Second day of practice teaching. Today's class was entirely different in setup and more advanced in their grasp of the Enlgish language. I was called to teach a class about American Culture and trends to this advanced group, it was probably the most intriguing thing I have ever experienced overseas.

I began class by asking each student to stand up and say their name, age and then one thing that they know about the US. The students followed suit and 90% of the student responded with words like "beautiful", "strong", "rich", "wonderful" etc. All extremely positive things that were clearly instilled by our glorious media machine.

(even the chinese word for America is "Meiguo" which means "Beautiful Country")


I then challenged them by asking them why they felt America was beautiful and glorious. They responded with a variety of answers. "The men are all very strong and all of the women are so beautiful." "Everyone is so rich in America" etc. needless to say this in some way or another made me fascinated in the thoughts of foreign nationals.

So then I promptly went into my monologue on why America like ALL countries is beautiful and glorious, wonderful and strong. I also explained that "American" is kind of a loose term because we are comprised of everyone in the world. They were amaized that there are "Chinese Americans" in America that ARE 'American'. That idea didnt really register clearly in the begining but eventually they began to get the idea. I also explained that America like all countries has beautiful people, but America in no way "sticks out" as an example of residential beauty.

I then proceeded to ask them what an American looks like. They immediately said "you! and people that are white." and then i pointed to some other people in the room who were Chinese and they said "NO!" and then I asked "why?" and they said "because that person is Chinese." I then proceeded to explain that "American" is literally everyone and takes no particular physical features... we are all primarily immigrants of the land... (drilling this in their heads was taxing but important).

I then ended the lesson by listening to them talk about Tyra Banks and America's Next Top Model and Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's former relationship and how Kobe Bryant is the best basketball player of today, etc. Not a bad class today, until Thursday!

TRYING TO SAVE PEOPLE FROM BEING SLAVES OF THE MEDIA!!!
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Oh yeah and you know how you catch people negatively bickering about you?...that happened today...not cool...but its ok. I just find it hilarious.

And I am still home searching for Shanghai...kind of scared about that, but we will see what happens!!!!