WARNING: It's long, but I could have made it longer. It may be best to read in segments to avoid boredom or information overload! :)
Monday, June 1, 2014
It was a holiday here in China so the lovely and wonderful Lois, who works in Volunteer Services, took us summer staffers into Beijing since we all had the day off! Shout out to Lois for using HER day off to show us how to use public transportation so we can get into Beijing on our own from now on, I am so grateful to you for doing that! This was a bit tricky since I had never had to use public transportation before, let alone in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language AND in a city of 13+ million people! It was a bit daunting and I was terrified that I would get separated from the group and be stranded in the middle of this strange place with no idea how to get back to NDC! Luckily all went well, and I'm amazed at how cheap it is to get around here! Only 4 RMB for a bus from Qingyundian into Beijing and just 2 RMB to use the subway, which essentially takes you anywhere in the city you might need or want to go. We went to the Temple of Heaven parks, which was an absolute blast!! I've already posted a few pictures of the types of activities going on there. They include the Chinese version of hacky-sack (using a object similar to a birdie in badminton with feathers coming out the top and washers to weigh it down at the bottom), stretching on the public exercise equipment, dancing, ping-pong sans the table, badminton and small music performances. It was interesting for me because it was primarily older individuals who were doing all of these things! They were so much better at hacky-sack than any of us were when we would briefly join in their game, but they really seemed to enjoy having foreigners and younger people take an interest in what they were doing. We also jumped in while they were dancing and did the Irish dance we had learned. I also loved getting to see all the small groups of people playing instruments and singing traditional Chinese songs. It reminded me so much of when I was in Japan and my mom's host grandpa (Pape) sang for us. They were so talented and I loved getting to hear a different type of music than I am used to hearing in the States. Before we left the park I asked a group of gentlemen if I could join one of their games where they threw heavy cloth rings up in the air toward each other and the partner would catch the rings on their neck. I was surprised to find I did pretty well, only missing one out of ten! I also got to throw them back, and they showed me the correct way to throw them. There was also a correct way to catch them, where you did a sort of curtsey as it landed on your neck which I tried to do but was not nearly as graceful as the other gentlemen. We were probably fifty feet away from each other, so there was a bit of a crowd that gathered to watch, which would have been a no-no in Qingyundian. I'm glad I was in Beijing where that wasn't a negative thing since I was so excited to have the chance to practice a bit of Chinese with them and to have that memory of playing games in the park!
We also we to Houhai, which has more traditional buildings but is more touristy. It was really nice to browse all the shops and to look at the older buildings. Our last stop was the main shopping district of Beijing, which has both a market area and also some high-end Western stores. I ate scorpion, which was not surprisingly disgusting. I'm sure it isn't actually a traditional Chinese delicacy, but I didn't want to turn down the opportunity for a good story! There was a nice mall that we went into to eat dinner, which ended up being the nicest meal at a Pizza Hut I've ever had! Apparently Pizza Hut is a nice restaurant in China, and it was pretty expensive and even had a wine list as part of its menu! If that isn't enough, they also served pitchers of water with lemon! Although it doesn't seem like a big deal at first, the fact that they had clean drinking water and didn't serve it in a plastic bottle says a lot about the quality of restaurant! Ultimately, it was a fan-freaking-tabulous day!!!
Saturday, June 7, 2014
This was the day NDLC held the first English Corner! We were hoping for a turnout of maybe seven or eight attendees for our first session. The goal was to get to know what the needs were and how we could best address the desires of the people who wanted to come and improve their English. Thanks to the NDLC's new connections with the Middle School, however, over thirty students alone showed up, plus a few adults and children. Several even came a half hour early while we were still setting things up, and the number of students just continued to grow. We actually had to frantically find more volunteers to help us run the tables so there wasn't such a mismatched ratio of Chinese to foreigners! While it was a bit overwhelming at first, I was so grateful that this project got off to a great start instead of us having to figure out how to build it up! It definitely changes our game plan concerning the structure of the sessions, but overall it will definitely be a good thing that so many people are coming to NDC and are interested in learning more about what we are doing here!
