Monday June 28, 2010

Thought for the day: If you add a little to a little, and then do it again, soon that little shall be much. - Hesiod
It’s the second week with our students from Pu’er City, and little by little they are sharing stories using the English that they know. As they recounted their activities of the past weekend in class this morning, we Volunteers introduced them to such words as “budget,” (for the shoppers), and “hangover” and “white lightning” (for the drinkers).

John and Betty had their students make up a story inspired from pictures in magazine ads. After a few minutes of preparation and a practice telling the story in front of a classmate, each student told his/her story to the class, without reading from notes.

Michael and Janet had given an example of telling a story (“Little Red Riding Hood”), in Friday’s class and assigned each student to prepare a Chinese Folk Tale to tell today, which they performed with flair, apparently.

Leon and Jim heard from two of their students, Tommy and David, that the two young fellows went for a walk in Green Lake Park on the weekend, speaking English to each other. Two beautiful Chinese girls heard Tommy and David speaking English, and were so impressed that they gave the fellows a puppy. Was this a tall tale?

Esther and Nancy are working with their class on discerning sounds of English using word pairs such as “light and right,” “connect and collect,” “glass and grass,” and “cloud and crowd.” Nancy’s ukulele accompaniment to songs such as “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” is a delight to the students.

As my class of 15 is made up entirely of women, we spent some time on the theme of shopping, talking about articles of clothing and patterns, such as checks, polka-dots, stripes and floral prints, and what items they bought for family members and themselves.

My class played a spelling game today, called “Alphabet Scramble.” Three teams competed in the spelling of five-letter words, with each member of a team holding up a card with a letter on it, in the correct order (usually) so that I could check the accuracy of their team’s spelling. That went well.

We got a start on the chants and singing games, joined by Leon’s and Jim’s class, the last half hour of the morning. There were lots of smiles as they learned a clapping pattern to go with “Miss Mary Mack” and traditional Western folk dance figures to go with “Old Brass Wagon.”

Baoli rewarded us for our morning’s work by taking us to the Golden Flower Hot Pot Restaurant, a short walk from school. It was a kind of pyrotechnical pleasure, with each of us sitting behind a blazing heat source and bubbling broth of tomato, chicken or coconut. The choices of raw items to cook included tofu skin, mint, watercress, mushrooms, quail eggs, sweet potato noodles, and thinly sliced lamb and beef. Fondue was never like this!

The afternoon lecture for the students, as reported by Michael and Janet, was given by a Chinese Professor, Yang Tau, who had observed educational institutions in the United States and Canada. He made laudatory remarks about the practices of teachers in the North American system of Education, and challenged our students to ask more questions, and to focus on every pupil, not just the brightest young scholars.

So, little by little, a difference is being made, for our students, and for us, Team #184 in the Kunming program.

A toast to small steps that lead towards big new destinations of the mind and heart!

-Dixie

Tuesday June 29, 2010

Thought for the Day: Into each life a little rain must fall.

And each summer day in Kunming, it usually will – likely a warm and gentle rain, creating a good market for the ubiquitous umbrellas for the pedestrians and ponchos for the scooter riders, including the fashionable pink matching set seen on a mother and her little daughter this morning. Tuesday was such a day of steady morning rain, prompting our leaders to exhibit the flexibility that we all strive for in this program. They canceled our outdoor field trip to the Hump Memorial.

Fortunately, Dixie literally stepped up and led the afternoon singing and dancing program a day early. I thought that the idea of packing all 75 of the teachers plus us into one room and teaching song and dance would be like herding cats. However, Dixie was not fazed, and the teachers took to the whole affair with great humor, enthusiasm and talent. We volunteers did our best to keep up! What better place to learn “Here We Go Looby Loo” and a medley of French Canadian, American Indian, Israeli, Russian and pioneer dances?

Our teaching continues to challenge and inspire us. Who knew there could be so many different ways to approach simply introducing an assignment such as the upcoming Speech Festival? Thus we learn from each other and from our teacher-pupils. That is partly why we want to return to this experience in China again and again.

- Betty

Monday June 28, 2010

Thought for the day: If you add a little to a little, and then do it again, soon that little shall be much. - Hesiod

It’s the second week with our students from Pu’er City, and little by little they are sharing stories using the English that they know. As they recounted their activities of the past weekend in class this morning, we Volunteers introduced them to such words as “budget,” (for the shoppers), and “hangover” and “white lightning” (for the drinkers).

John and Betty had their students make up a story inspired from pictures in magazine ads. After a few minutes of preparation and a practice telling the story in front of a classmate, each student told his/her story to the class, without reading from notes.

Michael and Janet had given an example of telling a story (“Little Red Riding Hood”), in Friday’s class and assigned each student to prepare a Chinese Folk Tale to tell today, which they performed with flair, apparently.

