My first talk on my experience in Xian

On September 22, I think, I will be speaking to the Peoria Section of the American Welding Society, about my time in Xian.  I will talk about welding and the other jobs I was able to watch people do, while I was in China.  I will also talk about life in general, as I observed it.  This will be the first time I will get to talk to a group of people about what I did in China and what I got to see.  I need to go through my pictures and get them on a thumb drive so I can just talk about the pictures.  I did take pictures of people just working and going about their every day lives, and many of those people looked at me like I was nuts.  I will enjoy getting the opportunity to talk about a place that I enjoyed so much.  I even have treats, Chinese cigarettes, hard liquor, and I will put together a Chinese welding helmet, a pair of sunglasses stuck in a piece of card board.  You strike an arc and close your eyes.  The Chinese word for personal protective equipment is Mei you.   Mei you, pronounced, May yo, like in what you spread on a turkey sandwich, means "not have."  I have been posting a lot of pictures on my Q-zone, so my Chinese students and friends can see what I did during my time in China.  It is interesting for me to go back through the pictures and see what I did in China.  I will enjoy added pictures to the different files as I prepare for this talk.
I will give a talk that will be very similar to the final exam that I gave my students.  All my students had to teach me about 5 to 10 new words in Chinese and talk in English for 5 to 10 minutes.  It took a month to get them to actually understand the assignment.  These were college students but I found out that none of them had ever given a speech before, not even in Chinese.  The school system is different from ours, very different.  I told all my students to talk about something you are interested in and to practice you talk  until you are comfortable with it.  That is what I need to do, get my pictures ready and practice.  It will not be difficult to talk about China because I enjoyed the experience so much.  Did I mention I was going to have samples of hard liquor that I brought back from China.  I will have more details after the AWS planning meeting this week and will post the information on the blog and facebook.  I just hope the room will be big enough for everyone.