Day 9: Here Comes the Sun

Today is the 9th day of being in China and the second day of camp, but it is the first day that I have seen the sun shine and the blue skies since coming here. The sun is the source of my happiness and when I saw it, I couldn't believe it. The pollution had dispersed and the sky was absolutely brilliant. I'm conscious about how appreciative I am of the sun and the clean air that we have back home but being here has just reaffirmed my love for it.

           

Camp was far less chaotic today than it was yesterday, however we still have a lot of work to do. Whenever I am in the presence of children, I am always in awe at their imagination and their colorful expressive minds. One of my student told me that she "colored what she felt". Her picture of dolphins jumping out of the ocean was described as coming from her imagination. Today I got three more kids added to my group making the count to thirteen. The majority of the children that I work with do not speak English, but instead they communicate with one another in Mandarin. Although we have translators we were instructed to try to have them only speak English. It's definitely a difficult task to fulfill, especially when a child speaks to you in another language and you have absolutely no understanding of what they are saying. I get frustrated and hopeless because I want to help them out but the different languages create a barrier that at times, seems impossible. The parents have the option of visiting their child during lunch time and to eat with them. Today some of their parents showed up. I discovered that one of my student grew up learning and speaking both Mandarin and English at the same time. Her parents informed me that she can speak and understand both very well and she's only 6 years old. In my Language Issues class I learned that children have a natural gift and skill to pick up on languages. Their brains inherently know what's right and what's wrong in a language.

We are staying in a hotel for another night. They still need to fumigate our apartments. Claire, our point of contact, is convinced that the bites on us are not from bedbugs but simply Chinese mosquitoes. Honestly I hope that that is it and not some unknown bug from China. We had the chance to wander near our hotel complex this evening. With the shining sun just settling and the newfound freedom to explore, I purchased a beer and we went for a walk to find some place to eat. The particular area that we are staying at is rather run down. Many of the buildings are either in construction or in poor conditions, garbage is strewn on the streets everywhere, and children are running around with the crotches on their pants cut out. We stopped at a small family owned restaurant and when they handed us the menu, everything was written in Chinese. I decided to purchase something from the street vendors (some people were warned to stay away from those) and when trying to figure out how much it costs, a guy came up to me and with very broken English helped me out. He tried to explain how he was trying to learn English. He seemed genuine when asking for my number but I wanted to be cautious about the situation so I didn't give it to him, but he was quick to give me his asking me when would I see him again.