Church and the Zhaoqing School for the Deaf 10/22/08

It's been a busy week. Shane, aka Guo Yong Xing (eternal star) is busily preparing for the speaking contest in Guangzhou on Sat. It is about a 2 hour bus ride there and I will go with him. I've been coaching him and he learns quickly. He is quite driven to master the English language which he has already done quite well. The Cantonese he speaks does not have an R sound so we work on that. The V sound is quite weak in his language too so we work on that too. My speech background has helped as I was somewhat able to analyze his speech and give him some feedback.

Sunday James and I went to the Catholic Church in Zhaoqing run by Fr. Li (Lee). He was quite nice. Of course it was all in Chinese. I told James I really enjoyed that sermon! He had a most quizzical look on his face. Peter from England and Sister Rosa from Hong Kong were also there. Peter is about 6'5" tall. He is married to a Hong Kong Chinese woman and assists Fr. John Wotherspoon at the school. Sr. Rosa took my geolog back to the Marco Polo school for the students and staff to make some entries in either Pinyun, characters or pictures. I will retrieve it in about a week. Can't wait to see the results and bring it back to the States to show the students there.

Yesterday I did my presentation at the Zhaoqing School for the Deaf where Yang Jing Guo is the principal. About 20 teachers and staff attended the workshop on teaching expository writing skills to deaf students. It was well received I believe; got the major points across. The students were so cute, peeking through the curtains at this Mei Guo / American to sate their curiosity. The sign for America here is the same as ours. Shane took lots of pictures and was quite enamored with the students but realizes how tough it must be to actually teach deaf students. I said, "like yeah!" Jeff was my interpreter and Shane told me he did a great job as Shane was a good listening post for Jeff's Cantonese interpretations.

At the moment I have three dinner invitations, er, two dinner and one morning tea at a restaurant next week. They should all be great. Jeff wants me to come over for a family meal and then for ping pong with his two sons. That should be challenging as they all tell me "You know, ping pong is our national sport!" Of course I knew that and have visions of getting a ping pong table for our new home when I return. We always had one when I was growing up otherwise I might feel slightly threatened. :-)

Well, enough verbiage, off to post some pictures. Hope some folks will drop a note when they have chance. Bye for now. Frank