English Dept. Basketball Tournament

Yesterday was a pretty busy day with the Halloween party, but it was made even more busy by the basketball tournament being held by the English department. It turns out that the team from one of my junior classes made it all the way to the final game against a senior team. Unfortunately, their final game was during our class.

The class, however, was able to persuade me to reschedule our whole class to today at noon after much negotiating. (And by that I mean one of the students on the team came up to me and said, "Can we reschedule our class to tomorrow so we can all go to the game?" and I said "Yeah, sure.")

So of course I took this opportunity to introduce some American sports culture to the class.

Making posters at my apartment. Yes, that is my laundry hanging.

When we got to the basketball court, I was surprised to find a very formal looking seat for myself and the other foreign teachers.

Not that this stopped me from cheering and yelling the whole game. I think all the Chinese students and teachers were shocked at how loud Betsy and I could get.. But this only encouraged my class to cheer louder! Luckily, the dean thought it was hilarious and asked me how I got my class of juniors to act like they were freshmen again.

My class, cheering in the stands.

My students are in the red jerseys.

After a close game, my class's team came back from behind to win the championship!

My students are the champions! Look at those fancy flags they get.

It was nice to see my class get excited about something. If only they would get excited about English too...