Casino Night Benefit V was a great success! We had a turnout of 450 people and raised $1175 to fund education development in rural China! Out attendance increased by 50% from last year and was the biggest turnout we’ve ever had. Everyone had fun playing poker, blackjack, and roulette, and many lucky winners went home with amazing prizes. Thanks to all the volunteers for their help!
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Operation D.E.E.P is having its 5th annual Casino Night Benefit on Saturday, September 26, from 9pm – 1am in Duffield Hall!
Join us for poker, blackjack, and roulette, free food, and plenty of great prizes. Admission and initial set of chips are free. This year our raffle prizes include a netbook, Wii, foosball table, giant stuffed animals, dish chair, Cornell hoodies & caps, and poker sets! We will also have plenty of free pizza, sandwiches, cotton candy, cookies, and fruit & veggie trays. 100% of donations will directly fund education development projects in rural China. Operation D.E.E.P. is now accepting applications for the following executive board positions: Project Director, Public Relations Chair, Fundraising Chair, and Webmaster. Please submit your completed application to apply@operationdeep.org by Saturday, October 3, 2009, at 5 p.m. Click the link below to download the application: The final two days of TTP09 were two of the most bittersweet of the program. On August 14, we kicked off the morning with a game of handball. Unfortunately, the day was just too hot, so gave the students free time to play the game or sport of their choice instead. We had our typical two one-hour classes of English during the day, our third rotation of the week’s science classes, and an hour of weeklong activities. After classes, Sonia, Ian, Amy, Ming, and David made it to the school after returning from their Chungba trip and were met with overjoyed students who congregated in the hall to welcome them back. The evening program for the night was a talent show to display what all the students’ had learned from weeklong activities. Since Holly’s painting and drawing students were too modest to exhibit their artwork as their talent, the three boys started the show off with some singing performances. Next was the recorder class’s performance of “Ode to Joy,” which they had been practicing diligently during their every free minute that week.  Talented recorder players They were followed by a top recorder student who had learned the more difficult melody line of “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” and who I had convinced to perform with me while I played harmony for her. It was so nice to see her come out of her shy shell and show off her musical gift. William then displayed his students’ photography with a slideshow of their work which featured captures from a day trip during the week.  William and his photography apprentices Audrey’s girls explained their sewing projects next, while Jerry and Dorjer helped model them–until Dorjer ripped the skirt!  Cindy showing the skirt that she made with the help of sewing teacher Audrey  Dorjer modeling the skirt and Jerry sporting the apron Finally, Liang’s class got together to perform some of their yoga moves and then serenaded us with a group song performance.  Liang and the yoga students The students then pressured the returning volunteers into singing a song in celebration of their return. They decided on a spirited hokey pokey performance. 
We ended the night by teaching all the students the macarena!  Teachers on the right, students on the left for the macarena The next day was the final day of the program. We began with an hour and a half of English and an hour of weeklong activities. In English, all of the classes did reviews of all the topics that they had covered. David and I did a “Concentration” review game with all of the topics we went over during the last few weeks. It was nice to have all of the English teachers back for their last classes–and it was astonishing to see how much material we had covered during the program in such a short time. I was glad to have one last recorder class after the previous night’s performance because it was an opportunity to give the students a final crash course before sending them off. This would leave them well equipped to keep learning to play on their own before they went back home where further musical education wouldn’t be available. We went over how to read the fingering chart for learning new notes, tempo, dynamics, various musical notations, and sharps and flats. One of my favorite moments during this program was when I got to unveil a surprise gift for the students: a new recorder for each of them to take home. They were visibly excited and exceptionally grateful. Each of these plastic recorders cost less than one US dollar, yet these teenage students received and admired them like treasure. I only wish they had more musical opportunities , such as to be able to learn more complex instruments or play in an ensemble; their dedication to music class during these last weeks has shown that they certainly would not take any of it for granted. During the same hour, Audrey’s sewing students were equally excited to be able to split the remaining sewing materials to take home and make new projects. While Liang’s yoga masters learned and reviewed some moves, William’s photographers had a final lesson in camera skills. Lastly, Holly’s artists had free drawing time to produce some creative new works of art. After lunch, we had a special last-day treat planned for the remaining twenty-some students: a carnival with all the trimmings. We split the students into three groups–blue, green, and blue-checkered teams–and delineated the carnival’s point system. At the end of the day, we would tally the points for each team and award mystery prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. We began with indoor activities, including charades, pin the tail on the yak, a “guess the ball” version of three card monte, and a race that involved carrying ping pong balls with chopsticks. After, we moved to the field for classic field day games: a running relay… water balloon toss (everyone’s favorite)… 
three-legged race…
spoon egg race…
The evening ended with the volunteers attempting to pummel Sonam and Rentzen with the remaining water balloons, which began a minor water war. The entire day was full of laughter for young and old alike and epitomized the fun we’ve had at the SLP since the beginning. 
