sarahsinbeijing

Day 4 July 10, 2008 Before coming to Ledu County I said on numerous occasions that I thought this would be an opportunity to see a part of China I hadn't seen, the rural countryside. I realize now that I have actually seen the rural countryside numerous times throughout my time in China. The difference now is that I am not in Ledu County as a tourist. I think perhaps I thought that I would be teaching in a small village with only a few hundred people. This is not the case at all. The population here is about 20,000, which is incredibly small compared to many cities in China, but it still makes for a good sized little town. Thankfully, McDonalds and KFC have not yet appeared here, but there are a few well known ... read more

(excerpt from an email I sent to my friend Michelle) This is my third day here in Ledu County, but we still haven't started teaching English because the students are taking exams or something. Instead we've been going to a ton of official dinners and lunches with people in charge of the schools and the government here. I'm not really sure what we're accomplishing by doing that..... Plus today at lunch they insisted on toasting with tons of baijiu. I refused to drink much and got away with it because I was the American girl, but the Tsinghua students were not able to refuse and they all got drunk! One of them even threw up! I don't think they'd ever been that drunk before. After lunch we were supposed to go to a local hospital because ... read more

Day 2 July 8, 2008 Day 2 in Ledu County has been relatively uneventful, especially for someone such as me with a low level of Chinese comprehension. Because the students are taking exams, we will not start teaching for several days. Thus, the Tsinghua students have set out to do some research on the successes and failures of a recent government health program aimed at covering a percentage of health expenses for people in rural areas. Yue Lin, the only female Tsinghua student, and Ma Haipeng, also a Tsinghua student, spent the morning meeting with people to get permission to interview doctors. They found that if a government official did not accompany them, the doctors would not be willing to interview. What it all comes down to at the end of the day is that us ... read more

Day 1 July 7, 2008 I am on a train to Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province. I will be here for the next ten days or so teaching English to children in the countryside. After arriving at the train station, we will take a bus to Ledu County. This is all part of the Summer Service Learning Program sponsored by the Poverty Alleviation Office at Tsinghua University. My traveling companions include one female and four male Tsinghua students, a Chinese-American who just graduated from Duke University and a female professor from the University of South Floriay. We will later be joined by a female Chinese teacher who works at an elementary school at Tsinghua. I am very excited for this opportunity. It's not every day that you can just walk into a rural, non-touristy area ... read more

I can't believe it's already June 21st. As expected, the time has flown by. I have had five amazing months here. In this time I have travele to Xian, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Yangzhou, Datong, Hong Kong, Chengdu, Jiuzhaigou, Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Chengde, Hohhot, Guilin, Yangshuo, and I have, of course, lived in Beijing. My Chinese has greatly improved, though I still have a LONG way to go. I have pulled the only two all nighters of my entire life, (one of them being last night as I struggled to complete my final 10 page paper and pack up my entire room at the same time). Mostly though, I feel I have learned a lot about people. I find it very humbling to go to other countries and learn that the way you do things isn't necessarily ... read more

I'm now on the train heading back to Beijing from Hohhot. We're taking a hard sleeper car, which means that there is a whole car full of bunk beds. There are three layers of beds: bottom, middle and top. We all have top bunks because that's all that was left when we bought our tickets. Our train left Hohhot at 9:23 PM and will arrive in Beijing at 7 something in the morning. It's currently about 10:05 PM which means I will probably have another 25 minutes until they turn off the lights. I'm definitely in very different sleeping conditions than I was last night. The experience in the yurt was fun, though in the middle of the night I woke up a few times because I was so cold. I just pulled the covers over ... read more

I know, I know, I haven't written in months! I'm sorry! I've actually started four or five entires that I've just never gotten around to finishing, so I'll try to finish them up and post them retroactively. My program officially ends on June 21, less than a month away. I'm going to travel from June 21 to July 1, probably to Xinjiang with my friend John and maybe some other people. Then from July 1 to July 22 I'll be participating in a Summer Service Learning Program with Tsinghua University, the school I'm studying at right now. If you're interested in finding out more about the program you can visit this website, www.wangfoundation.net/service_learning.htm. Basically, I'll be traveling to Ledu County in Qinghai Province, a rural area of China, to learn about poverty in the country and ... read more

I'm back in Beijing! After three weeks of traveling, I have finally returned to my cozy dorm room at Tsinghua. I'm planning on retroactively posting some journal entries that I've written out so make sure to check back and look before this entry to see what I've been up to the last few weeks. Here's a basic itinerary of where I've been: January 20-23: Xi'an January 23-28: Beijing (but in a hotel, not on campus) January 29-February 2: Shanghai February 2-5: Nanjing February 5-7: Wuxi, specifically Jiangying country February 7-8: Yangzhou February 8-9: Back in Nanjing for a short 24 hours before jumping on the train to Beijing February 10: Beijing! ... read more

That's right. I drove a car in China. You see, today started like any other day. I woke up, ate breakfast, brushed my teeth and got dressed. Then, it happened. Yinxi said to me, "Sarah you know how to drive, right?" I replied that I did, but that I could only drive an automatic. Luckily for them, the car was an automatic. My mind raced for other excuses. The roads in China are very different from the U.S. I don't have an international driving license. But none of it mattered. They needed someone to drive, and I was the only one who knew how. Next thing I knew I was standing in front of Yinxi's uncle's new Mercedes and he was handing me the keys. Why oh why did I remember to pack my driver's license? ... read more