CHINA: Day 3

May 19, 2012

Well I started off today by blowing the power in our room.  I attempted to straighten my hair and apparently our outlet didn’t love that too much.  Oops.  I was afraid that that was going to be a bad sign of how the rest of the day would be (like breaking a shoelace), but it definitely wasn’t.  Today was incredible.

We met in the lobby of the hostel at 7 am for our trip to the Migrant School.  We first took the subway to the part of the city where the US Embassy is.  That is definitely a different part of town than where we have been.  It felt really Americanized over there (because that’s where all the Americans who work in the embassy hang out).  We stopped at a building there that became our new favorite place.  The bottom floor was a little grocery store/bakery/deli with all kinds of American foods.  That was so exciting! Kenz and I bought a warm ciabatta bread and some juice.  Best breakfast ever!  The rest of the building had lots of other American restaurants like Papa John’s, Fatburger, and Starbucks.  We loved that.  After only a couple of days, some of us we already pretty done with Chinese food.  So that was fun. 

After our little snack we met with a guy who works at the embassy who was going to take us to the school.  He told us that we would be dividing up into pairs and taking over a classroom of 8-16 year-olds and teaching them English.  None of us were prepared for this so he suggested just playing games and singing songs that would help them practice the little English that they already knew.  The school is one of several started by a Chinese man trying to help the kids outside of town who, without schooling, really have no chance to improve their very poor quality of life.  The schools are technically illegal because the government doesn’t love anything that will give the people of China the chance to better themselves and get out of here or put themselves in a better place than they are right now.  Nice huh? But that doesn’t stop people.  Which I love.  The kids that we were teaching were super dedicated too because it’s all volunteer and to go on a Saturday is something that only the kids who really want to learn do.  It’s easy to forget how blessed we are in America with our school systems.  I would so much rather be forced to go to school than have it be illegal.  This trip is so full of eye-opening experiences.

We had about an hour bus ride to the school out in the countryside.  This was the first time that we had actually been on the roads, since we have just been taking the subway.  Holy scary!  Chinese people are TERRIBLE drivers! We were mostly terrified for our lives the whole ride.  Luckily our bus driver was just as crazy as the rest of them so he could handle it. 

When we made it to the school, the kids were all lined up in perfect lines outside.  The school and grounds outside of it were soooo ghetto and sad looking.  We got into our pairs and our kids led us into our classrooms.  Kenz and I had 8 kids in our little class who started off kind of quiet but warmed up to us pretty quickly.  We didn’t really know what we were doing or how much English the kids knew so we decided to start with introductions.  I couldn’t repeat a single one of those kids’ names or hometowns.  Which I felt bad about.  But they just called me teacher so I guess they couldn’t remember/pronounce my name either.  Our kids were all about 16 and absolutely adorable.  Chinese kids look a lot younger than they are.  We decided to start with playing hangman.  They loved that.  We tried to start easy with just doing colors and words that we thought they would know.  Pretty soon they were doing whole sentences and guessing the answer before even a single letter was guessed.  They were super smart, and I felt super dumb.  It was fun though.   At one point, Kenzy left the room for a second and the little boy on the front row looked at me and said, “Dance!”  It took me a couple tries to figure out what he was saying, but when I did I just cracked up.  I tried to get him to come up and dance with me and then he just cracked up and shook his head.  Pretty soon the whole class was stomping their feet and clapping their hands “We Will Rock You” style….and I was dancing.  Too funny.  After we played a zillion rounds of hangman (they seemed to be enjoying it so we just kept playing), Zach and Avery asked if we wanted to combine our two classes and go outside and play a game.  First we attempted to play Red Rover, but we couldn’t pronounce any of the kids’ names so that made that pretty impossible.  Then we attempted to play baseball but the kids had no idea how to play and with the minimal English that they spoke, it was pretty tricky to teach them.  So, instead, we played run around and do whatever you want.  All the other classes ended up coming out with us and we played ping pong, badminton, hacky sack, basketball, and little sit in a circle hand games.  It was kind of cool how much fun everyone had even though we couldn’t really communicate with each other.  Kenzy and I ended up falling in love with three little girls from our class (mostly because they fell in love with us).  At one point we were all getting together to take a picture and one of the girls threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek.  It was totally out of nowhere but I just loved it (and it made for a super cute picture)!  After we took the pictures another girl grabbed the camera and held it up to Kenzy and me and said “Beautiful!”  It was so cute! After a couple hours we gave our kids lots of gifts (which weren’t much, but the kids were so grateful for them) and got back on the bus.  It was so much fun and I was pretty sad to leave.

From the school, we took the bus back to Embassy area and got Papa John’s there from our favorite American building.   We were definitley excited about our pizza. Also, there wasn’t actually anywhere that we could eat our pizza inside the building, so we ended up sitting on the curb across the street.  The big group of Americans sitting on the sidewalk eating pizza definitely got some crazy looks from the people walking by.  We get those a lot actually. 

After lunch we went back to the hostel and a group of us did some shopping in the area down the street.  We stopped at one store so that Kenzy and Zach could look at purses (Zach needed one for his wife).  Part of the bargaining process includes walking away when you aren’t getting the price that you want.  The people in this store would have none of that.  They literally grabbed onto Zach’s arms and dragged him back, and they even chased us down the street a little ways.  It was super intense.  But Kenzy got a really cute purse for a pretty good price so I guess it worked.

The best bargaining happened at a bigger store down the road.  Zach and Branden had bought some Nike shoes there yesterday for a really good price so they brought us all back there so we could do the same.  There ended up being nine of us all wanting Nikes for super cheap.  The poor lady helping us was running around like a crazy person trying to get us all the right shoes and colors.  Once we all had the shoes we wanted, the bargaining process began.  Zach and Branden have this down to a science.  They absolutely love bargaining and they are soooo good at it.  So, the rest of us stood back and enjoyed the show.  And it was quite a show.  The lady would tell us a price for all of our shoes and Zach would yell “WHAT??”  Then Branden would suggest a different (much lower) price and the lady would throw her hands in the air and yell “NOOOOO!!!”  It went back and forth like this for a looooong time and, finally, after lots of yelling, laughing, getting down on one knee and fanning the lady, flirting, a moment of real anger, and a whole lot of drama, we all walked away with a pair of $15 Nikes.  I am super happy about that little purchase.  Plus they are super cute! (P.S. they aren’t real Nikes, but nothing here is the real thing.  They make some great fakes though)

After our successful shopping trip, we hopped in the vans and headed to the Kung Fu show.  The show was cool but, once again, as soon as I sat down I realized how tired I was.  I was passed out for the majority of the show.  The best part of the evening was really the van rides to and from the show.  Mostly I just love the kids that are on this trip with me and we were a little crazy tonight.  We cranked the radio and jammed all the way to and from the show.  The van driver didn’t speak any English and he just didn’t know what to do with us.  We had a good time with him.  It was one of those things where you had to be there, but it was so much fun.

To wrap this up, here is your Chinese culture moment of the day: Today we saw a little boy hanging around butt naked in the alley, and no one but the Americans thought a single thing of it.  He was cute though.  We took pictures.

P.S. We have discovered that Fruit Ninja and Ninja Jump are so much more fun in China! I’m so excited to see a real ninja.

I love my girls!