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The ORU team left today! :( I had a lot of fun getting to know them and hope to keep in touch with some of them in the future! They were here for a month, so when I arrived they had just reached their halfway point. It was a really awesome group of people and I had a great time talking with them and goofing off on our down time! I especially appreciated getting to know a guy on their team named Piang who is originally from Berma but moved to the US with his family as a teenager. Hearing about his life story was truly inspiring and his resilience and strength when it came to overcoming obstacles is amazing. This didn't stop me from beating him in basketball, though, but I guess technically we still have a second half to finish—I'm just giving him some extra time to train!
Saturday, June 14, 2014
This was the second English Corner and it was even more popular than the first! I was really glad to see a mixture of adults and young students, and it is especially neat that some of the NDC staff come to work on their English! I really enjoy getting to know them better, particularly Anna and Rebecca! Anna owns a shop in the cafeteria that sells several NDC products and also some food items. The ice cream is the hands-down favorite of everybody, although Grace and I might debate over whether the strawberry or grape popsicle is better (strawberry!!!). I am still blown away by how cheap things are here compared to home, and I sometimes convince myself to get a popsicle after lunch just because it's only 1 RMB, or about $ 0.16! Rebecca works in the NDC office and we bonded over our mutual appreciation of superhero movies, of all things!! I'm hoping to someday have a movie night maybe, and we can watch one of her favorite Chinese movies (with English subtitles, of course) and then an English movie she hasn't seen before. This week over 50 people showed up for English Corner, which was amazing, but also a lot to handle at once. Especially since the level of English competence differs drastically it's hard to decide what activities and games will work for everybody, and at times the only thing to do was add-lib. Another issue we didn't foresee was students wanting to play on the playground so much, and sometimes they would just get up and walk outside to play instead of staying and talking. What will likely happen in the future is give kids a break from speaking and let them play on the playground for half an hour shifts. This way someone will be outside making sure everyone is okay but also attracts more kids who want to play on the equipment! I don't think playgrounds are common in China, so I think they are amazed at the availability of the nice, new playground NDC just built on campus!
After the English Corner a group of staffers, including myself, went into Beijing on our own to visit the Pearl Market! I was glad to find that I remembered where to switch subway lines and how read the maps, and we got to our destination without any hiccups! The Pearl Market is an really neat place, and they have tons of merchandise besides pearls. Obviously the pearls were the main attraction, though, and I bought a couple of things as souvenirs and gifts (I won't say what or it will ruin the surprise for some of you!), but I don't think anybody could have loved the jewelry as much as Grace. We started out in the pearl section for a bit then went to see some of the other shops, and within a minute Grace was talking about going back to the pearl section and looking for more things! Although we get along really well (and attribute this mainly to us both having three brothers and no sisters), we have completely different taste in jewelry. I'm pretty sure when she asked me which one I liked she did so just to know which one she wouldn't like best! ;) I also ran into someone who went to Michigan State while there. I was wearing a Notre Dame tee so we struck up a conversation which started with "You guys ruined our chances of getting to a Bowl," to which I replied, "Yeah, sorry about that. Kind of." It was nice to talk with someone from "home" though, and wherever he is I hope he has safe travels the rest of his stay in China and on his way back to Michigan. I also wished him luck next fall, and it took him a few moments to get what I meant. I didn't hear him laugh until a few seconds after I left, so I got away with having the last word on the superiority of Notre Dame over all other schools ;)
