The blog deleted, I feel better now.

July 27, 2015

I deleted a blog. It was about what I observed in two different teachers' classes. The two teachers have quite different styles, one was interactive and communicative, and the other was informal lecturing.

I struggled these days for publishing it. It's not because what I said is not true, but I felt sad for commenting on a teacher's not-so-good instruction. That's not my nature. But when  I seeing the students sitting there yawning several times, I felt guilty not saying anything for them.

But now I felt even more guilty not talking with the teacher face to face, which now I think would be the better choice than writing a blog without her knowing what was expected.

Every teacher has their awareness and they know quite well what kind of class activities are better for their classes. I do not understand her students as well as she does, hence I am not supposed to criticise her on her instruction. I should be more suggestive instead of jumping into that conclusion.

And I learned how to organize my own class after all. That's what I am here for.

After deleting the blog, I feel better. Thank goddness! Hope no one is hurt.



So,

Oh, A Lovely Lovely Little Girl!

Oh, A Lovely Lovely Little Girl!

July 20th, 2015

I had been to New York for 2 days this weekend. I had no time to go anywhere but learnt Ba Gua in a Zen place. Before I came back to New Haven I went to TJ Max which was near the hotel I lived in. After grabbing what I needed, I rushed to the Cashier, thinking about catching the train, when I met this lovely little girl.

I was first attracted by a sweet little girl's voice from a shelf on my left. A two-year-old girl was skipping up to her mom, saying something like Spanish with a small red plastic bag in her left hand. Her mother, a young lady, sitting on a pram and playing her mobile phone, gave a very short response without even looking up at the little girl. The poor girl judged her mother's face for a while then turned back to a shelf with a reproachful pout.

Only several seconds later, she ran out, waving a more colorful plastic little packet, smiling and saying something with those expecting dark eyes. Her mother looked up with no feeling clearly seen on her face, said another short response. The girl drawned and retracted her lip  and turned to a man standing by with a begging voice. Just as she turned to her father(I supposed he was the father), the mother held up her right index finger swinging it  to the father and her mouth moved for some words with no sound.  The father receive the meaning and hugged the poor girl and said something comfortingly. With a disappointed sign, the girl went back to the shelf.

 A little while later, she jumped out and moved hesitately toward her mom. Presenting the yellow and green packet to her mom, she murmured several words. Her mother did not looked up at her this time and kept silent. (I supposed she tried to hardern her heart because any mother could not refuse the little girl's request if seeing her begging yet worrying dark eyes. ) The girl began to whimper, then sobbed. Finally it turned into crying. Her mother let her cry for a while without looking at her, then patted her on her back and shh-ed comfortingly. The poor lovely little girl stopped crying, wiped away her tears and went back into another aisle.

After several minutes, I did not find her coming out. As I was guessing whether she would give up,  the lovely girl appeared with another colorful packet in her little right hand. She held it so high above her head and walked steadily toward her dad, who was now checking out with the cashier. She stood on her tiptoes and handed it to the cashier HERSELF! What a clever girl!

Did she got it? No. Perhaps this is another time she tried to use her "tatctics" to get what she wants. Her parents are used to that. I was once such a parent as well. I felt a little sorry for her. But what a lovely girl!

 

A Trip to Boston

July 15th, 2015

Boston is a place where two famous universities are located, where Americans began to fight for their own independence, where only four hours’ drive from New Haven.

With great expectation, I and my colleagues went to Boston at the last weekend. The first stop was the famous statue of John Harvard, who according to some story was the creator of Harvard but turned out to be one of the donators of Harvard University. There is also a saying that his left foot will bring good luck to those who touch it. So almost every visitor goes up to shot a picture with it. With hundreds and hundreds of people touching it, the first half of his left shoe was so noticeably shining on its base, which seems a proof that touching does really work and which attracts more people going up and touching.:)  Did I touch it? No. It was so popular, crowded with people waiting to take a photo. But I am not a photo fan, you know.

             

In Harvard, most of the empty space in front of the teaching buildings were occupied with different styles of chairs placed in circles for the convenience of discussion. This reminded me of the idea of indoor designing of Microsoft Corp: give brilliant brains some space to talk and create. Discussing casually would help a lot for innovative ideas and future Nobel prize winners.

