Thursday morning, Emily needs to leave a little early today. She gives her level 1 students an exam tomorrow and needs a little more preparation time to get everything done by tomorrow. Next week and the week after she'll only be teaching the kindergarten (apart from a couple more days of level 1), and then she's done!
Jesse has the History of Chinese Philosophy class at Wuhan University today. Always a discouraging one for him because he realizes just how little he really understands. But he can usually bounce back by Friday afternoon.
They have a Russian friend coming for a visit on Friday, staying till Sunday when she will take the HSK Chinese language exam. Jesse will also be taking it, but more for the experience. He has to score a six (the highest score for the middle test level) and there's NO way he'll be able to get that (unless he guesses REALLY well) so he's feeling pretty laid back about it. By the end of next year he should be able to get a six, which he needs to graduate from the MA program.
Just yesterday he started working on a paper on Wang Yangming, a Chinese philosopher and statesman from the Ming Dynasty (think 14th-15th Century). Nothing much. Probably something you might write for a freshman course. Very basic, just getting the main ideas down. And he's enjoying learning.
Emily has started studying new 'family' related words, from a book we read (in English). We gave a Chinese copy to some friends of ours to read. They liked it a lot, apart from the fact that the translation was not quite the same. Perhaps Jesse can explain in another post about things being 'harmonized' here. It's a rather new cultural phenomenon. Anyway, in order to improve her Chinese, and our friend to improve her English, they are each doing recordings of the book for each other and trading them. That way they can listen to the book and read along.
That's all for today,
- Wednesday
You guys sound uberbusy. We'll be praying for you and all your studies - teaching and learning. And we're praying for your 'family' as well. Sounds like you guys are really making an impact. We sure miss you and think of you often.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the Nut Drink sounds hilarious. ;)