An Unexpected Opportunity to Teach English

This morning started off with a very good run, which I was thankful for. Last week was a terrible week for running and I was afraid I was starting to lose motivation. Fortunately, I think I'm back in the swing of things.

I figured the rest of the day would be a serious homework day... particularly since we have many deadlines coming up within the next two weeks. Homework did take up the majority of the day... until Ashley popped into my room to tell me that we had an opportunity to go teach English tonight.

So, five minutes later, we were on our way with our teacher to check out the English school. The Chinese English teachers there were very excited about the prospect of us joining them for class this evening and for future evenings during our time in Beijing. They requested that we bring pictures of ourselves so that they could post pictures of the "lovely foreign teachers" in the classroom.

Ashley and I hurried back to the apartment to eat dinner before giving our first English lesson. Both of us were pretty excited about the opportunity to teach. We were back at the English school within an hour of first meeting the Chinese English teachers, Nancy and Grace. Upon our arrival, we were informed that the students they had been expecting were unable to attend class for the evening. However, Nancy and Grace invited us to stay and chat with them. We were a little unprepared for the chat...

They spoke to us in Chinese very quickly and looked at us quizzically, expecting us to respond. I told them they spoke very fast. They then asked us how much Chinese we had been studying and asked us to tell them the phrases we knew. Ashley and I shifted uncomfortably, looking at one another and proceeded to make our feeble attempts:
Wo jiao Holly. (I am known as Holly)
Wo shi Meiguoren. (I am an American)
Wo shi xuesheng. (I am a student)
Wode shi san ge didi he yi ge meimei. (I have three younger brothers and one younger sister).

They corrected our tones and asked questions (in Chinese) along the way. We smiled... and they said, "What else do you know?"

I said, "Well, when we're at the market and we want to know how much something costs, we say "zhe ge, dou shou qian?"

We also talked about ordering food and received several other corrections. They asked us how long we have been in China and if we study very often. We tried to explain to them that we are taking other classes and when we don't have homework, we like to try to get out and see the city. It was a rather humbling experience, to be sure. We have so much more to learn in our study of Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese)! I would have been discouraged, except for a conversation I had with my Chinese teacher last week. She told me that we were all doing very well for beginners and that it usually takes the students that she tutors privately at least two to three months to get the tones down.

The good news is, they provided very helpful feedback with our pronunciation attempts and did offer some encouragement. They also were eager to practice their English and were very interested to know about our lives. By the time we left, they told us that they hoped we would become hao pengyou (good friends). I think we may go again on Wednesday evening if they have students.