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One of my private classes is with a lovely young couple, "Christie" and "Chester". We meet once a week for a fairly informal English lesson. This week I invited them to my house for the first time, for a simple pasta bake meal followed by some ice-cream. They really enjoyed the food and then we took a deep dive into the past tense!
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 I don't think you want to be sitting on the urinal somehow!
I've done this before and sat through 30-40 videos of variable quality. But today there turned out to be 140 videos and the whole thing took 3½ hours! And unlike previous years none of the contestants was particularly outstanding. All very average. Oh well.
This is JD [bottom row, towards the right] as his class are about to launch into a patriotic song they've been learning recently, Lyrics include, "The glorious People's Party is the sun that warms the ground in China!" ...helps explain global warming.   Lessons at my Uni have started up again after the "Golden Week" holiday. This is one of my classes trying to rearrange the lyrics to the song "Love's Divine", sung by Seal, after I had cut and mixed up the words.
 "Starting" tomorrow is Kunming's long-awaited "COP15" Meeting. This huge UN Biodiversity Conference, involving 195 countries, has been the talk of the town here for literally years, having been put back three times due to COVID. Sadly, it was announced last month that it would now be a "virtual" conference which makes all the money spent on beautification. road repairs, flower-planting and "Welcome!" posters somewhat redundant. They say there will be a second face-to-face Conference here in April next year, but that remains to be seen. [COP means, "Conference of Parties" - I looked it up!]   JD and I have been knuckling down to some serious Lego building lately. I started out trying to make a zebra but it very quickly insisted on being a black-and-white bird! JD was inspired to recreate "Branch", one of the characters in his favourite film - "Trolls". Without any help at all from me, he managed to work out the colours, the pose, the eyes and the hair, all from memory! I only realised how accurate it was when I Googled a picture of the troll in questions. Just forgot the ears!  JiaJia and I challenged JD to an Art Competition last week (to get him off the iPad for an hour or two!). We decided to all draw the same thing (JD chose one of his aeroplane toys) with the best sketch winning a prize [L to R below: Jiajia's, JD's, mine]. Who won, do you think?  JD's schoolteacher is fully aware that Jiajia has a Masters in Art and JD's English is fluent, so she often sends us details of Art/English Competitions for us to enter "for the glory of the school". The painting below was a JJ/JD joint effort for Teacher's Day! 
A rare glimpse into Ma's previous life as a professional, and fairly famous, Beijing Opera star in Shanghai.  You'd think she might now enjoy participating in one of the multitude of park-based dancing groups that attract so many old people in Kunming, but she dismisses them as "amateurs" and prefers to spend her time gambling with her mahjong friends.
We took JD to a huge play centre yesterday, meeting up with a couple of his old Kindergarten classmates and their families. The kids had a blast, exploring all the rides and activities for over 3 hours [JD coming down the slide, top left].
My University lessons are back in full swing after an unusually long, but very welcome, two month Summer holiday. This was one of my classes earlier this week doing a "Running Dictation" exercise...  The Chinese Government have been rolling out a series of education reforms over recent months to "reduce the burden" on young students in China. These include banning online tutoring with teachers based abroad, removal of western printed textbooks, regulating after-school and weekend training classes and reducing homework and exams in Primary Schools. However, JD's school seem to be largely ignoring the "less work" parts. Completing his daily homework is taking longer than ever. He didn't finish until after after 10pm on Monday/Tuesday, though Wednesday/Thursday were "only" 8.30pm [see below]. Crazy.  Our ever-changing Lego display, featuring kit and scratch-built models made by both JD and I.  |
 About the blogger
Paul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and updates this blog about his life there every other day. Past blog entries
August 2021
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