Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Teacher, Teacher, I declare.....

And how many of you know the followup line to that one? hehe

Wanted to tell you all about my student. Well, OK, so he's more of a guinea pig than a student, but I'm still teaching him! Started like this.....

I went to the stadium in Xinzhuang on June 10 with one of the other fans, Tona from Singapore, the day before the Li Hai concert to check out the venue and to see if maybe we might see the guys and hear them practicing. We ended up meeting the stage manager, Cooper, and as we were outside talking with him, a friendly guy bounced over and said to me, "Hi! You can speak English to me, I need to practice!" I looked him over and said, "What a coincidence - I'm looking for a student!" He protested that he was just a poor boy and couldn't pay for lessons. I told him I'd teach him for free if he'd help me out with practicing my Chinese. He agreed, and we exchanged names and phone numbers. He told me his name was Kuoshi and that he'd give me a call sometime after the concert stuff was finished (he was one of the roadies).

After the show, when we'd all finished eating and were heading to the car, I heard someone call my name. I turned around, and there was Kuoshi, pulling his car into the lot at the stadium. I went over and talked to him, agreed that we'd get together sometime the next week after he called to confirm a time, and went back to my friends. Natari was looking at me very strangely. "You know Kuoshi? How do you know Kuoshi???" she asked. "Ah," I thought to myself, "he must be one of the fans who occasionally gets hired to work the shows." I explained to Nat how I'd met him and that I was going to give him some help with English. She just kept staring at me. "He's a famous guitar player!" she said. "What?! I thought he was just a roadie!" Nope, turns out that Kuoshi is very well known in Taiwan, his former band being Trucku and the current band being Mojo. And I'd actually seen them perform, because they opened the Wu Bai concert in Xinzhu last year when I attended that. Boy, was I surprised.

So, I didn't really know what to expect from the guy, because I know sometimes the "famous" folks can be a bit arrogant, but I have to say that this fella is one of the nicest, sweetest guys I've ever met. I am totally enjoying our three-hour sessions, whether we're working on English or just chatting to get him used to conversation. He has a heart of gold and is so very down-to-earth and not full of himself. Another big plus is that he's a HUGE Wu Bai fan, just like me =) I'm happy to have the opportunity to test my teaching skills to see whether I feel comfortable charging someone to study with me.

Here's a photo of Kuoshi at Spring Scream


I do have another student, too, sort of.....because whenever possible I try to help my friend Hiyoshi with his English. However, we seem to end up having giggle sessions more often than not, because my attempts to explain in English sometimes just go right over his head! It's still fun, and it's helping me learn what sort of difficulties a Japanese speaker has with English. I'm finding that Chinese people have an entirely different set of problems with the language than Japanese. English has quite a few sounds that Japanese does not have, ditto for Chinese, but not as many. Let me tell you, if you never made a certain sound throughout your entire life, it is NOT easy to learn how to make it!

A big "xie xie" to Weiwei for being such a wonderful example as my teacher and for showing me effective ways to teach another language! I owe ya ;)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kuoshi sounds like a swell guy!

Anonymous said...

hey that's cool! i like some of kuoshi's music & it's awesome he likes Wubai! :D

Anonymous said...

That is a cool picture of Kuoshi! It looks like he is a very happy and fun person.

Anonymous said...

HEY!!!
i thoughi was the sweetest guy you ever meet,
oh poohie!
love you anyway
aaron from nyc

Anonymous said...

Cool! I just realised that I can post without having to sign up...

Just wanted to let you know that yes, I do read. =)

-velvet-

500CBFan said...

Aaron, of course you're sweet, dear. Read carefully - I said Kuoshi was ONE of the sweetest ;) Miss you, too.....