Mooroolbark College – China Trip

Tag: Beijing

  • Lost In The Suburbs.

    Blog Day 4

    The 3e International School is a small school with around 200 students from kindergarten to grade 4. Each class has two teachers, and the students spend half of each day speaking English, and the other half speaking Chinese. They study each subject in both languages with both Chinese and foreign teachers.

    They have some fantastic ideas about education, and we were all excited about bringing some of these philosophies back to share with our colleagues. Their library, for example, has little reading nooks to encourage young people to read, and it seems to be very successful.

    After lunch we visited a school of 1200 students (Grade 1 to Year 9) where we were given a very warm welcome. The Principal and her team gave us a short tour and a briefing before we were taken to observe an English class. You have to remember that this class is like a LOTE class for the Chinese rather than like our English classes. The teacher taught very well, and made the lesson very practical, and we were impressed by the abilities of the students.

    About 5 minutes before the end of the class, they came and asked whether we would teach a short lesson to the class. Mr. Cameron made a few notes then taught ‘adverbs of frequency’ to the Chinese students. His lesson was very well received, and the Chinese Director of Curriculum offered him a job. Don’t worry – although he considered the offer, he decided to turn it down and stay at Mooroolbark College.

    We had Peking Duck for dinner in an excellent restaurant. Most of the teachers spoke about the classes we had seen during the day and educational differences between Australia and China. There is a film crew travelling with us – they are making some short documentaries about setting up partnerships between Australian and Chinese schools, and so we chatted to them about Chinese education too.

    In the evening we went to see the Chinese Acrobat show. This show is very famous, and we could not believe some of the things they could do. Not only were there acrobats, but also people doing tricks on bicycles and even motorbikes. Eight motorbikes riding in circles inside a huge globe on stages. Ity was unbelievable.

    Everyone was exhausted, and went straight to bed as soon as we got back to our rooms.

  • The Next Day.

    Blog – day 3

    This morning we had breakfast in the hotel – a buffet, and we could choose anything we wanted. They served western breakfasts, everything from bacon and eggs and waffles, to coco-pops and fruit. With such long days and a lot of working and walking on the schedule, it’s important to get a good start to the day.

    The bus took us to the Hanban Center, a Confucius Education and Cultural institute where we were shown a brief history of the development of Chinese characters from drawings. It’s easy to see where the characters came from when someone shows you. We were also shown Chinese musical instruments, paper cuttings and opera costumes in an excellent interactive display.

    For lunch we had dumplings. The tour organisers have made a lot of effort to make sure we try lots of different styles of Chinese cuisine at every meal. This food is quite different to the type of food we find in most Chinese restaurants in Australia. Most restaurants at home serve Cantonese style dishes which have been adapted for Australian tastes. Here the style is Mandarin.

    We had an opportunity to split into groups in the afternoon to go and explore Beijing. Ms. Williams, Ms. Cooper and Mr. Cameron joined with the staff of Upper Yarra College and went off to visit the Lama Temple. This Buddhist temple is the home of the Chinese Buddhism in Beijing. It is very serene and very beautiful.

    It was late in the afternoon by the time we were done, and so we decided to try and find some very typical Chinese streets with everyday Chinese life – the type of place tour guides don’t show you. We found a shopping strip with some very cool shops and people (and some very funny names for their shops – make sure you ask us when we get home). It was a lot of fun checking all the shops and seeing the types of things the local people want to buy. Our Upper Yarra friends decided to head home to the hotel, but the Mooroolbark staff are tougher, and so we continued on and walked around a large lake with lots of restaurants and cafes and music. Some of the food on sale was very strange and we weren’t prepared to try some of it.

    Finally we found somewhere to have some dinner. We grabbed some food and chatted about our adventures so far, about Mooroolbark College, and how we can share our experiences with you all. We talked so much that we had to run to catch the last train.

    We missed it.

    And so we caught a taxi and returned to our hotel at around 11.30 p.m. I think we all fell asleep very quickly.

  • A Slow Plane To China.

    Ms. Williams, Ms. Cooper and Mr. Cameron left Mooroolbark College at 6 .45 a.m on Tuesday morning to go to Melbourne Airport. The plane left at noon, and after a couple of flights and a short stop in Shanghai, we eventually arrived in Beijing. A bus was waiting to take us to our hotel, and so we were finally able to check into our hotel rooms at 4.30 a.m. Melbourne time, almost 24 hours after we left our homes.

    With only a few hours sleep, we had to drag ourselves down to the lobby for our first day in Beijing, a huge city of around 21 million people.

    We were split into teams with our other colleagues for a ‘Race around Beijing’. The three Mooroolbark staff were put on different teams, I believe this was because the others felt they had no chance of winning if were able to combine our amazing skills and powers.

    But off we went with a sealed envelope and a series of tasks and challenges. We had to find things, taker photos for proof, get on a bus, get on a train, buy stuff, order lunch and meet up in Tianenmen Square – all with no help from our tour guides. I won’t tell you which team won, because that might embarrass the others. Let’s just say that Ms Cooper and Ms Williams weren’t on the team that came first.

    It was a fabulous experience and we learned a lot about how a big city runs – and how difficult it can be to find something or buy food when you can’t read the writing and no-one speaks English.

    The whole group spent the afternoon walking through the ancient Forbidden City. It’s incredible, and very beautiful. Check it out on the internet.In the evening we had a welcome dinner at a downtown restaurant, and then were taken back to our hotel.

    The food was great, but the best thing was crawling into our beds after such a long day to try and catch up on all the sleep we missed the night before.