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Today was fortunately the worst day I've had so far in China. I say fortunately because it really wasn't that bad at all. We travelled into Beijing to go to a service and I got car sick. It was pretty bad and I felt sick the rest of the day, which didn't help when we got lost in Beijing a short while later (with no way to communicate with anyone). Our bus driver dropped us off at the wrong location, so we had to take three separate taxis to the correct spot, but our taxi driver dropped us off in a different place than any the rest of our group. She was talking on her phone when we arrived, so she just nonchalantly waved in the general direction of our destination. We had been the second taxi to leave, and since the first group wasn't there and the last one didn't arrive soon after us, we figured our best option was just to find where we needed to go and hope the others would think the same thing. Nobody had usable phones or any phone numbers. Only one of us, Katherine, spoke any Chinese, but she'd only taken a year of it in school. We wandered around for about 30 minutes asking random people if they knew what direction we needed to go before finally finding it! Thankfully we all found each other in the end, but it was a bit concerning for a while! After the service we were surprised with a trip to the Summer Palace, which was really beautiful but also really hot and humid. Also, since I didn't know we were going there I didn't wear the appropriate sightseeing clothing and was also still feeling unwell from the ride into Beijing earlier. I did have a good time, though, and got to see some really pretty buildings that had beautiful paintings! We also took a boat ride around the lake, which was relaxing We ended the trip with a walk on the Seventeen Hole Bridge, which Lyne from NDC told us is one of the world-famous attractions at the Summer Palace! Overall the day was not too horrible at all, and again I'm fortunate that it was the worst I've had since being here!!!! :D
It was also the day marking the beginning of a very busy week for all of ND as this weekend over 50 volunteers from three separate groups arrived for the week! It is really exciting to meet so many amazing new people from all over the world (America, New Zealand, Switzerland and England), but also makes for a very intense week for the staff, which includes me. I'm in charge of projects (or "The Island of Misfit Toys/Volunteers" as Donna calls it ;) ), so all of the volunteers who do not have obligations in NDFH or with the homeschool students come to me and I find tasks for them to do! It will be great to see how much we can get done in a week, and hopefully all goes smoothly as we facilitate projects and programs for so many people. I also hope all of the volunteers leave here feeling satisfied with the work they will do here and enjoy their time at NDC!
Monday, June 1, 2014
It was a holiday here in China so the lovely and wonderful Lois, who works in Volunteer Services, took us summer staffers into Beijing since we all had the day off! Shout out to Lois for using HER day off to show us how to use public transportation so we can get into Beijing on our own from now on, I am so grateful to you for doing that! This was a bit tricky since I had never had to use public transportation before, let alone in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language AND in a city of 13+ million people! It was a bit daunting and I was terrified that I would get separated from the group and be stranded in the middle of this strange place with no idea how to get back to NDC! Luckily all went well, and I'm amazed at how cheap it is to get around here! Only 4 RMB for a bus from Qingyundian into Beijing and just 2 RMB to use the subway, which essentially takes you anywhere in the city you might need or want to go. We went to the Temple of Heaven parks, which was an absolute blast!! I've already posted a few pictures of the types of activities going on there. They include the Chinese version of hacky-sack (using a object similar to a birdie in badminton with feathers coming out the top and washers to weigh it down at the bottom), stretching on the public exercise equipment, dancing, ping-pong sans the table, badminton and small music performances. It was interesting for me because it was primarily older individuals who were doing all of these things! They were so much better at hacky-sack than any of us were when we would briefly join in their game, but they really seemed to enjoy having foreigners and younger people take an interest in what they were doing. We also jumped in while they were dancing and did the Irish dance we had learned. I also loved getting to see all the small groups of people playing instruments and singing traditional Chinese songs. It reminded me so much of when I was in Japan and my mom's host grandpa (Pape) sang for us. They were so talented and I loved getting to hear a different type of music than I am used to hearing in the States. Before we left the park I asked a group of gentlemen if I could join one of their games where they threw heavy cloth rings up in the air toward each other and the partner would catch the rings on their neck. I was surprised to find I did pretty well, only missing one out of ten! I also got to throw them back, and they showed me the correct way to throw them. There was also a correct way to catch them, where you did a sort of curtsey as it landed on your neck which I tried to do but was not nearly as graceful as the other gentlemen. We were probably fifty feet away from each other, so there was a bit of a crowd that gathered to watch, which would have been a no-no in Qingyundian. I'm glad I was in Beijing where that wasn't a negative thing since I was so excited to have the chance to practice a bit of Chinese with them and to have that memory of playing games in the park!
