Snow in Spring

Went to Juizaigou near Chengdu last month, Easter Weekend.

It was snowing when I arrived, not what I'd bargained for. Fortunately, six years in Chicago and NY had taught me the value of layering. Still, I'd been hoping for warmer weather, non-slippery tracks on the mountains, and really nice colours for photography.

So, as I'm climbing down Huanglong (took the cable car up...I'm not THAT tough), I'm thinking - maybe I shoulda come later in the year, like the OTHER tourists. Fewer puddles on the ground, more water in the springs, fewer layers needed...then, I finally got to the "Five Colour Pond"  - and wow. Surrounded by snow, the crystal blue water was in what looked like a series of nature's own infinity pools. I could hear crackles as snow melted and water trickled down the descending lakes. That one moment was worth the trip and worth the trek.

I'd been feeling kinda down about the learning program that my friends and I were working on at Whampoa. Attendance is inconsistent: 18 kids one week, and then 8 for the next few is frustrating. I want to impact more kids, not just a few! And we've got some really great, passionate volunteers who work hard to make learning fun - and they REALLY care about the kids. Engineers, graphic designers and marketing execs have little enough leisure time as it is...wouldn't more kids mean better ROI? I was mentally calculating their billable rates and dividing it by the number of kids in class.

Yes, the kids' behaviour had improved tremendously over the past three years, but was there any way of empirically measuring impact?


Separately, I was working with a student who had been part of the learning program but now that she's 15 and in Secondary 2, is too old to be part the program. Still, she'd gotten into an elite secondary school and because she's from a Chinese-speaking family, her weak English skills put her at a severe disadvantage. Plus I'm sure most of her classmates have an army of tuition teachers. So I've been working with her one-on-one on the weekends on her English.

 When we started in January, we had to do an intense revision of simple subject/verb agreement. ie. "she/ he/ it does vs she/he/it do". We had to start with the difference simple present and simple past tense. We did drills, assessment books, tongue twisters, talked about Hunger Games, flipped through Seventeen, listened to podcasts on TED and BBC for Kids. I found out she was having problems understanding the British accent, comparing it to what she called "normal" speech aka Singlish.

It was slow going and I was constantly wondering if I was making any impact at all.

Then yesterday, she did an grammar drill that involved multiple tenses: various forms of past, present, continuous, future - and she did pretty well! Better than some adults I know. She's distinguishing between long and short vowels (bean and bin), making eye contact more consistently and projecting her voice. And her mum happened to walk by - our classes are in the void deck - and thanked me.

It was like a warm wind in what had felt like a tundra. The snow was melting and everything looked just a bit more colourful. Yes, we've still got a long way to go - her progress isn't reflected in her grades yet. But that's OK in my books. Because I know she's learning. And I know we'll get there.