pbwinfield

Back in the States! We left Xi'an at 11 this morning and got into Chicago around 4 this afternoon. In Newark now for the night, and on to Fort Knox tomorrow. Back to the MO on Wednesday. I already miss you, China.... read more

Well, it's been a while since I made contact with y'all! Forgive me. Life has been extremely busy since last Thursday when I posted. Allow me to give you an overview of the last 6 days, and when I have time, I will fill in the highlights with more detail and pictures. So, last Friday...Went to the kindergarten in the morning. That afternoon, we (the entire Army group) went to the airport, caught a flight to Guilin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilin) for the weekend, and spent the night in a hotel in there. We took a sweet bus tour on Saturday, and then myself, Eric, and Johnny split off from the rest of the group and spent the night on our own in Yongshua Town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangshuo_County), which is about 70 km from Guilin. The rest of the group spent ... read more

This week has been much less eventful than last week and weekend. After getting back from Beijing on Monday evening, we went directly to bed, having volunteer placement on Tuesday morning and being quite tired from all the good times in Beijing. We've been at the kindergarten every morning the rest of this week, and it has been so fun! There are 4 teachers for my particular class (about thirty 5-year olds. I haven't actually counted them or gotten a group picture yet.), but only 1 of the teachers speaks conversational English. And she hasn't been to class all week! Haha! So, I've had a good time communicating through sign-language (and a tiny amount of very simple English) with the other teachers. Mostly, I've just played with the kids, taught them about the beach and baseball, ... read more

Monday morning, I met up with Dale again and we walked to a sweet, crowded shopping/food street near the hotel. I tried scorpion, which tasted something like a seasoned curly French fry after I finally got up the courage to stick in my mouth. We strolled around the street for a while, and I also tried a stick of candy-coated fresh strawberries. Why can't food be so tasty and cheap in the States? I avoided actually buying any of the goods, since everything I want is cheaper in Xi'an. All the tourist traffic jacks up prices in Beijing. For lunch, we enjoyed a few dishes at a local Muslim restaurant, then walked around Tienanmen Square and took a look at Mao's tomb (didn't go inside though, as it was closed). So cool to be able to ... read more

We flew into Beijing on Saturday morning! This post is gonna be real short, cause I'm so tired! Saturday: Arrived at hotel around lunchtime, then had lunch on the 20th floor of the hotel at a dumb, way over-priced Italian restaurant. Most of our group was tired of Chinese food. Silly. Expensive Italian food in Beijing? Don't do it. However, we did have an excellent view of Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City! After lunch, we walked to The Forbidden City and walked around it for a while. My freshman RA, Dale, from Cedarville met me at the entrance and we walked around together for the afternoon. He has been in Beijing for about 9 months to teach English through Cedarville. So good to see him on the other side of the world! For dinner, we ... read more

Finally, I was able to poach some pictures. There are a lot more I'd like to share from this week, but this is the best I can do for now. Quick update: Thursday, we went to the kindergarten in the morning, which was again so good! Then had a Chinese calligraphy class that afternoon. That evening, I went with Ashton and John to the English Corner, a weekly gathering on a university campus for anyone (primarily college students and recent graduates) to practice their English. We simply made ourselves available to speak with anyone who wanted, and we each soon had a small crowd surrounding us. The 2 hour conversation that I had, if it can be called a conversation, was excellent! It was fascinating and varied, and I learned so much! I'm definitely gonna do ... read more

This time, the title actually applies to the post.... Tuesday: We started our volunteer placement at the kindergarten! Our first day on the job was outstanding! At 8:30 AM, we loaded up in the CCS vans and drove about 20 min through the crazy city traffic, eventually making a quick u-turn to the other side of the street so we could swerve into what appeared to be a random side-street. The kindergarten happened to be just a few hundred feet down this side-street, so we unloaded. Alice, our friendly Chinese CCS staff member, led us through the guarded gate into the lovely kindergarten where large groups of children were dancing in sync. Since my descriptive writing skills aren't quite tops, I'll just show you pictures later this week, instead of trying to describe the school to ... read more

The title of the previous post "Precious Children and Ancient Ruins" pertains to Tuesday and Wednesday. I only got to Monday, so consider that title a teaser for my next post. I hope you weren't too confused when no precious children or ancient ruins showed up in the post...... read more

Monday: We slept in and enjoyed the first tasty meal for breakfast by our CCS cooks. It was excellent (as have all the meals been, but more about that later). We did not start at the kindergarten since we got in so late Sunday night, so Tuesday was the first day there. At 0930, two young ladies came to the apartment and gave us a traditional Chinese music performance. One played the erhu, which is something like a two-stringed violin, but not really. Google it. The other played the pipa, which is something like the mandolin, but not really. Google it. They were both phenomenal musicians, and played both solos and duets. They gave us a taste of some of the most famous, ancient Chinese music, and it was lovely and full of passion. This drove ... read more

We are all safely in China, in the apartment in the middle of the city! And we have a nice wi-fi connection in the apartment! The travel was all just dandy, no problems, uneventful. So cool to be in the middle of a huge, ancient, Chinese city! First impressions: I feel crippled by my lack of reading and speaking skills. The air looks and smells veeeeeery polluted. The apartments are nice, but not quite as nice as I was expecting. Though I wasn't expecting a good, free wi-fi connection! I'll take the swap. The ride from the airport was a little crazy (not too many observed traffic laws...). Though, I think our driver honked more than anyone else on the road. The rest of our Army group (the West Pointers and our officer-in-charge, OIC) seems pretty ... read more