Leon and Jim heard from two of their students, Tommy and David, that the two young fellows went for a walk in Green Lake Park on the weekend, speaking English to each other. Two beautiful Chinese girls heard Tommy and David speaking English, and were so impressed that they gave the fellows a puppy. Was this a tall tale?

Esther and Nancy are working with their class on discerning sounds of English using word pairs such as “light and right,” “connect and collect,” “glass and grass,” and “cloud and crowd.” Nancy’s ukulele accompaniment to songs such as “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” is a delight to the students.

As my class of 15 is made up entirely of women, we spent some time on the theme of shopping, talking about articles of clothing and patterns, such as checks, polka-dots, stripes and floral prints, and what items they bought for family members and themselves.

My class played a spelling game today, called “Alphabet Scramble.” Three teams competed in the spelling of five-letter words, with each member of a team holding up a card with a letter on it, in the correct order (usually) so that I could check the accuracy of their team’s spelling. That went well.

We got a start on the chants and singing games, joined by Leon’s and Jim’s class, the last half hour of the morning. There were lots of smiles as they learned a clapping pattern to go with “Miss Mary Mack” and traditional Western folk dance figures to go with “Old Brass Wagon.”

Baoli rewarded us for our morning’s work by taking us to the Golden Flower Hot Pot Restaurant, a short walk from school. It was a kind of pyrotechnical pleasure, with each of us sitting behind a blazing heat source and bubbling broth of tomato, chicken or coconut. The choices of raw items to cook included tofu skin, mint, watercress, mushrooms, quail eggs, sweet potato noodles, and thinly sliced lamb and beef. Fondue was never like this!

The afternoon lecture for the students, as reported by Michael and Janet, was given by a Chinese Professor, Yang Tau, who had observed educational institutions in the United States and Canada. He made laudatory remarks about the practices of teachers in the North American system of Education, and challenged our students to ask more questions, and to focus on every pupil, not just the brightest young scholars.

So, little by little, a difference is being made, for our students, and for us, Team #184 in the Kunming program.

A toast to small steps that lead towards big new destinations of the mind and heart!

-Dixie

Tuesday June 29, 2010

Thought for the Day: Into each life a little rain must fall.

And each summer day in Kunming, it usually will – likely a warm and gentle rain, creating a good market for the ubiquitous umbrellas for the pedestrians and ponchos for the scooter riders, including the fashionable pink matching set seen on a mother and her little daughter this morning. Tuesday was such a day of steady morning rain, prompting our leaders to exhibit the flexibility that we all strive for in this program. They canceled our outdoor field trip to the Hump Memorial.

Fortunately, Dixie literally stepped up and led the afternoon singing and dancing program a day early. I thought that the idea of packing all 75 of the teachers plus us into one room and teaching song and dance would be like herding cats. However, Dixie was not fazed, and the teachers took to the whole affair with great humor, enthusiasm and talent. We volunteers did our best to keep up! What better place to learn “Here We Go Looby Loo” and a medley of French Canadian, American Indian, Israeli, Russian and pioneer dances?

Our teaching continues to challenge and inspire us. Who knew there could be so many different ways to approach simply introducing an assignment such as the upcoming Speech Festival? Thus we learn from each other and from our teacher-pupils. That is partly why we want to return to this experience in China again and again.

- Betty

Sunday June 27, 2010

Thought for the day:
"No knowledge is ever wasted or to be despised"
- Joseph Needham, father of the Joseph Needham known in China as Li Yue-se

Sunday being a nominal day of rest, five members of our team (Michael, Janet, John, Betty and Esther) took a day trip to the Stone Village (Nuò Hēi) and the Stone Forest (Shí Lín) about two hours Southeast of Kunming. The excursion was led by our gracious Kunming host Li Baokun (known to us as Chris). The four who remained behind had visited these amazing sites during previous trips to Kunming and I could easily dedicate a page or two of this journal telling of their wonders. However, I will defer to a fresher view from one of our travelers in a further issue of this journal.

The four of us left behind (Jim, Nancy, Dixie and me) spent a quiet day and so I am tempted to end this journal entry here. However, there may be some interest in exactly how we spent our time.

First, Jim. Jim, in a weak moment last week volunteered (I think that's what our leader Baoli called it) to give an afternoon lecture on the changing demographics of his school system. So Jim spent the entire day, with the exception of lunch (about which you will hear more later), preparing his lecture. This, he says, involved many hours on the Internet gathering information and pouring it all into PowerPoint. I find it puzzling that Jim, a dedicated Apple user, uses Microsoft's clumsy and underpowered PowerPoint rather than Apple's sleek and feature rich presentation software Keynote. Here, again, I could dedicate several pages elaborating on the superiority of Keynote, but I digress.

