Abby and Sarah, Virginia Baptist college students spent five weeks in Xi'an during the summer of 2002, leading oral English classes of junior high and senior high students for the YMCA. They did a great job and learned a lot about Chinese culture at the same time. There were two classes of students and they switched off halfway through the morning so that each of them only had to prepare a lesson for an hour and a half, and so that all students had both Abby and Sarah as a teacher. Their classes were very active, employing games and songs to encourage the students to use English. Each class had a Chinese teacher to help with any translation problems.
They spent some of their free time with some Chinese young people who had been enlisted by the YMCA to take them around Xi'an showing them the sights. This gave the Chinese young people the experience of speaking English with the Americans, while showing off some of the historical places in Xi'an. For Sarah and Abby, it was also a learning experience, both from being with Chinese young people and from the lessons in history and culture they absorbed on their outings.
On Sundays, they walked down the alley behind the YMCA to attend a Chinese church.
The first evening I was there, we went to a restaurant that served pizza. They ate most of their meals in the YMCA restaurant, which was provided as part of their program, and on occasion, someone would take them to eat in a 'real' restaurant, but sometimes they just had to break down and eat at KFC for a taste of home.
A special occasion of eating out took place when Mr. Tian, the director of Xi'an YMCA took us to lunch at a place that serves the traditional Chinese dumpling known as jiaozi in many, many forms, such as that of a chicken or turtle or flower.
One of the most exciting events in my visit to Xi'an in the summer of 2002 was the discovery of the Nestorian pagoda, a relic of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), representing the first establishment of Christianity in China, from 635 a.d. Abby and Sarah accompanied me on this little adventure. For more information, see the entry, "Nestorian Pagoda."