We also we to Houhai, which has more traditional buildings but is more touristy. It was really nice to browse all the shops and to look at the older buildings. Our last stop was the main shopping district of Beijing, which has both a market area and also some high-end Western stores. I ate scorpion, which was not surprisingly disgusting. I'm sure it isn't actually a traditional Chinese delicacy, but I didn't want to turn down the opportunity for a good story! There was a nice mall that we went into to eat dinner, which ended up being the nicest meal at a Pizza Hut I've ever had! Apparently Pizza Hut is a nice restaurant in China, and it was pretty expensive and even had a wine list as part of its menu! If that isn't enough, they also served pitchers of water with lemon! Although it doesn't seem like a big deal at first, the fact that they had clean drinking water and didn't serve it in a plastic bottle says a lot about the quality of restaurant! Ultimately, it was a fan-freaking-tabulous day!!!
Saturday, June 7, 2014
This was the day NDLC held the first English Corner! We were hoping for a turnout of maybe seven or eight attendees for our first session. The goal was to get to know what the needs were and how we could best address the desires of the people who wanted to come and improve their English. Thanks to the NDLC's new connections with the Middle School, however, over thirty students alone showed up, plus a few adults and children. Several even came a half hour early while we were still setting things up, and the number of students just continued to grow. We actually had to frantically find more volunteers to help us run the tables so there wasn't such a mismatched ratio of Chinese to foreigners! While it was a bit overwhelming at first, I was so grateful that this project got off to a great start instead of us having to figure out how to build it up! It definitely changes our game plan concerning the structure of the sessions, but overall it will definitely be a good thing that so many people are coming to NDC and are interested in learning more about what we are doing here!
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The ORU team left today! :( I had a lot of fun getting to know them and hope to keep in touch with some of them in the future! They were here for a month, so when I arrived they had just reached their halfway point. It was a really awesome group of people and I had a great time talking with them and goofing off on our down time! I especially appreciated getting to know a guy on their team named Piang who is originally from Berma but moved to the US with his family as a teenager. Hearing about his life story was truly inspiring and his resilience and strength when it came to overcoming obstacles is amazing. This didn't stop me from beating him in basketball, though, but I guess technically we still have a second half to finish—I'm just giving him some extra time to train!
Saturday, June 14, 2014
This was the second English Corner and it was even more popular than the first! I was really glad to see a mixture of adults and young students, and it is especially neat that some of the NDC staff come to work on their English! I really enjoy getting to know them better, particularly Anna and Rebecca! Anna owns a shop in the cafeteria that sells several NDC products and also some food items. The ice cream is the hands-down favorite of everybody, although Grace and I might debate over whether the strawberry or grape popsicle is better (strawberry!!!). I am still blown away by how cheap things are here compared to home, and I sometimes convince myself to get a popsicle after lunch just because it's only 1 RMB, or about $ 0.16! Rebecca works in the NDC office and we bonded over our mutual appreciation of superhero movies, of all things!! I'm hoping to someday have a movie night maybe, and we can watch one of her favorite Chinese movies (with English subtitles, of course) and then an English movie she hasn't seen before. This week over 50 people showed up for English Corner, which was amazing, but also a lot to handle at once. Especially since the level of English competence differs drastically it's hard to decide what activities and games will work for everybody, and at times the only thing to do was add-lib. Another issue we didn't foresee was students wanting to play on the playground so much, and sometimes they would just get up and walk outside to play instead of staying and talking. What will likely happen in the future is give kids a break from speaking and let them play on the playground for half an hour shifts. This way someone will be outside making sure everyone is okay but also attracts more kids who want to play on the equipment! I don't think playgrounds are common in China, so I think they are amazed at the availability of the nice, new playground NDC just built on campus!