Next, Nancy. Nancy spent the morning preparing a new lavishly illustrated edition of "There Was an Old Lady" (you remember, the one who swallowed the fly) using, of course, Apple's amazing word processing and page layout software called, simply, Pages.

Finally, Dixie. Dixie spent the morning preparing the notes (using Pages of course) for the afternoon music and movement workshop she is planning for all of our English teacher students. She is requesting that we go over some of the lyrics with our students, prior to the Wednesday workshop of songs and games. She will be handing out the lyrics on the bus this morning.

There was a triumph at lunch in the Porridge restaurant. Dixie successfully ordered a delicious meal of pork spare ribs, fried vegetable dumplings and an excellent eggplant dish for the four of us.

After lunch, Dixie and Nancy walked to what's left of Kunming's Old Town and the Bird and Flower Market (the indoor, four story one that sells everything except birds and flowers). I am sure, if pressed, they will display the trophies they collected during their outing.

Oh yes, me. If you insist. I was modestly trying to avoid revealing the brilliant repair I made to the corroded battery compartment of the team's boom box. It had been damaged by leaky batteries. I will spare you my treatise on "The Theory and Practice of Repair in the Field Without Tools or Parts". Briefly, the repair was accomplished using Dixie's nail file, my trusty Swiss Army Knife and a few brass paper fasteners commandeered from our resource room.

Finally (for real this time) at dinner, John read the journal for Friday, Nancy read the journal for Saturday and our reunited group had a lively discussion about all of the day's events.

Respectfully submitted,
Leon

Saturday June 26, 2010

Thought for the day: True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.” -- Felix Emmanuel Schelling, American educator and scholar (1858–1945)

A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, as Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, declared. (But he lived between 604 BC and 531 BC.) The philosopher may have begun that journey in the Western Hills of Kunming, where Jim, Esther, and I, plus students Zoe and Yen, and their friend, Yu Wei, discovered that a single step past Dragon’s Gate began a journey of a thousand more steps: up past a temple, up and along a narrow precipice where the view of Lake Dian and the city were spectacular, up through a cave-like tunnel, up more steps that twisted and turned, until we reached the cable cars — really, a chair lift — that gently and quietly carried us just over the trees on the hillside, back down to the parking lot.

Then our guide hired what turned out to be a rattletrap of a van to ride down the rest of the hill. The doors were barely attached, the interior was ragged, and part of the dashboard wasn’t operational. The driver was careful, though, and eased us onto a boulevard and kept driving. And driving. But we were ready for lunch, the time being after 2 o’clock. It seems there had been miscommunication about our destination, both between our companions and us, and between our companions and the woman negotiating the transportation. After turning around and taking a modern open-air conveyance to an ethnic village complex we hadn’t planned to visit, we decided just to take a bus back into the city. The 9:00 to 5:00 adventure included relaxed strolling, effortful climbing, almost scary moments, and camaraderie with our Chinese companions.

Other volunteers enjoyed Green Lake Park, the Provincial Museum, and exploring the contents of the resource room. What adventures will tomorrow bring?

-Nancy

Friday June 25, 2010

Opening Thought for the Day:
Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in. Alan Alda

Friday, the last day of the teaching week. And this Friday the last teaching day of our first week was typical with skits, vocabulary drills, pronunciation improvements, battles against shyness and the many other methods we employ to make the program work.
Today, as in previous days, had its range of emotions. “Do they not understand anything I am saying”, to “yes, they are excited, they are speaking to each other in English.” Two weeks to go! It can work!

Ah, lunch, that round table of opinions, memories, advice perhaps solicited, perhaps not, as well as sincere offers of help and encouragement. We heard at length from two volunteers who have the audacity to not follow American football or any major sport. They will not be asked to offer a talk on the benefits of our professional sports, nor even contrast it with the gladiators of Rome. And there was no encouragement today for Brett Farve that aging quarterback formerly associated with the Green Bay Packers. But we did learn that in Milwaukee the team mascots, the sausage people, whose capers and races still bring the crowd to its collective feet. And know well that the Polish, German, Italian and Mexican fans cheer their sausage with fervor and joy.

And so the afternoon moves on at a scheduled pace for some, and unscheduled wandering and exploration for others.

All this occurring in Kunming, China where the vehicular traffic like that in the rest of China, at least in the China I have seen, has the oxymoronic quality of controlled chaos; of a dance where one cannot distinguish the dancers from the dance. Newcomers to China are terrified by the variety of challenges imposed by the flow of an immense number of motorized and non motorized conveyances. Seek no cover on the sidewalks; they drive there too. Accept the notion that the driver will probably not hit you, especially you, a Westerner. Since you are now part of it, relax and enjoy the dance.