After the dinner break, we announced the point totals: the winner… blue-checkered team! Each member of the team received a watch, while the second place blue team received notebooks, and in third place, the green team got Canadian flags from Ian!  Ian spreading Canada spirit Everyone also got candy and then one final surprise was a slice of pizza for everyone; some of the students had told us they had always wanted to try pizza.  Students enjoying a taste of pizza We then had a farewell ceremony in which the teachers presented each of their students with a certificate for having completed their English class, a kata, and a letter from each of their respective English teachers.  Students with white katas, certificates, and cards Several students said eloquent words of thanks and appreciation, and the volunteers presented gifts to the program coordinators who had made this program everything that it was.  Left to right, the amazing coordinators and masters students: Sonam, Peter, Pamo, Ian, Rentzen, Zhang Lin Then, the volunteers lined up in the hall for our final one-on-one goodbyes and hugs to our beloved students. Although many tears were shed, I think the lasting excitement from the carnival alleviated some of the sadness that could have been. After just three weeks of official programming, the SLP was over, although the stunning impact it had made on every person involved made it feel as if it had been far longer than three weeks. We’ll never forget this very special group of students. Occasionally still, the volunteers will absently think of something we want to teach our English class or an active activity to do for the following morning before realizing that the students have left and we’ve all gone our separate ways too.  All of us in our room at Dreams Hostel Although the 2009 SLP has ended, we won’t mourn for long. Instead, we’ll look forward to next time because we’ll certainly be back again. Today was a short day for the volunteers because we only had morning classes. We started the day by giving the students their choice of a selection of active activities: badminton, jump rope, soccer, throwing around a frisbee, etc. Then we had English class. There are only two students left in my class, so we did restaurant role plays, one student as the “waiter” and one as the “guest” to review the restaurant vocabulary and phrases we learned yesterday. Next, we had our second rotation of this week’s science topics. Holly and I are teaching about density this week. Most of the students today had a vague concept of what density is, but only the college students seemed to have ever learned at all about the topic in school before. We did some experiments putting an egg into regular water, salt water, and salt water on top of regular water to see if the egg would sink or float. We also experimented with an orange and asked the students what we could do to the orange to change its density and make it sink. In the end, the lesson turned into an interesting discussion when two of the older students, Wesley and James, started asking us some more in-depth “what if” questions. In the afternoon, the DEEP volunteers got some time off as a few of the other volunteers took the students shopping for books. Audrey, Holly, and I, having never had any free time since we arrived a month ago, didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We took the extra time to browse the rows of shops in our Tibetan neighborhood for Tibetan prayer flags, thangkas, and jewelry. Then, the three of us and Zoe went out for some great Indian food. By the end of the night, we were missing the kids already, so we’re happy to get back into our normal routine tomorrow. Tomorrow night, the other volunteers should be back from their Chungba trip just in time for our talent show! -Jenny After last night’s emotional farewell we started today by playing Capture the Flag and Circle Tag on the field. Everybody had fun. The constant laughter is a daily part of our morning activities. We began English classes at around 10:30am. Walking into the room and not seeing Dega’s warm smile and hearing him say “Good morning, teacher Liang” brought me melancholic feelings. Our class only had two (yep, TWO!) students. The upside is William and I decided to give them a one-on-one conversation session which proved to be very effective. After lunch we had another English class followed by a science class. The science class topics this week are states of matter, density, and weather. After dinner Audrey gave a wonderful presentation about Cornell. The students were amazed by our beautiful and immense university campus and the pristine natural setting of Ithaca. -Liang Hello fellow Operation Deep members and enthusiasts, Yesterday was a bit of a rough day for the teachers an students here at the Summer Learning Program. No, we didn’t lose any kids in the bustling crowds of Chengdu or succumb to any painful stomach aches from strange new foods. Rather, the Chungba students had to depart in order to begin preparations for their regular school year, and most of the staff was in tears by the end of last evening’s farewell ceremony. We traded many words of wisdom and email addresses for future contact, and there were copious amounts of hugs being given all around. The evening was topped off by a few vocal performances from some of the most praiseworthy Chungba singers, and a little camp cheer from our dear friend and volunteer Audrey. Yes, we have video evidence of her performance, which the students readily requested. Perhaps it can be posted on this website for your viewing pleasure sometime in the near future. Before the farewells began, the students participated in many morning activities that had to do with health related topics. Four medical students graciously volunteered their services and gave checkups to some of the departing students, and the whole crew learned how to take each others’ pulses, heart rates, and temperatures. They were captivated by these activities… I’m sure we have a few potential ER doctors and surgeons in this group of talented Tibetans. Machik hired a speaker to come and tell the students about AIDS, which turned into a nifty little activity involving T-cells, several squealing organs, and pathogens attempting to tag the organs with post-its (dun dun dun). Don’t try this at home, ladies and gents. In the afternoon, went went to visit a Tibetan jewelery store and a recording studio to give the kids a little time away from school. They definitely enjoyed the trip, but I believe their favorite part of the jewelry store was the book section in the middle. They each grabbed a novel, plopped down on the floor, and began to read for a lengthy period of time. The teachers were all beaming with pride, naturally. Cheers, Today was a day that featured both sides of Rentzen’s personality in full. He started off the day as a tour de force on the soccer field, when he rescued our team from what would have been a humiliating defeat. And he ended the day somewhat emotionally, when the students surprised him by singing two of his favorite songs. Soccer was an easy choice for today’s morning activity, and we managed to have the whole field to ourselves (except for a too-friendly older gentleman who decided to join in). Everyone was participating in some way or another, and even the shyest of the shy girls played some offense. Rentzen swooped into the game just in time to rescue the losing team from imminent annihilation. He was so intimidating on the field that kids were literally scattering right and left when he went towards the goal. As expected, he won the game single-handedly. English class followed. Ming Ming and I are teaching the higher intermediate-level students, but because he left for Chungba two days ago, I’ve been flying solo since. Today we studied health-related terms, and the students wanted to know names for all kinds of ghastly conditions. Once they were satisfied that they could say they had H1N1, SARS and malaria, we moved onto body parts, visits to the doctor and health emergencies. It’s coincidental that we studied health in class today because the theme of tomorrow morning’s activities is supposed to be health, also. After a quick lunch the kids went back to their hostel to rest and the SLP volunteers went back to High Train for afternoon pre-planning. Holly was hard at work drawing pictures of rooms and furniture, Jenny was correcting letters her students had written in the morning, and I was trying to come up with something to teach the kids in the afternoon. They pick things up so fast! After lunch it was English class again, minus the Chungba students, who went shopping this afternoon to prepare for their departure on Wednesday. In high intermediate English we did a review of the health-related terms we studied earlier and moved on to table settings and food. On Wednesday, Jenny’s remaining advanced students will join with high intermediate and we’ll work on menus and ordering food–which they hopefully won’t have studied yet. Jenny will teach the three most advanced students in place of Brad, who will be leaving soon. Week-long activities are going swimmingly. In drawing and painting class, Holly’s students mixed colors and painted landscapes (except for Jerry, who got frustrated and threw paint onto newspaper with much gusto). Jenny’s students were introduced to the mysterious dotted quarter note–its one-and-a-half beats confused them until they were finally able to make some progress on “Ode to Joy.” In sewing class, my students sewed pillows at the speed of lightning and seemed surprised and excited when they were allowed to keep what they made. Chinese class was canceled, so after some free time spent playing card games, the students went to dinner. We volunteers outlined our day for tomorrow and looked up the lyrics for “We Are the World,” which Rentzen was especially enthusiastic about teaching to the kids. Rentzen will be leaving soon now that Sonam is here, and we thought we could teach the students to sing the main chorus of “We Are the World” to surprise him, since he loves the song and its message. So for today’s evening activity, the kids rehearsed “We Are the World” line-by-line until they had it memorized. “You Are My Sunshine” was another song that they picked up fast, and before we knew it, Rentzen had arrived. I told him the students had a present for him and he seemed really happy when they sang the two songs for him. As it turns out, they’re his two most favorite songs, and he listened with such a moved look on his face that I almost forgot about his soccer prowess and intimidation factor. Rentzen treated us to a song, and then the Chungba students sang their own. After a great evening, they headed back to their hostel, and we went to grab dinner. By this point, Ian, Sonia, Amy, David and Ming Ming should be in Chungba. We all can’t wait to hear updates from them, and to swap stories about our time there! The SLP in Chengdu is amazing, but going to Chungba was a different experience entirely, and one that we are so, so glad we had a chance to participate in. Now that we’ve more or less settled back into our routine in Chengdu, we can’t help but talk about Chungba every day! It figures. -Audrey Our group (Audrey, Liang, Holly, and me) is back from Chungba! We had an incredible time; I can’t wait to share it, but things are pretty crazy around here now that the second group of volunteers has left for Chungba (Sonia, Ian, David, Ming, and Amy) and those of us in Chengdu have a lot of exciting things to prepare for in the coming week! We made it back last night just in time to say goodbye to the dozen students from Tenba and Yushu who were leaving early this morning. We went straight to the school from the bus station, and the students were just passing by the corner where we were being dropped off. I didn’t realize how much I missed them until they all surrounded our cab and gave us hugs and high-fives as we came out. They also forced our bags out of our hands and carried them up to the school for us. That night, we had a goodbye ceremony for the students who were leaving. Each of their English teachers presented them with katas (Tibetan white scarves) and certificates for having successfully completed