Saturday's classes are Chinese in the morning and English in the evening, but then not as a student, plus a completely English Sunday.

It was the first real Chinese class that we've had so far. This class has a bit more students than just the three of us. One teacher from Sudan and another student from Finland are taking this course as well. Besides them, there are a few students who're helping the teacher during class. Every one of us has their own student who helps us drawing the Chinese characters and practicing the pronunciation.

We've learned some basic Chinese words and phrases like, 'how are you?', 'my name is…', some greetings, the numbers, personal pronouns and so on. Again, it feels like learning two languages at the same time. Without the English phonetical translation of a character (Pinyin) it's not possible to pronounce the character and without learning the character it isn't possible to read anything. So it's like learning from English to Pinyin to Chinese character. It'll be a challenge to learn Chinese and to actually be able to read and to understand something.

In the evening there was an English corner again, this time for the elementary students. It was the first time that I had this group so it was back to the beginning and the introduction. Luckily this time I had some experience drawing Europe from scratch to explain where The Netherlands and Finland are. Besides teaching them something in English, I've also learned some useful words in Chinese. So this English corner kind of works both ways.

On Sunday I also went to REAL. I was there the whole to join one class and to learn teaching and to explain some situations from Europe. The topic was traveling and since I've been in some countries in Europe I could tell about them. There we two classes today, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. It was quite long but still it was interesting for me. I think that I've seen a good example of how a good teacher is teaching. I hope I will be able to do something like he does as well.

The evening consisted of an 'Imitation Competition'. The idea was that the students read and memorize a dialogue and then act it out in front of the class. The student with the best pronunciation and performance skills won the game. I was really surprised about their performances; it is completely different than what we're having in The Netherlands. Something done by a 20 year old Dutch student would look completely different. I think I can compare this show in China with what's being done in high school in The Netherlands. That is also what one of the other teachers said; in Europe and America a 20 year old is a lot more mature than in China, there is a huge difference.