Special People Special Places

This was the ninth and last year of our current program in Doumen. For eight of the nine years the middle school students produced a camp newspaper. Here is our final edition. Enjoy!

Saying goodbye in Huntington

Tomorrow the TEFL class in Huntington will graduate and begin their return to China. Tonight host families say goodbye to our Chinese friends.

TEFL Class Completes Last Visit to ELS Language Center

The Chinese teachers spent their morning at ELS Language Center in Fort Wayne leading small group discussions, presenting on various topics and leading communicative activities in classrooms, and observing vocabulary and speaking classes. Our three visits here have allowed the teachers to see many methods we discuss in class modeled in a real language learning setting and also practice these methods themselves.

Doumen No. 4 Middle School

Butterfly Love Flower Coffee Shop

This evening my host sister and Abbie's High School class took the both of us out to dinner at the Butterfly Love Flower Coffee Shop!!

TEFL Class Visits 4-H Fair

Julie Hendryx explains the four H's

The TEFL class participants visited the Huntington 4-H Fair last week. Julie Hendryx explained the purpose of 4-H and showed us all around the fair. Bippus State Bank treated everyone to milkshakes and the group tried several other types of fair food. Elephant ears were the favorite!

Chinese Dumpling Dinner with TEFL Class at HU

Rolling the wrappers

Preparing the filling

Making the dumplings

 So pretty!

Delicious!!

The TEFL class participants from Liaocheng invited Matt and Shoshannah for a traditional northern Chinese dinner of pork and cabbage dumplings

2015 Program Update - August 1

A week ago the Doumen two week teacher training and English camp and the Zhongshan primary English camp concluded. The majority of those teams returned home last week.

The three week Zhongshan teacher training has concluded and that team is on their way home today.

But the programming continues! The five-day teacher training in Zhuhai #1 High School begins on Monday. Trainers are Del Doughty, Jackie Angi-Dobos, and Luke Fetters.

A ten-day high school English camp at Zhuhai #1 High School for 100 kids starts Monday. Staff includes Jonathan Harrigan and nine HU students. (This group along with a few folks from the two week Doumen camp just concluded a "bonus" week of English camp in Doumen.)

Monday starts the third week of a three-week TEFL certificate program led by Shoshannah McKinney in Huntington, Indiana at HU for 20 professors and university students from China.

Zhongshan

Zhongshan city leader, Tang Ying, inspecting the last day of training in Zhongshan.

Singing Friends Forever at the end of Zhongshan training. 

Ike knocking ladies over playing musical chairs at the closing party. "I'm always kind except when I'm playing a game."

Zhongshan

We have grown to love the teachers here.  

The workrooms are fun places where they continue to crank out creative lesson ideas.

Things are winding down here. The teachers are excited about upcoming travel plans as their summer break is in July and August. Now that the training is over, they can begin to relax. 

We had one last evening to hang out with the teachers on Thursday night.  

We will miss these friends that we have gotten to know in Zhongshan.

More photos of the one week Doumen English Camp