their respective ESL levels. The best part of the ceremony was when the students singled out each teacher and many of the students individually to sing a song in front of everyone. The four of us from DEEP and another volunteer, Zoe, decided to sing “Bye Bye, Miss American Pie” because it was the only song we could think of that we could all remember the lyrics to. Our performance didn’t quite compare to the students’ beautiful voices, but Audrey’s hilarious camp cheer was the hit of the night. Some of the students who were leaving were already crying during the ceremony, and when it was time to say goodbye, many others teared up. We all didn’t want to see them leave, and we’ll miss them very much. Today, we started the day–with our slightly smaller group–with a big game of Capture the Flag out on the field. The kids had a great time, although a lot of them couldn’t resist cheating! Then in English class, I introduced some new verbs to my class and went over conjugating in basic present, preterit, and future tenses. I was very happy at the noticeable progress they had all made with David during the week that I was gone. They responded more quickly to English instructions and had a better foundation of vocabulary and grammar: not bad for one week! We then played a game in which I divided the class into two groups and had opposing team members compete with each other one-on-one to be the first one to give me the preterit tense of irregular verbs that we learned. I find that team-based games like this help the students learn best because they get pretty competitive and, therefore, enthusiastic about learning the material. We ended the class with some exercises in choosing the correct verb tense in fill-in-the-blank sentences. In the afternoon, I taught second-level recorder class and was really happy to see students from my first week’s class come back to learn more! All of them stayed long after class was over to practice their new music. Their dedication is amazing, and I’m excited for how great they are going to be by the end of the week (and for their performance in our talent show on Friday!) For our evening program, we had a guest speaker who spoke about a nonprofit that she started that helps children who live away from their parents. Afterward, the students turned the night into a big Tibetan dance party! I would have to say that American dance parties don’t quite compare. Although the students had previous seemed a bit tired, they seemed to get pretty energized once the dancing began, so we ended the night later than usual. Anyway, I will write about the Chungba trip soon, but for now, I still have to prepare my English lesson plan for tomorrow! -Jenny Yesterday was one of those rare “regular” days where we actually followed the schedule. Perhaps I should call it an “irregular” day because we definitely change our schedule more often than not. We had active hour in the morning, consisting of trust activities and tag games that got all the students involved. My favorite was when all 60 of us stood in a circle then sat in each others’ laps…luckily no one got too hurt and I can safely say everyone in the SLP is trustworthy. Later, we had English class. It’s amazing to see how much some of the students have improved since the first day of class. One girl in particular, who used to be painfully shy, has caught on quickly and isn’t afraid to speak in class anymore. Afterwards, we had science class and I taught liquid density with Amy, another volunteer who is an alum of UVA. We used different amounts of salt in food-colored water to demonstrate how liquid density works…I have to say, the students weren’t the only ones learning in this class. To me, the most meaningful part of the day was our evening program. We held a “Cultural Seminar” asking the students to discuss what being Tibetan means to them. This discussion was prompted by one of our guest speakers, David Germano, who teaches at UVA and compiled the Tibetan Himalayan Library (THL). The THL is an incredibly/ridiculously/amazingly extensive database on Tibet covering everything from buildings in towns to monasteries on mountains and everything in between. The group of students I was with for the discussion really delved deep into the issue. At one point, they asked whether I identified more with my Chinese or American side, and I told them that I honestly couldn’t decide. Although I really want to hear the students talk more about this topic, I’m not going to push it because it can be a very sensitive subject. August 6th Today we went on another museum field trip! We went to the Sichuan Science and Technology Museum. I must admit, it was about 29874 times better than the museum we went to on Tuesday. The museum was much more interactive, obviously catered to younger students. We spent a couple hours there, and with the commute back and forth (on public buses, which miraculously worked with all 50 of the students), we could only have one English class and then our week-long activities in the afternoon. As for our evening program, we branched out from the discussion on Tibetan identity and had the students begin writing brief autobiographies. We came up with a bunch of prompts for them, such as “What is your most significant childhood memory?” “What are your future goals? Where will you be in 5, 10, 20 years?” “What has made you most proud in your life?” “If you could give a younger version of yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?” and so on…They responded really well to the project and they’ll continue to work on them tomorrow evening. The autobiographies are ultimately for the students themselves, not for us or Machik. I kind of wish my teachers asked me to do something like that when I was younger so I could look back 10 years later and see what I said about myself back then… Tonight we also said goodbye to another crucial member of the SLP team, Lenore, who came to Chengdu before everyone else arrived to begin planning for the summer program. She’s leaving tomorrow morning for the US and we’ll definitely miss her! |
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