After the English Corner a group of staffers, including myself, went into Beijing on our own to visit the Pearl Market! I was glad to find that I remembered where to switch subway lines and how read the maps, and we got to our destination without any hiccups! The Pearl Market is an really neat place, and they have tons of merchandise besides pearls. Obviously the pearls were the main attraction, though, and I bought a couple of things as souvenirs and gifts (I won't say what or it will ruin the surprise for some of you!), but I don't think anybody could have loved the jewelry as much as Grace. We started out in the pearl section for a bit then went to see some of the other shops, and within a minute Grace was talking about going back to the pearl section and looking for more things! Although we get along really well (and attribute this mainly to us both having three brothers and no sisters), we have completely different taste in jewelry. I'm pretty sure when she asked me which one I liked she did so just to know which one she wouldn't like best! ;) I also ran into someone who went to Michigan State while there. I was wearing a Notre Dame tee so we struck up a conversation which started with "You guys ruined our chances of getting to a Bowl," to which I replied, "Yeah, sorry about that. Kind of." It was nice to talk with someone from "home" though, and wherever he is I hope he has safe travels the rest of his stay in China and on his way back to Michigan. I also wished him luck next fall, and it took him a few moments to get what I meant. I didn't hear him laugh until a few seconds after I left, so I got away with having the last word on the superiority of Notre Dame over all other schools ;)
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Today was fortunately the worst day I've had so far in China. I say fortunately because it really wasn't that bad at all. We travelled into Beijing to go to a service and I got car sick. It was pretty bad and I felt sick the rest of the day, which didn't help when we got lost in Beijing a short while later (with no way to communicate with anyone). Our bus driver dropped us off at the wrong location, so we had to take three separate taxis to the correct spot, but our taxi driver dropped us off in a different place than any the rest of our group. She was talking on her phone when we arrived, so she just nonchalantly waved in the general direction of our destination. We had been the second taxi to leave, and since the first group wasn't there and the last one didn't arrive soon after us, we figured our best option was just to find where we needed to go and hope the others would think the same thing. Nobody had usable phones or any phone numbers. Only one of us, Katherine, spoke any Chinese, but she'd only taken a year of it in school. We wandered around for about 30 minutes asking random people if they knew what direction we needed to go before finally finding it! Thankfully we all found each other in the end, but it was a bit concerning for a while! After the service we were surprised with a trip to the Summer Palace, which was really beautiful but also really hot and humid. Also, since I didn't know we were going there I didn't wear the appropriate sightseeing clothing and was also still feeling unwell from the ride into Beijing earlier. I did have a good time, though, and got to see some really pretty buildings that had beautiful paintings! We also took a boat ride around the lake, which was relaxing We ended the trip with a walk on the Seventeen Hole Bridge, which Lyne from NDC told us is one of the world-famous attractions at the Summer Palace! Overall the day was not too horrible at all, and again I'm fortunate that it was the worst I've had since being here!!!! :D
It was also the day marking the beginning of a very busy week for all of ND as this weekend over 50 volunteers from three separate groups arrived for the week! It is really exciting to meet so many amazing new people from all over the world (America, New Zealand, Switzerland and England), but also makes for a very intense week for the staff, which includes me. I'm in charge of projects (or "The Island of Misfit Toys/Volunteers" as Donna calls it ;) ), so all of the volunteers who do not have obligations in NDFH or with the homeschool students come to me and I find tasks for them to do! It will be great to see how much we can get done in a week, and hopefully all goes smoothly as we facilitate projects and programs for so many people. I also hope all of the volunteers leave here feeling satisfied with the work they will do here and enjoy their time at NDC!