 

Another aspect of Harvard is its red-wall-white-window buildings. Though the buildings are not so 16th-century styled as those in Yale, these red-white-matched buidings are so classic and amazing.

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology was our next destination, where we also found some amazing architectures. I love them feeling they are so sacred and scientific.

 

 

In the afternoon, we went to Boston beech. Wow, so many people of different races and ethnics, speaking different languages. Standing among them, I finally felt the sense why America is called a melting pot. what an important discovery! :)

 

Wondering in the street, I saw for the first time the unique styles of a Boston tourist guide and a Boston tour bus.

 

 



 

We also went to a historical spot where a battle during the independence war took place. What a pity was that the door to the top of the monument was closed just half an hour before we got there.

 

 

 

The Boston trip provided me a quite different view from New Haven and I enjoyed it.

 

 





 

 



The Apple Store in Yale

The Apple Store in Yale

July 11, 2015

I heard about the Apple store in Yale University many times. I passed it several times. I knew they had discount for Yale students. I enjoyed the benefit of its wifi when waiting outside. I had planned to visit it someday.

Finally the day came. Marina and I went to the Apple store to enjoy ipad and macbook, and of course have a glimpse of iwatch as well.

Someone wearing the Apple slogan told us we could have $30 down for each ipad and $50 down for macbook. Although the discounts are not big, they are discounts.  We wondered there for a whole hour, taking pictures of the comparison of different types of ipad, macbook and iwatch. These electronic gadgets are not low-priced, but they are even more expensive back in China.

An Apple product is definitely a precious and unrejectable gift for most Chinese I know. The products from Apple are all very helpful and once you own one, you will inevitably depend on it and cannot live without it. One ipad given by my sister-in-law helped my son learned a lot, and was regarded as a marvelous indispensible learning tool. This is also agreed by many Chinese. Everyone wants to have one Apple gadget if they can afford it. That also push the price higher. But  now I am in the U.S.A. I can get these products cheaper.

We didnot buy it immidiately but returned to search more information online to check which one is more suitable, more worthy and more practcal. After a whole night on line searching, we went back to the Apple store, only to find that we were misguided last time. There was only $20 discount for each ipad. But a women working there suggested we wait for the big discount this summer. The discount begins August through September. I do hope I get some good bargins. So we accepted her suggestions.

I cannot help but searching Apple.com to see those wonderful pictures and illustrations of each Apple product. I am really looking forward to the lucky day for Apple.

Prepare the culture show flyer

Prepare the culture show flyer

July 7, 2015

Thanks to Carrie and Xia Feng's help, we finally have a chance to present some Chinese culture in New Haven Free Public Library as a volunteer activity. So Monday afternoon Carrie tried to get us together to work out the flyer for it.

Rachel came up with an impressive name as "A Walk into China" and everyone liked it. So we started to work out the description of the program and a brief introduction to our group. Junia thought about the description, Arnold took charge of the introduction, Rachel and I designed the picture, while Carrie was always there with us, giving a lot of helpful suggestions, from the topics, the names for the topics, the expressions, the designing to even the font (the word size). She helped us pick up interesting topics, suggested how we can organize them, and illustrated how to design a flyer.  All of these she did were just her suggestions, as a typical American, she did not push her ideas but gave fast beneficial help.

We searched the Chinese calligraphy for some elegant handwriting styles, and then cut the images and copied them into our powerpoint. It took a long time since the elegant Chinese characters are not easy to find.

Gradually an elegant and beautiful flyer came out. We joyfully took pictures and uploaded it to WECHAT so that everyone in our group can see it. We got more suggestions and improved it.

 

Then we sent it to Xia Feng, the Chinese manager of New Haven Public Library, through email and quickly received her response--her telephone number. We connected her and asked some questions about the audience and the lecture room and planned to practice once so that she could give some suggestions. She was so kind in the phone and said she was ready to do anything to help us make it. We are really looking forward to next Thursday.



 

At night I received another email from Xia Feng, asking whether the ppt we sent her was the final one. I sent the message to everyone, Junia, Rachel and Joice responded that they found a spelling mistake. After some improvement I sent this back to her. I was really impressed by my teammates' carefulness.

