Connecting Mandarin and English,
          Chinese and American,
                    people with people

Again, No Quiet Appearance
(October 21, 2008) (return to Homepage)
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     We met her at English Corner. Another English major but beyond our classes. She asked if Gail could help her with a speech she was going to give in a competition. She goes by "CC." Melody asked me to review a writing during a class one day, which I did during our ten-minute break. Chandlar asked if he could come by some evening to gain some tips on pronunication. When "CC" came by, her friend Cherry came also just to visit.
     Several students had asked us if we would attend the speech competition and they gave us tickets, somewhere in the tenth row. When we arrived we flashed our tickets and were met by the same young lady who met us at the Chinese Cookoff. She usherd to the thrid row dead center. I tried to show her our tickets and indicate that this is not our assigned. She ignored my comments and told us that this was the row for the judges. We could only chuckle inside. We knew that we have coached the speakers, how could we be objective? Knowing there would be other judges we also knew that our opinions would be overridden. Indeed, four of the speakers had come to us for support and after the competition the fifth asked for help.
     The speakers were followed by 14 wondrful solo vocalists all in English. Some of them were fabulous and it was wonderful to hear American music. Finally there were three plays, written and performed by English majors. Gail had helped with the "Romeo and Juliet" one and I ended up working with the rewrite of another play which won the competition and will go on to another competition later this month.
     One doesn't have to try very hard to make an impact and impression on these students. They so want to learn and excel.