Precious Children and Ancient Ruins: The Real One

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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 you. Each of us Army students were paired up with a class of about 35 students with 2-3 Chinese teachers. I was paired with Nancy's (who speaks excellent English) class, and two other younger teachers, neither of whom speak much English. The kids were about 5 years old, and as cute and friendly as can be! They all have American names, which is how they and their teachers were introducing them to me. Some of their American names are common, but lots of them are quite different (and sweeeeeet). I think some are translations into English of their Chinese name: Tiger, Sophia, Yo-Yo, Happy, Nemo, Tom, Peter, Tracey, Beta (maybe?), Leo, Michael, Linda, and man I really wish I could also learn their Chinese names, but trying to memorize their American names is gonna be hard enough! Since Wednesday was Chinese childrens' day, all I did Tuesday was follow the group around for a couple hours as they practiced some group dances. In between dances (in which I eventually participated near the end of the two hours, to the childrens' and teachers' delight), I worked at memorizing the kids' names, giving them high-fives, playing duck-duck-goose, learning that Chinese kids like to tackle and tickle me as much as American kids, and noting how stinking cute they all are. Wednesday, we didn't work at the school since they simply had performances for their parents. But today (Thursday), we were back there, and then again tomorrow. Beyond simply helping out the teacher's control the kids, playing with the kids, and speaking English with them, I'm also gonna end up teaching them some American songs and games. Today's experience at the kindergarten was again amazing, but I'll expound on that in a later post. These children are precious, and it is already a huge blessing from God to be spending time at this Chinese kindergarten!

Tuesday afternoon, we explored the city area around our apartment, which seems to be in a great location. We've discovered that the Big Wild Goose Pagoda (more about this later!) is a short walk from the apartment, along with lots of cool little (and big) shopping areas and stores. And lots of little restaurants (including McDonald's, KFC, and Pizza Hut) are just several minutes walk down the street. The favorite shop thus far of some of the other guys is a local dvd/cd store. You can buy almost any American movie there for no more than $1.50, and lots of bootleg American movies and tv shows for extremely cheap. Somehow I avoided buying any of these, but the other guys walked out of there with at least 10 dvd's each.

Wednesday morning: We went to see the "Eighth Wonder of the World", the Terracotta Army! It was on the edge of the city, just over an hour's car ride. The ride itself was pretty cool, as I was surprised to see a small mountain range as we got near the edge of the city! This excited me, as I've been craving fresh air and the beauty of nature ever since we entered Xi'an (as cool as the city is, I wouldn't want to call it home). It was relatively inexpensive to tour the Army, and we got to see a newish museum, along with the 3 main pits they currently have open to the public. The first pit was by far the most impressive, consisting of rows and rows of life-size clay soldiers! What impressed me the most about the whole experience was the sheer age this ancient burial ground. It's amazing to think that people more than 2,000 years ago built this huge, ridiculous (when you really think about it) burial sight. I know I've barely talked about the visit here, but I'll talk about it more when I can post pictures. This was my first visit to truly ancient ruins...

And I promise to post pictures of all this as soon as I can! I haven't gotten pictures yet of the kindergarten, but I will tomorrow (if I remember). And I'm need to steal other people's pictures of everything else.

I make too many promises on this blog...

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