Painting With All the Colors of the Wind

I had such a productive, fulfilling Saturday! In the morning I went for breakfast (somehow it feels like I'm achieving more when I actually go somewhere and get a Chinese breakfast than when I spread peanut butter on bananas in my room) and picked up my clean laundry and rode my bicycle and it was sunny and I felt like I had some good inertia for the day.

I was in a hurry, so I caught a cab to Wudaokou, where I was meeting the other people who were going to volunteer at the school for migrant children. We took the subway up to northern Beijing, then took a bus off into the middle of somewhere, I still don't really know where, then walked through the town to the school. It was in the mid-to-high 90s, so walking there was a super sweaty time, and even during volunteering I found that my clothes were soaked several times. Ewwww.

But whatever about the weather, because teaching at the school was sooo much fun. We have 2 sessions, one teaching English to teachers in the community, and one teaching random stuff to kids. Teaching English to the teachers is a great exercise for the linguistics part of my brain. Not only does it exercise my Chinese skills, but I realize new things about English as I'm trying to explain it. I was talking about the verb "come" and how sometimes you put a "to" after it, but there are 2 exceptions: if the destination is "here" or "there." My student said oh, okay, so can I say "come to home?" Ahaha, I said, actually there are 3 exceptions, "here," "there," and "home." I couldn't think of any other places that didn't require the "to," so I left it at that, but it made me wonder at the peculiarity of English. I'm so glad it's my native language, because English is mightily hard to learn. It's probably the most irregular language ever, due to its mixed roots in Germanic and Romance languages, and yet coincidentally it's becoming the global lingua franca for business. Who's idea was that? It would be so much more convenient if we all spoke Esperanto...

But as much as I enjoy the linguistic aspects, the part I really like about the teaching is my students. The teacher who I teach English to is so cute! Her name is Rose, although she has a tendency to forget what her English name is. She brings her little son with her to class, and is always looking to him for backup, since he takes English in school. Rose is rather shy about speaking English, but I explain things to her in Chinese and she diligently writes things down so she will be able to remember it when she's doing her homework. I just love working with her, and her son is adorable too. Yesterday we learned about the past tense. It was super.

After we work with the teachers for one session, we have a session with the kids. For yesterday's program we split the kids into two groups: one group did sponge painting, and one group divided up and had a contest to see who could build the highest tower using only a certain amount of paper, straws, and tape. The point of both activities was really just to encourage creativity, which isn't emphasized in Chinese elementary education the way it is in America. The kids had a lot of fun and got pretty ingenious building the towers, including the fabulous idea of taping the top of the tower to the ceiling and then building it down from there, which might be cheating, but you can't deny that it's creative! I think I had just as much fun as they did, and I confess that when we were painting pictures I was so engrossed in painting my own picture that I didn't give any kind of guidance or anything, but seriously, it doesn't require that much supervision to paint a picture. One of the little girls painted a huge, red sun, which all of the volunteers agreed was super Communist. Oh my.

After we were all done, the kids hung around by the chalkboard trying to show off their English knowledge for us by writing words and phrases on the board. They were very curious about us, and wanted to know how old I was (they guessed 25 at first, the only time anyone's ever overestimated my age in quite a while) and whether they should call me laoshi (teacher), ayi (auntie), or jiejie (older sister). I told them that I had a little brother who wasn't too much older than them, so I supposed I was young enough to be called jiejie. One little girl gave me the picture she had painted, and I was feeling pretty super.

After we cleaned up we had a little strategizing meeting, after which I went for delicious delicious pizza with one of the other volunteers. Today after church we also went to an Italian buffet, which marked the 3rd day in a row that I had gone to eat somewhere where they gave me a fork instead of chopsticks (the first one being Korean food on Friday). I feel a little guilty about that, but I don't eat Western food that often, so whatever. I have to admit, however, that I am really looking forward to getting some of that good old American food when I get home: hamburgers grilled in the backyard and tomatoes from our garden that aren't blatantly artificially colored and Christmas mint brownies and my mom's chocolate chip cookies...ahhhh. Of course I'm also excited for 6 weeks from now when I'll be getting home-cooked Indian food 3 times a day!

I finally got all my placement information about going to India, and I've got plane tickets (I have a stopover in Finland!) and this week I'll be going to get my visa and I just feel like everything's coming together, which is cool. I'll be working in an orphanage for boys in Delhi, teaching English and just generally helping out for 5 hours a day, and I'll be living with an Indian family and hopefully learning how to cook Indian food! I'm really excited...now all I need to do is find out how I can maybe learn a little Hindi before I go. There's a little language and culture orientation, but I want to prepare myself as well so I can kind of know what's going on. Lots to do, and I still have to find housing for the rest of my stay in China after my program ends...whatevs, everything is hen hao. :)