The Chengdu Stampede
We teach two night classes a week. The first two we spent working on pronunciation. The second set we smartened up and went downtown to the evening market and shopped with our students (an exercise in Active Learning that I could readily defend if anyone questioned its pedagogical efficacy!!). Tonight we spent the night celebrating the Calgary Stampede. We watched video presentations on the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. Margaret ( a.k.a. Cookie) turned the front desk into a chuckwagon and we had our very own stampede breakfast complete with pancakes and maple syrup. We momentarily worried about setting off a fire alarm, but considering we couldn't see any smoke detectors through the haze of cigarette smoke on our non-smoking floor, we put away our worries and went back to flipping flapjacks!