Day Five

Hey all you lovely people

Once again thanks so much for all your kind emails.  Its the little things that make you feel special and receiving all your emails is flippn awesome.  Its amazing how in a city that has twice the population of New Zealand you can feel so isolated when there is only a few 'westerns' around.

Today we were back at the Water College to teach.  We spent the morning in the class room going through research questions and ensuring that the concept of the proposal was understood. Its not that these students aren’t smart - flip they are, its more they need an understanding of the method and concept of this paper. They understand the content just fine! 

At 11am went walked across the road out of the College and into the student area - this has two three story cafeterias that feed 7500 people everyday for lunch and dinner.  Students have no cooking facilities in their rooms so they rely  on the campus to feed them.  We has our traditional one meat and two veges with rice.  I am getting awesome at eating everything with chopsticks - rice, whole pieces of meat. ye-ah!

After lunch we found a shop and brought a drink and some note books to be able to record the progress of each of the groups we are working with - I have three groups which is about 17 students.

We drew up a game plan for the afternoon in the library on the fourth floor as there is aircon and its was 26degrees today!

We then met the students and sat out on the grass under the shade and worked with each individual group to finalize research questions and objectives before letting them loose to work as a group independently of us on their proposals.   It was intense hour but we are really happy with the progress each group is making.  There are however some groups that havent even turned up for class and that have no chance of passing at all.

We got a taxi back to the apartments and managed to watch the All Blacks game on skype as John's wife Christine of Astrolabe (go check them out in mot!) pointed the computer at the tv.. was awesome!

At about 7.30pm we walked down the street and found a restaurant that has a picture menu and ordered some dinner. I got prawns.. so yum. We got fried rice but not as we know it in NZ, some other form of meat, a fish dish and a vege dish.. yum!

We are now working on some course work for our students before heading to bed.  We also have to start thinking about our own research projects that are due a week after we get home. I havent had a chance to look at it yet but hoping to get on to this tomorrow.  We are heading to Shanghai for the day on Tuesday as Tuesday and Wednesday are holidays in this area as Hangzhou are hosting the 'special games' of china.  Wednesday will hopefully be a muck around day where we can sleep and do homework.

Apparently the shopping in Shanghai  is crazy.. I am so looking forward to it. More than happy to add some kilograms to my baggage on the way home!

Thanks for dropping by to read :)

Thats all for now.

Lucy x

HIGHLIGHTS:

Watching the All Blacks Play!

LOWLIGHTS:

INTERESTING:

We have seen numerous people with umbrellas when its not even that sunny, finally realized that they want to keep their skin white all the time as it is a sign of status.  The whiter you are the higher up the food chain you are.. sa-weet deal for me!