Well after days of ridiculously-long posts, here’s something short and sweet (no guarantees though, I’m rather long-winded).
I’ve more or less gotten used to the street soundtrack playing every morning. But today morning was something new. It was a recording promoting something they were selling downstairs, and the only word I can barely make out was 豆浆and I’m not even too sure about that.
Anyway, today would be our first IS class. I’ve always loved IS since it gave me new knowledge, and interesting things to read up about. Our IS class is conducted by Ms Zhang Hong. Her grasp of English was rather commendable and I could mostly understand what she was saying.
Our location was classroom 704 today, a slightly more run down room than Room 604, but still decent. I would have loved this OEC module even more if only it didn’t start out with such a heavy subject: Business and investing.
English phonetic cards on the walls of Room 704.
I was sleepy about an hour into a lesson, almost right after she dove headfirst into describing China’s economy. While I don’t want to be ignorant about the world or China’s economy, it was not my most favourite topic and I couldn’t relate to half of what she was talking about.
Nonetheless, the lesson gave us some good insights into the Chinese culture, and maybe it may not have been what she taught, but more of what happened during the course of today’s lesson. More later in the reflections.
Anyway, I home alone today! I’ve started referring to my dorm room as “my home”, because it’s just another step to help myself immerse into the local culture. Anyway, The Roomies are out to hunt for a Halal restaurant with some of the Malay LSCT kids, so I decided to stay in for dinner and get some work done, before I procrastinate and let it pile up.
So mmm since I’ve only been to class and then back at home, I don’t have much to share today, other that what I’ve observed and heard today in class. To the Reflections-Mobile! /Cue themesong!
Reflections:
I’ve heard somewhere before that one of the biggest differences between Western and Eastern culture is the importance of punctuality. While the Westerners are lenient and willing to give you a grace period, the Easterners are not as forgiving, and are actually extremely particular.
So I guess it came as no surprise as we all started off on the wrong foot with Ms Zhang when some of the LSCT kids came in late for class.
This should be where the phrase “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” comes in. When in China, do as the Chinese do, because this is their country and we should respect their way of life of being punctual and attentive in class.
Remember how I was talking about appreciating all the small things we took for granted back in the homeland? There was another one today: the teaching equipment.
We stopped for about four ten-minute breaks in total today, because the teaching equipment kept breaking down and was due to be changed the next day. Nonetheless, I can’t help but notice how incredibly inconvenient this was for the teachers. To have your class disrupted by discrepancies in technology; such a waste of time!
In Singapore, we have visualisers, projectors, OHPs in every classroom, not only in polytechnics, but even in Primary schools. Here, updated teaching equipment is rare and Ms Zhang actually commented on how envious she and her colleagues were of the high-tech teaching equipment we have available around our schools.
I don’t think I’ve ever thought about teaching equipments this way. They’ve always been so on-hand and available, there was never a need to think of what would happen if they weren’t. Come to think of it, it would certainly make studying in class a lot less interesting.
