Two trips into new territory provided an exciting change of pace for Wayzata High School students learning Mandarin Chinese.
Last December, many students in their first-year of Chinese class went on an immersion trip to Concordia Language Villages in Stillwater, where all the staff were native-speakers and only spoke Chinese for the entire weekend.
From the start, pantomiming was a great bridge for the language barrier; but it was easy to get into the groove of things come mealtime. “[The staff] sang a lot of catchy songs,” says ninth-grader Haley Pysick. Daechia Harris, a sophomore, says it was great because, “We remember songs [in Chinese] so easily.”
Between picking up a broader vocabulary and learning how to brew tea and season rice porridge, ninth-grade student Angel Moua liked doing calligraphy the best.
Over spring break, another group traveled abroad to China for even more fun and memorable food, getting a true-to-life taste of foods like Peking duck and treats filled with red bean paste. All the trip participants plan to continue studying Chinese, which is great for teacher Sheen Heng Zhang, as she planned the trips because she “wanted to give them confidence about what they can already do.”
