New Friends....

This semester I continue to volunteer as an English Conversation Partner with students attending the English Language Institute of UT. My current students are Renato from Peru and Mega from Indonesia. Mega is from a town in the mountains near West Jaffa and about 2 hours from Jakarta. I’m not sure of Renato’s hometown. Both guys are very personable and their English is quite good. It’s much harder to do well on the TOEFL exam than it is to speak understandable English to Americans. Both Renato and Mega hope to receive TOEFL scores high enough to attend UT. Yesterday evening, Mega and I met at Panera Bread (Renato was studying for a test) and were soon joined by two more ELI students, Ju Ya (like Julia without the "L") from South Korea, and Kayo (pronounced "kai yo" from Tokyo, Japan (far right in photo). We had a great time talking and laughing. I invited the girls to join us again next week for a little "crazy English talking." Mega enjoys it when I feign a heavy southern accent and speak very, very fast. He says he wants to be able to understand people here in East Tennessee and has specifically requested that I speak fast so he can "practice understanding." ha ha Strangely, because of being around foreign friends so much these days, I have begun speaking slower, more distinctly, and without accent. I am now much more likely to say "we will" instead of "we’ll" and instead of "aren’t chu goin’ with us," you’ll hear me carefully pronounce "Are you going with us?" It’s just easier all around because I don’t have to repeat myself and my friends are accustomed to my slowed down speech and they understand me very well. It does sound a little funny, however, when I catch myself speaking this way to long-time American friends! :) Actually, it sounds downright nerdy.
About the film I viewed Tuesday night: "Up to the Mountain, Down to the Village" is a documentary about three Chinese (now in their late 40s) who, as educated youth living in China’s cities, were separated from their families and sent "up to the mountain and down to the village" to a rural and remote village in China to be "re-educated" by the peasants as part of one of the biggest youth movements (17 million) in world history, all courtesy of Chairman Mao Zedong. Eventually, after around seven years of living in fairly squalor conditions, they were university educated, came to America, married and had children. As cameras documented, they all returned to the villages where they were sent to see how things had changed or if they had changed. Two took their American-born teenaged children along with them. The documentary was in English and subtitled on occasions where they were talking with folks in the village in Chinese. The film left me with many questions and I felt perhaps I was only hearing half of the real story of their lives during those years. The director, Chris Billings, will come to UT next week to give a talk and I plan to attend. Perhaps I’ll even watch the screening of the film again as it will be playing just before the discussion. You can watch a trailer here: http://www.uptothemountain.com/film.html