Old Qingdao Family

We got our writing exam results back a few days ago and I got the best mark in the class, closely followed by the other western-educated student. I think it really shows the difference between those who are taught mainly to memorise and repeat, i..e. the Koreans, do better at the reading exam (teacher gave us the answers day before- we had to memorize them) but when it comes to actually creating something, the Westerners pull ahead.

This was exemplified by a class I taught today. They were supposed to use their imagination to imagine imaginatively an imaginative movie. And they could not do it. I asked for a character's name. Any name. Any English name. Any name at all. Do you understand me. Yes. Ok a name. Silence. Ok Samuel can I have a name. Silence. I don't know. We settled on Kate eventually. Then I needed a story for this movie. We spent five minutes reminiscing about movies we had seen but still nothing for our movie... 

Writing teacher said some bits of my essay sounded like a Chinese student had written them :D

I had 3 hours to kill during teaching today (should have been two but a student didn't turn up) so I hopped on the bus to Zhongshan Park because it was such a lovely day (I could see a horizon!). On the way in I passed some men with a Shetland pony and they came over to me. I thought they were trying to get me to pay to ride it but then realised they just seemed to want to talk to me. One asked if there were Shetlands in the UK and how much money. When I replied saying around 5000RMB he looked a bit thoughtful so I wonder how much he paid for his. The pony looked in fairly good condition, which is not the norm for beasties in China. I patted it and it nuzzled my leg. It was called 奥巴马, aobama, which is how they spell Obama. The last character means horse so it is rather fitting for a pony! As I talked to the owners a little crowd gathered and one woman was like "ooo don't you think her Chinese is good!" to the others. *pink*.

There was another man with a larger, but still small, white pony that he was riding around looking like a disappointing version of a white knight.

 :)
On the way back from work my taxi driver asked me the standard "what country are you from""Britain""oh your Chinese is amazing""I just said Britain but ok thank you". I then asked him the standard "are you from Qingdao" to which they normally reply "yeah". But this one leapt at the question and it turned out his family has been in Qingdao for generations and they even have a bus stop named after them. Or rather the bus stop is named after a village that used to be there before but is now just skyscrapers was named after his family.  His surname is 辛,, Xin, and the bus stop is 辛家庄, Xinjiazhuang, Xin Family Village. I go past it almost every day