Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Book Club

Do you love to read? Do you want to practice your oral English? Are you a junior at Qufu Normal University? Join the book club!


Every Monday night, about a dozen junior girls come to my apartment for book club. This semester we are reading and discussing the wonderful Anne of Green Gables. It's a lot of fun. Tonight there was such a heated debate about Anne and Gilbert's future that Caroline had to stand up and shout to make her opinion heard. (Caroline believes that they will eventually become a couple.)

Since I believe that good books and good food go together, I try to bake something for the book club each week, and sometimes I have the girls help. Last week we made a cinnamon oatmeal cake, to which we also added beans. Because, hey -- this is China! Why not?

Most of the girls are students in my writing class. Today, I discovered the following entry in one of their writing journals.
Last night, I went to Alison’s home for reading. The members of the book club were almost there at 7:00.

Our first sight in the room was several bananas on the table. At first I didn’t show any surprise at them. However, as Alison took out an instruction for food, we were all puzzled with excitement. “Aren’t we going to talk about the book? Are we going to learn cooking?” Later, Alison took out the needed ingredients and told us that we would make some banana cakes. That’s really waked our mind up. In one minute, we are ready to begin. Rosy smashed three bananas in a big bowl. Windy .D churned up the butter, oil, eggs, and flower. The rest of us added salt, sugar, baking soda, etc. in it. And lastly, Alison and I put the ready mixture into a oven. Because we had to wait for about one hour, so we took use of the time to talk about the book we had read during the national holiday.

“Wow! Ca sent bon!” Evry cried out in French, when she smelled the delicious cake. No long after that, we got the chance to have a taste. It’s soft, sweet-smelling and warm. The banana cakes tasted so good! Thank you, Alison!”

For the record, the students "Windy .D" and "Evry" are actually Wendy D. and Avery, and we cooked with oil and flour, not butter and flower. If you ever want some soft, sweet-smelling banana bread, feel free to drop by some Monday night.



1 comment:

  1. Alison, judging by your student's account of the evening, it sounds like they're really enjoying book club. What a great idea combining it with a cooking class!

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