 5 minutes for the rest of the trip though, so that amused us greatly.
Once the great John mystery/crisis had been solved/resolved, we were off to dinner. Chi Pei came with and so did another family whose names were never offered. They also had a little girl, aged 4.
Chi Pei had asked me if I like white wine. Yes, I said. So he brought white wine. or what they call white wine but is actually Baijiu. A whole wine glass of baijiu, and enough toasts to finish it off!
They took me to a restaurant that specializes in Beijing food. They ordered a Beijing Duck. These are not cheap. They spent so much money on me, I still feel guilty. There was the duck, a whole fish, mutton (of course), pork, veggies, salad, peanuts, and more. They were stacking places on top of plates in some sort of gluttonous pyramid just to fit it all on the table. All washed down with Baijiu.
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| Baijiu/white wine |
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| unnamed 4 year old in a cool t-shirt, eating ice cream for dinner instead of duck |
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| This was before the duck had even arrived. |
Then we went home and finally exchanged gifts. I had brought each of them a t-shirt from Camosun and a bottle of ice wine and some smoked salmon. they meh'd at the wine and salmon and loved the t-shirts.
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| Chi Pei, Sally and Lily in their Camosun Swag! |
