Classes at Jing-Shan

The American classes are the silver lining to each new school day at Jing-Shan. Our American classes are scattered throughout the course of the day so that way we don’t have to sit through the Jing-Shan classes not understanding a single word of a lecture. Wednesdays are the worst days because we don’t have our American classes until after lunch. Our American classes consist of martial arts, tai chi, brush painting, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese, English, and knot tying.
Of all our American classes, my favorite is knot tying class. We only have knot tying on Fridays, period 1 and period 2. The knot tying teacher is really sweet and she’s so good at knot tying. Just by taking a glance at your knot, she can quickly tell you whether or not its dui (correct) or bu dui (incorrect).

Last Friday, I got the chance to talk to her before class began and I found out that her son’s in my class! She wouldn’t tell me his name because she wanted me to guess who he is. She gave me two hints, only one of which I understood, which is that her son is shy. After hearing this, I was like great… he won’t be difficult to identify out of our class of 50 students and 36 of them being boys. Haha..

Chinese calligraphy is sometimes fun but it’s very tedious and slow going so you need a lot of patience for it. It takes a lot of practice just to perfect each character stroke. Usually, during one of our art classes, one person always ends up getting frustrated.

Chinese brush painting is one of the few ancient Chinese arts that I enjoy doing. It’s less tedious than Chinese calligraphy and it looks very pretty too.

(my pitiful attempt at trying to draw a bamboo tree)

北京奥林匹克: 水立方和鸟巢

On Saturday, the American group and I took a field trip to go see and go into the Birds Nest and the Water Cube.

We boarded a small mini bus in front of Jing-Shan around 8:40ish and arrived around 9:20. We got off the bus and immediately heard the song Beijing Huan Ying Ni blasting through the loud speakers all around the streets.


Upon arriving, we first went to the Olympic park to walk around. Located down the street from the Birds Nest and the Water Cube, the Olympic Park was pretty peaceful. It was kind of like a forest. There were many trees off into the distant and there were many big rocks surrounding the area. Since some of the others, Hannah, Clara, and Carolyn and I were tired, we decided to sit down while the rest of the group walked around the park.


Afterwards, we headed off to see the inside of the Water Cube. I had wanted to go inside the Water Cube for the longest time after watching Michael Phelps on t.v. winning his eight gold medals.

When I entered the Water Cube, I was so surprised. The inside of it was so peaceful and calm. On the left wall, there was an LCD t.v. screen showing clips from the 2008 Olympic events.It was hard to believe that last year, the whole arena was packed with athletes from all different countries all over the entire world competing to be number 1. The diving boards were my favorite. I took so many pictures of that. From a distance, the diving boards don't look that tall and the decieving height makes diving look kind of easy. But in reality, the diving boards are of course really high up.


This is where Michael Phelps won his 8 gold medals!!!!

The pools and the whole room give off such a peaceful feeling. It feels like you're being transported away to a more serene place.

You couldn't go down to where the pool is since there were people guarding the area.

The ceiling is decorated to look like large bubbles. The outside of the water cube looks better during the night because each bubble can change colors, so one second the whole water cube would be green and the next the water cube would change to red and etc.


The last place we visited to that day was the Birds Nest.

The inside of it was huge. There were probably more than a million seats circling around inside the arena.

It was an open ceiling so sun light beamed down from high above and hit the floor of the stadium. The stadium was huge. In the middle, there were huge Fuwa statues that people could chose to pose next to and get their picture taken.

A few minutes into the visit, a scheduled performance began. Six people dressed in Fuwa costumes danced around, doing hand gestures and jumps, while loud playful music played in the background. There were five Olympic mascots: BeiBei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing, and NiNi dancing. The sixth performer was an ox representing this years Zodiac animal. All together the six of the danced for about five to eight minutes. After watching the small performance, I noticed the running track on the floor. It was hard to believe that just a few months ago, Usain Bolts, the fastest man in the world, set and broke multiple new world records.

I would definitely love to go back to see the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. Although I liked the Birds Nest, I loved the Water Cube and wouldn't mind going back there a few hundred times more.

(The inside of the Birds Nest!! You can see the big red Fuwa in the middle!)

Differences

Sorry I haven’t been updating for a while, my internet connection on my host family’s laptop wasn’t really working.
There has been so much going on at Jing-Shan. Last week, instead of morning exercises, all the students had to running laps around the school. The students would line up single file with their classes, boys in one line and girls in another line, and then run behind their class leader circling around the school and the basketball courts. When I was first told that we had to run outside, I was really excited, until I found out how freezing cold it was. It was so cold that my ‘run’ turned into a slow jog. Our class leader ran very quickly, so by the end of the run, the whole class was beat red and began loudly panting after running as hard as they could to try to keep up with him.
After being at Jing-Shan for two full weeks, I’ve noticed quite a few differences between the schools in America and the schools in China. The teachers in China are usually much respected; however, during class students don’t necessarily give all their undivided attention to them. I’ve noticed that in many of my classes, kids around me do homework for other classes instead of listening to their teacher lecture. The teacher does take notice that students aren’t paying attention and that they are doing homework for other classes, but he//she doesn’t do anything about it. The boy who sits in front of me does his physics homework while in math. Doing this minimizes the hours of homework they would have to do later on when they get back home. My host sister, Shengnan, has virtually no homework when she gets home so all she does is study for the next day’s test or quiz. In America, the teachers do mostly get the students undivided attention and if the students do homework that’s not relevant to their current class, the teachers would get angry and tell them to stop.
Another more noticeable difference I’ve seen here is that, at Jing-Shan, students don’t switch classrooms unless it’s for an elective. Usually, the students stay in one classroom while the teachers move. I think in some ways this is better because the students don’t have to hectically find rush to their next class. I’ve also noticed that the kids in my classroom have a tight bond with each other. Unlike the schools in America, where your classmates in each class can vary, the students at Jing-Shan have the same classmates for every class. I think there are definitely pros and cons to this because in some ways, the students can form tightly-knit bonds with each other and become like one big family however, in other ways, students would end up having a harder time interacting with kids from other classes.
Although schools in China have many differences compared with schools in America, it’s impossible to say which school system is better because each one has its own benefits and its own flaws.
This week so far has been really fun and exciting. My new favorite teacher is the music teacher. He’s very funny. He teachers choir but most of the time he’s the one singing while his students are busy chatting and texting away on their cell phones.
Right now, it’s late Sunday night and I should probably go to bed soon. Tomorrow’s the start of another school week and I can’t wait for it to begin.