The next morning I found another email from Xia Feng, who sent me a template they always use for flyers. It is in a Publisher which is quite new for me. With no knowledge of how to do this, I asked Siggie who was giving us classes that morning. Make sure everything I started to work on this template. The characters were so small and I didnot know whether I could change it or not. With so limited skills, I just filled the blanks. Sharing this with other teammates on WECHAT, I received suggestions from Rachel. Unfortunately, I had no time to work on it because we went to a lecture after class and a shopping trip to Target Mall in the evening.

When we got back, I received another email from Xia Feng, who already made a new one for us.

 

Much better! I relieved. That's wonderful! Xia Feng is so great and helpful!

Shopping in Outlets

July 6, 2015

What a mess! It was 10:30 p.m. when we were still in Clinton, far away from Yale. But how exciting we were as well after a FOUR-hour crazy shopping in Premium Outlets.

Jason and Jeniffer had searched the route and planned the trip for us for this whole week. We, almost everyone in the group, had been looking forward to such a shopping trip.

There were so many exciting things on the trip.

At first we got on a shuttle, hoping it would take us to the Street State Station, but found it was driven so slowly that we might miss our train. So we got off the shuttle and walked to the station on foot. We got there just ten minutes before the train came. We felt very lucky for changing our plan without any delay.

Sitting in the train, we enjoyed the beautiful shore line. But it's a pity the windows of the train were not clean so the pictures are not good enough to show the fascinating landscape.

When we getting off the train at Clinton, a group of local people helped us with the route. It was about 15-minute walking to Outlets. Not so long distance for Chinese! We were happy to hit the road, talking about our shopping plans, introducing or learning those famous international brands. Some cars passed by and people waved to us. Perhaps walking on the side of a highway is quite unusual to Americans, since we found no other people on the road.

Finally we found ourselves standing in front of the Outlets buildings, our shopping trip now really began. We spent more than four hours in different shops and were busy finding presents for our families, relatives and friends. That's typically Chinese, buying things for people we love wherever we go. At last, some colleagues found they bought so many things for others but forgot themselves.

Unfortunately, we missed the six o'clock train in the afternoon and have to wait till 10: 40 for the last train. But fortunately, no one complained about this delay. Everyone was so eagerly sharing their  bargains and experiences, imagining how much their families would appreciate these presents. Only the cool wind reminded us we had not eaten anything yet.  Some of us went to find something to bite, but rushed back before getting anything because someone played a trick on us and sent us the wrong information. Anyway, we waited till the last bus came and took us back.

It was such a risky adventure that everyone was totally involved into an unusual excitement.



 

Yale Outdoor Activities

2015-07-03

American's National Holiday comes! Yale Outdoor English Center holds an outdoor barbecu activity for ELI summer session students.

When hearing Carrie said that we can swimming there, I was a little worried because I don't know how to swim. After taking an one-hour schoolbus driving to Yale Outdoor Center, we finally reached the beautiful lake. It looks so fabulous under the clean blue sky. We took a brief lunch (not so delicious but OK) and scattered to shoot those beautiful scenaries, some busy with their own selfies, others waiting around one camera for Marina to shoot us. Marina is so skilled at taking pictures, about how to catch a good view and how to talk to us into naturally smiling.

We also went to canoeing. I even asked the safeguard whether we need some skills to canoe. When getting a "no any skilled technics" answer and encouraged by Marina, I pulled out all my bravery and sat in a two-seat canoe with Marina.

Canoeing in such a peaceful lake, bathing in the warm sun and exposed to the cooling breezes, I was so enjoying the oars cutting into and out of the water. "Gulongdong", then the water splashing around, the canoe flying on the surface of the lake. Marina knew I don't know how to canoe, so she sat behind keeping the boat to the right direction.

 

On the shore there is a quiet corner, where you can sit and enjoy the peace weekend. Some of my friends even say they would like to live here for ever. To be frank, I want to live by the shore as well , but only when my family is with me.

 

 

Just several days away from home, I found myself missing them so much. Only if they were with me, enjoying the breathless beauty and canoeing with me!