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News
March 2016
Mandarin comes to Breadalbane
At Breadalbane Academy a Mandarin teacher came and taught some of the pupils of S2 how to speak Mandarin.
Zhao Lao Shi (Mrs Shi) taught us how to say the numbers in Mandarin and also how to say some basic words
such as mouth, fire and roof which, when the pictures are combined, make a whole new word such as fire and roof
which combined make fire in the building. On the last day we had a very interesting lesson about the Chinese New
Year and this year it is the Year of the Monkey. We even got to put on a mini parade.
Zhao Lao Shi is from the capital of China, Beijing and she moved to the UK 14 years ago. She lived in England for
6 years but has been in Scotland for the last 8years. Zhao Lao Shi also had a helper on the last day called Zhao
Lao Zhang (Mrs Zhang) who has only been in the UK for 4 months.
The schools in China are so different to here. They start lessons at 7:30am and end at 5:30pm which is a long day.
The summer holiday is a lot longer than ours - we get 6 weeks but they get 2 months.
Both teachers told me that they love Scotland because of the welcoming people and the beautiful scenery. The
only problem with Scotland for them is the weather. Zhao Lao Shi told me that in China the seasons are very
distinct - not like here where we can have all seasons in one day.
We were very fortunate to have Zhao Lao Shi teach us as she has now left Perth and Kinross to start a new job.
By Luke Smith (S2)