Practicing Presentations

Today we managed to get access to the theatre where we were going to be holding our presentation. The first thing we notice … the internet is far better in the lecture theatre than it is in our room, which is rather useful considering that we are trying to bring in someone via video chat into this presentation. We still don't have access to large chunks of the internet, but I guess that would have been too much to ask for.

We discovered a little bit about Chinese culture, and the kind of respect that is required between different levels of authority. While we were waiting to have the lecture theatre opened for us, we ran into a student that had forgotten his headphones in the opposite lecture theatre, and had asked someone to open them. When we had our theatre opened, we discovered some of the bad blood that the janitor ignored the student as he had apparently asked him to open the opposite theatre while the janitor was "off-duty". This sounded a bit like a deep insult the way some of the words were being spat out.
I guess I can be happy that most lecture theatres at my university are generally open, whether there's a lecture in there or not. But the experience certainly makes me a little bit more fearful about trying to respect Chinese culture.

After having played for hours in this theatre, night had already fallen again outside. In some hope of capturing the night life with a tripod and camera this time, we went through the main square again, but again left only with the new lights that we found. We really need to check on Wednesday again to see whether there is something about that particular day of the week.

After tomorrow, things get more relaxed again. The tutoring can be done almost reflexively instead of spending hours of preparation. And we hopefully feel a little bit less burnt out by the time we start wanting to hug our mattresses.