pinlay
pin lay Joined: October 27th 2005
Logged in: July 21st 2010
Logged in: July 21st 2010
Travel Blog Posts
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go...
28th Feb 2010 It was a leisurely breakfast at the area near where we stay, 如家hotel which has a couple of shopping malls, a big hypermarket, a cinema, foot reflexology place (which opened until 2am!) and two coffee places with a KFC- very popular with the locals. I had a simple porridge breakfast at KFC and wandered around snapping some pix of the places we go to for the past week. I also saw a local hawker selling what seems like delicious breakfast to me - a Tianjin version of a Ramli burger - with egg, ham between two buns...however as the queue was rather long and I don't fancy waiting in the cold, I decided to walk to the only KFC in the area. KFC is the same everywhere, and while it doesn't boast great ... read more
Towels for POPCH
Day 8 and the final day of our work at POPCH was a happy moment for us. Mee Lar has managed to get her Tianjin friends, a lovely Christian couple to help us source for milk bottles, bibs and together with the towels that she has bought earlier, we were able to give the whole lot of over 100 milk bottles of two different sizes to Xiao Liu from World Vision, Tianjin. Being very meticulous, she has actually ensured that the bottles were suitable by asking her friend to drop by at the POPCH sometime earlier in the week to make sure that they are suitable for the children. It is indeed with grateful heart that I will like to say "Thanks" to all my team members who have gone out of the way to make ... read more
The completed wall
Day 7 at POPCH was another round of Milk Kitchen, Baby Care as well as English teaching. This time round I did much better with washing of all the milk bottles at the kitchen as I finally managed to clean all the milk bottles before the 1 hour is up :) and have time to spare to walk over to where Diana is helping to peel sweet potatoes :) There was a time given during the lunch break to share with the staff on what we learnt during our stint at POPCH. It was a heart-warming moment for us to receive tokens of appreciation - a T-shirt, a calendar plus a letter of appreciation from children. I had a good time sharing with my students from my EL classes over lunch. There was also much happiness ... read more
Fun with Hats
Day 6 at POPCH saw us trying to finish up our un-completed work for the wall-painting, hanging the cranes and also the paper hats for the children. Anne was very hardworking the previous night and did OT by helping paste the headband for the animals and potato men. The final touches were done when we reach POPCH by glueing the banner into little headbands for the children. We had fun trying on the hats and there were favourites by the different volunteers :) eg Arlene loves the "cat" hat, myself the "snake" hat. There were discussions on how to make the hat "stronger" to withstand rough play by the kids eg Anne suggested cutting off the legs of the "bee" as the legs will block the kids' view if they were left on the headband. With ... read more
Wall painting 1
For me, this trip has been a discovery of the the many talents of my team members. Today both myself and Diana were rostered to do "wall painting" - which was started by Mee Lar, Amanda, Arlene and Anne. It was a pretty piece of work - with strawberries happily sprinkled all over the fields. The pix was supplied by "Xiao Liu" from World Vision China and the artists were none other than the 4 ladies above. They did a beautiful job of doing the wall and when we were there, the wall was almost completed with finishing touches being done by Mee Lar. She gamely climbed on the ladder and did the last two drawings :) For myself and Diana, we set about trying to help thread all the cranes into a string and hang ... read more
Snake
Day 4 at Prince of Peace Children's Home began with both Diana and myself being tasked to the Milk Kitchen. Diana helped wash milk bottles and I was given the job to separate good eggs from cracked ones. When done, i was asked to help peel potatoes. I only managed a pathetic no of having 6 potatoes peeled before the hour was up:) Diana fared slightly better, and with a little help from me, managed to finish washing all the bottles assigned :) Next was lesson time with JJ, my assigned kid and the afternoon was spent finishing our work on drawings of animals and facial expressions to be used as teaching aids :) It was a tiring but fulfilling job as we managed to finish all the assigned drawings..though we are far from done... Take ... read more
Paper Cranes and us
Day 3 at Prince of Peace Children's home brought about new challenges. On our list were duties like "baby care" which includes bringing my ward, JJ to the classroom today. JJ is not able to walk and my duty include helping to bring her to the 3rd level classroom where she joined some 5 other children to learn a lesson on "parts of a face". The two local teachers were cheerful in teaching - though a teacher myself for many years, it was interesting to see how they taught this group of special children. They started the lesson by singing a song to bring class to attention. Next, roll-call is when each child is asked to point out which face is her/hers :) After that, lesson proper began where 4 oout of 5 senses were engaged ... read more
Fu
Prince of Peace Children's Home - Day 2 Day 2 started with baby care and my group had lotsa of time with baby care slots. I met two new "ah yi"s on duty - there are a total of 8 of them on 4 shifts as the room I am assigned to is the most dependant in the home and needs care 24x7. It was a time of learning to feed them, understand their individual learning ability, what each of them is like,what they dislike and also how to relate to them. For games and activities, both Diana n myself fare a bit better after yesterday. We learn how to make a "cat" mask and teach them to sing with the "Old Macdonald had a farm" with their mask on. The kids simply love the masks ... read more
At POPCH
Prince of Peace Children's Home and Children Rehabilitation Centre Finally! We are going to meet the children at the home today. We were briefed on the rules and regulations of the POPCH by Liu Jie, the hospitality officer. The home has strict rules to protect the interest of the children under their charge and we have to sign some papers before we are allowed to start "work". I felt that this was a very good SOP by the admin as it protects the interests of the children and also set our expectations right. We were brought on a tour of the home before we start our duties officially. Everyone was given an identifier batch (which incidentally became useful when we were stopped by a security guard to ask why we were at the door of the ... read more
Culture Street
Tianjing We had a one day tour of Tianjing, taking in sites from various famous places. As it was still CNY holidays for the locals, the mood was very festive with occasional burst of fireworks at pockets in the city. The places of interest included Tianjin Old Culture Street, the Tianjing flyer, eating of hot-pot with the flavourful mutton either in slices or the bbq sort. We also visited the place where Emperor Puyi was put up with his wife Wanrong when he was exiled from Beijing and a museum that was setup by a local philanthropist - to showcase the decorated porcelain pieces :) More pix at url=http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=yongtaufooteam&target=ALBUM&id=5440319595352375905&authkey=Gv1sRgCI7cy8-_sqrBtgE&feat=email... read more
