Monday, April 14, 2008

This was the day to partnership with our “Sister School”, the Jinan Middle School #12. We all waited in the lobby of the hotel to be picked up by representative from our respective schools. The principal from the Jinan Middle School #12 arrived around 9:45 AM along with an English teacher/interpreter along with a math teacher who was the driver. I said my goodbyes to my colleagues and left for the visit to my new sister school. The principal was a forty-year old man named Zhang Yi. Mr. Zhang was a formal English teacher, but for the past nine years he was the school principal. I was lucky since I had both an interpreter and Mr. Zhang, who’s English although limited, got better every hour that I spoke with him. The interpreter had an American name of “Sandy”. Her Chinese name was Hourairnan, and she had been teaching at the school for the past 12 years. The driver, Mr. Lee, was a ninth grade math teacher and spoke no English. We drove first to my hotel, The Great Wall Hotel, in the western part of the city, and checked into my room. The accommodations were clearly not the same as the previous hotel stays. The hallways were dimly lit, the room smelled of cigarette smoke, the rugs were badly stained, and there were stains on the room’s walls. It did have, I was told by the principal, hot water “24 hours a day”. People smoked freely in the lobby and in the elevator. The four of us sat in my room for about 30 minutes, getting to know one another. When they began asking about my school, I decided to give the principal and the interpreter a copy of the PowerPoint presentation that I created. They were very attentive to it. Finally we went to lunch at a local restaurant. I found out that the school had teachers and students visit from many other parts of the world: Shanghai, Korea, and Finland. The principal also well traveled and had been to Australia, Russia, Korea, and a few other places. Finally, after lunch it was time to visit the school. We drove in the gate and I saw a large red banner hanging across the driveway saying “Welcome Richard Dellinger” along with students in blue uniforms playing on the soccer field’s artificial turf. We entered one of the three buildings on the city “campus” and went directly to the administrative office floor. After I got to see the principal’s office, I was ushered into a modern, large conference room with a large conference table, another “Welcome Richard Dellinger banner” and a flat screen TV on the wall. The principal then started a formal meeting with me, the interpreter, himself, the secretary of the Communist Party, and one of his vice-principals (the other vice principal was at a class off-campus). Mr. Lee, our driver, took many pictures as Mr. Zhang showed me a PowerPoint presentation about his school. After the presentation I was invited to eat fruit and other foods that were all around the conference table. Finally, the meeting ended with the exchange of gifts. I was given a very lovely book that gave a historical overview of the school which opened in the late 1950s. I also got a lovely Confucius plate and a decorative coin with a picture of the school. I gave the principal a Connecticut-Shandong Partnership plaque, a Amity athletics, tee-shirt, a key-chain with the state of Connecticut on it, school bookmarks, school pencils, and a school mug filled with Hershey chocolate kisses. I also gave the others in the room the school mug and Hershey’s chocolate kisses. Next was an extensive tour of two of the three classroom buildings. What was really unusual was that very few of the classrooms that we visited had any students…they were all empty. The rooms were also very austere. Few if anything was posted of the walls. No books or papers were in sight. A substantial amount of time was visiting the sixth floor of the main building. It was basically a mini-museum. On the walls of all the rooms of this floor were hundreds of displays of insects, butterflies, and small birds from all across the world. Most of these had been donated by the mother of one of the teachers who was a university professor. The school tour ended by 4:45PM. I talked to the principal for the next 45 minutes, while he also took several phone calls from one of the two cell phones that he carried at all times. The day ended with yet another meal in another Chinese restaurant. Everyone in the afternoon meeting joined us for dinner, along with the other vice-principal, Mrs. Yang. I was dropped off at my hotel by 9:30 PM, and made my usual journal entry.