China Team Journal


Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Thought for the day: Peace begins at home, but it can be infectious.

Journal by: Lynn Murry


We met for a quick breakfast at seven AM and Warren gave a synopsis of our planned activities. Ann read the journal entry for Tuesday and we scattered to pick up our materials for class. Mr. Fong was right at the door at 8AM to whisk us to the university and so began our day.

Claudia and I went through a wealth of material beginning with charades (at which they excel), proceeding to contractions, pronunciation and discussion, and ending with a word puzzle that ends by providing a phrase describing a picture that appears below the puzzle. Since it took me a while to solve the puzzle, my guess is most of them will spend quite a bit of time on it. One student explained that this puzzle type was not new to them because such puzzles appear in their newspapers as they do ours.

We had lunch in the porridge restaurant on the first floor—excellent as usual (potatoes, tofu, BBQ, beef and egg, dumplings and soup. There was a little time for shopping, lecture prep, and rest before returning to the university to go on our field trip.

We visited the Flying Tigers Memorial. It is very close to the city and 6800 feet above sea level. The memorial consisted of two parts, spires and a separate piece of marble that explained the reason d‘etre.

Warren spoke a few words in honor of the fallen pilots, saluted and placed a bouquet of flowers at the base of the spires. The rest of the group also laid flowers down before the memorial. Chris
translated for the students in case they were not following all the words.

The mountains in which the memorial is located were very green with pines, spruce, laurels, peaches, etc. and very moist as evidenced by at least two types of mushrooms growing among the grasses.

All of us walked to an open area in the trees and learned to dance with our Yi and other indigenous peoples. Although it was hot and humid, there was great participation; and a good time was had by all.

Volunteers had dinner at a very fine Moslem restaurant. We had lots of lamb, fresh tofu, mushrooms and bok choi, sweet pumpkin, and a very good cabbage and chicken broth soup.

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