posted by Ms Isabelle Gall, Principal Teacher Curriculum , Carnoustie High School

Alex and I are senior pupils at Carnoustie High School who have been awarded the life-changing opportunity to spend a year in Tianjin from September 2017.  Ever since beginning our Mandarin Adventure, Alex and I have become deeply immersed in many Chinese experiences and opportunities.  Alex and I were very lucky to be offered places in the CISS Summer Immersion trip 2016.  The two weeks became an unforgettable experience filled with culture, beautiful sights, language and more.

We have always been interested in Chinese language and culture; we had seized the opportunity to take it as a course at our school. Even though this was the beginning of my journey, it wasn’t until I had the honour of hosting the launch ceremony for Carnoustie High School to become the Confucius Hub for Angus Schools, that I really dedicated myself to the study of the Mandarin language.  Kevin Shand

Following our return from the summer course we decided to start a Chinese club for younger pupils in our school to share our experience of the rich and beautiful culture in China.  Currently our club boasts around 20 pupils and runs weekly.  So far we have not only taught them some Mandarin but we have also enjoyed teaching cooking, food tasting, art and games.  In addition to running the club we compiled a video and presentation about our time in China that was shown to the entire school and we hosted the Guangzhou Cantonese puppet show in our school.

I feel it’s important to get young people more involved in learning about other cultures, therefore it has been a delight bringing Chinese culture to our school.  The work we have done has encouraged many pupils to learn more and I hope that they are inspired to follow in our footsteps.  Alexandra McCombie