This
morning I was woken up very early and went down to breakfast: pickled
vegetables, a quesadilla-type thing, and a bread-type thing with
sugar on the top. One of the other three women is going through
caffeine withdrawal with only tea instead of her morning coffee:
lucky me!
Then
we went to the school which serves a larger area than only this
village. It was an elementary school with about 300 kids. As soon
as we arrived kids rushed up to us and grabbed our hands to lead us
to their classroom: beyond cute. Overseas Adventure Travel helps to
support this school financially, which must make other area schools
jealous. Their latest contribution is money to construct a bathroom
for the kids – what Mike calls “the happy room,” as in, "Anybody need to use the happy room?" — to replace
the current setup which is to pee and poop onto the dirt over which
more dirt is shoveled. You can imagine the smell and I am happy I
didn't experience it myself.
The
child who adopted me showed me her English book; tattered is an
understatement. These kids in the third grade started studying
English two months ago. Here she is:
Girls
and boys share a classroom. Some kids wore “Red Pioneer” scarves
around their necks that have nothing to do with the early days of the
Party – now it denotes that they are good students. I noticed later that
there were significantly more younger kids than older kids who wore
the scarves: maybe the older ones start to goof off? No answer.
Before we were all called away, we left our presents on the teacher's
desk and rushed out. She will be perplexed to find a picture book of
San Miguel, Mexico, when she unwraps them.
Every
Monday morning is the raising of the Chinese flag and singing the
national anthem.
Then
there was an uplifting speech by a student – today's, I am told,
was on the importance of keeping the school clean. And in fact the
school and China in general are very clean. People pick up trash and
many people are employed to sweep the sidewalks and streets with twig
brooms. However, if it's so clean why do they need the reminder?
Next
came the principal – male, of course, with only female teachers. I
hate this. He gave a long speech which the kids seemed to ignore. I
was told every Monday morning he reviews each class's achievements
over the past week.
Next the group broke up into classes and the
teacher did the same thing about the individual students in the
class. As we left the school we passed many uplifting billboards meant to instill good morals in the children. This one was also in English.
Back
in the village the local tour guide with great distress told us to
hurry, hurry: the plane to Chengdu leaves an hour earlier than they
thought. So we all rushed back to our houses, grabbed our things and
rushed to the bus. This is the first logistical snafu I have
observed so far on this entire trip: an impressive performance. We
did make the plane but not by much. With such an early breakfast I
was starving and was delighted to be served something hot on the
plane labeled “Muslim” – a bread-type thing with obviously no
pork, sort of a Chinese burger. Once in Chengdu (pronounced CHUNGdu, just as feng shui is pronounced FUNGshway) we went to a
restaurant where I had good practice picking out the hot pepper bits
with chopsticks: Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan Province, and
they like their food spicy. Being big noses, however (the Chinese
nickname for Caucasians – a Jewish couple at first took offense
thinking it was an anti-Jewish slur), we got served dishes that were
not or only a little spicy. By then it was late, nearly 4 PM, so I
will skip dinner tonight. Enough food, delicious though it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment