The Others

Today I met two more foreigners who are teaching at Henan University: Tim and Toby... Tim is Australian and is teaching on the same campus as me. He teaches English to students that will do their later years of their program abroad in Australia. Toby is German and he is the German teacher on the new campus. He also teaches in the international Education college to students who will study here and then eventually go to study in Germany.

He has been here since we have (about 2 months now) and until this week he thought that he was the only foreigner in Kaifeng! (the new campus has no other foreign teachers) He was so excited to be able to communicate with people (he speaks flawless English).

Tonight Ben, Mal, Tim, Toby and I went to get dinner together, after dinner we were walking back and came across some sort of concert that was being set up in the middle of campus. Tim thought that maybe some of his students were involved in this so we walked in for a closer look. As soon as they caught sight of us, some official looking man grabs a hold of Tim and guides the group of us to the front row (mind you there is probably about 4,000 people here). We sit down in our seats where there is already a bottle of water waiting for us... The show begins (completely in Chinese.) It was some sort of variety show with singing, dancing and other types of musical performances... Between acts the cameraman would always put the camera on us foreigners as we clapped... (I am fairly certain that we will be on  TV somewhere) After the show, we were ushered onto the stage to have our pictures taken with the performers.... CRAZY STUFF 

Following the show, which lasted until about 9, I decided that I would have Tim and Toby come to English corner with me... Since this was their first time there, Tim and Toby were quite the hot topic as the students asked them many things about Australia and Germany. for some reason they were not able to comprehend that only one was German and kept getting confused thinking they both were... By far my favorite question of the night was directed at Toby: "Do you like Hitler?" Toby, being a very humorous guy (and perhaps the craziest that I have met) says "Of course, he's my best friend." The other foreign teachers were able to laugh at this, but then Toby quickly explained that this was not the case and that the German people do not like Hitler or the Nazis...

I think that we will be having a lot of fun in the coming months together!!!