If you come home at 10pm after a dinner with Chinese hot pot the mind to write the daily part of this blog is not too big anymore. So I decided to write it in the morning and take advantage of the fact that the sun rises in the East while the rest of the world is still asleep.
A couple of days ago we accidentally met Rob Korfage, Dutchman and teacher at the WAB, the Western Academy of Beijing. This is an international school with departments from pre-kindergarten to high school and many nationalities among which of course Dutch pupils but also a lot of Koreans and Chinese. The building complex lies just a few kilometres from our place and so an appointment was made quite quick and settled for this afternoon.
It’s really amazing what this school offers in facilities. Every teacher an assistant, a pupils restaurant with a real international menu, beautiful classrooms, big libraries, an Apple laptop for even the small children of 6 years old, for the older children the kind of lounges you also find in the more expensive establishments and a huge row of new school buses. But if you pay $ 20,000 a year for your child you may expect something of course, even if this money is probably paid by the company or the embassy you work for.
I found it very stimulating to see how much attention had been given to art, big music rooms with a recording studio, pupils filming in the corridor, a film studio, a theatre where pupils were rehearsing, but also big bronzes of scientists like Galileï and Newton besides other modern art objects in the garden.
Accidentally there were two exhibitions of pupils of the school, one of 10 year old children also teached by Rob and one of the elder high school pupils. Both showed a very good level. Is it to be expected that the picture above is made by a 10 year old child that took ‘The Scream’ of Munch as starting point but gave it a Chinese turn if you have a look at the face?
I hope that the other photos give a good impression of what I had to tell today.
And this hot pot, together with Rob in a place where till now he had never seen another Westerner, was again another very positive experience!