Closing Thought for the Day:
Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.
…Japanese proverb

Thursday June 24, 2010

Thought for the Day:
The key to success is to wake up every day and do the best you can.

Today Leon and I had another successful day. We borrowed Michael’s idea of having the students perform skits in groups of three: one student was a teacher, another a student and the third a parent. We were encouraged by how excited the students were; they immediately got into groups and eagerly chatted away, deciding what to say and what actions to do.

Surprisingly, all groups performed the same scenario: an inattentive/uncooperative student followed by a phone call home and a resulting visit from the parent to the school. One group role-played a teenager writing a note while the teacher was talking, another was sleeping in class and yet another was listening to an MP3 player and refused to put it way.

These same stories could easily have taken place in an American classroom. This led me to believe that perhaps the stereotypical studious and obedient student is not so typical after all in China.

Afterwards Leon gave a good critique of basic stage techniques, i.e. projecting from the diaphragm and not turning ones back to the audience while talking. The activity also was an excellent springboard to talk about, model and practice pronunciation. One notable pronunciation problem was the teacher telling the parent “Don’t late (let) her stay up too late.

Tomorrow we will have the students redo the skits with the expectation that they will improve both their pronunciation and basic acting skills. We plan to continue doing skits; next time giving each group a completely different situation.

Time goes very quickly here. It is hard to believe the first week is almost over.

-Jim

Wednesday June 23, 2010

Thought for the Day:
“Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.”
Lady Bird Johnson

When some of my friends and acquaintances heard that I was traveling to China with Global Volunteers, they said things like: “Wow! You’re so brave to go to such a far off place!” or “You’re flying alone to China? And transferring flights in Shanghai? I could never do that!” and even “What about the food? Do you think you’ll like it?”

But the amazing thing about traveling with Global Volunteers is that you get so wrapped up in the service you are performing that you forget to be afraid of the adventure.

As the only person on the team who has never been to China before, I’m perhaps noticing some of the things that the others take for granted. For instance, my first introduction to China’s city traffic was the drive from the Kunming airport. It reminded me most of the “bumper cars” found at amusement parks – without the bumping (I hoped), but with plenty of weaving between cars, motorbikes, bicycles and people! I continue to be astonished by the pedestrians who cross in the middle of a crowded street, get half-way across to where they encounter a short barrier, stand there until they see an opening and then leap across the barrier and cross the rest of the street, horns blaring and motorcycles swerving. This may be an authoritarian country, but that certainly doesn’t stop anyone from breaking every traffic rule in every possible way!

Wednesday started as usual with a mixed Chinese and Western breakfast and a short meeting. Then we headed into said traffic to our morning teaching assignments. Nancy and I teach 16 primary school teachers who are always more than prompt and offer help getting things ready. They love singing, so we sprinkled songs throughout the morning, including When Cows Get Up in the Morning. Please ask one of our students what roosters say – they found this very amusing. We also had the students “interview” each other about their families and discovered that we have one female student and one male student who are unmarried – both very attractive. Perhaps Global Volunteers has match-making in its future.

The always bad traffic was especially bad on this day so we arrived back at the hotel late for lunch. The food was delicious, as usual, if not always identifiable. We shared our morning stories, and then some of the group left for a free – oops! – a “lesson-planning” afternoon. Leon and I, however, were due to return to the training center to give lectures to the entire group of students. Back into the traffic we went, along with Baoli and Nancy.

I gave a talk on the American school system, a source of great interest to these teachers on the other side of the planet. Because we wanted to encourage questions and knew that the students were unlikely to speak up in such a large, public setting, we passed out paper for the students to write their questions. This turned out to be very successful, generating 19 questions. They ranged from simple ones like “How much is the average salary of a U.S. teacher?” to more challenging ones like “Which school’s teaching quality is considered better – a private school or a public school?” My favorite question was this one: “In China, our parents are strict with our children. They ask their children to be best in everything. How tired they are! How about the children in the U.S.?” A student also approached me during the break and, having heard that I teach parenting in the U.S., asked me about her concerns about her one-year-old daughter (“She won’t sit in my lap and read a book.”) We talked about typical development and what she could expect at this age, and she seemed reassured. Interestingly, I heard this exact same question from an American teacher a few years ago.

I do want to thank everyone in the group who taught some educational vocabulary in the morning in preparation for the afternoon talk. I believe that helped make the presentation more successful for the students.

Leon followed with his presentation on the immigration story of his family and, by extension, the story of America’s growth through immigration. The students were alternately delighted and amused by his pictures – both sets of Old World grandparents, his parents and their siblings, his 8th grade graduation picture that reflected the diversity of America, his discovery of a Chinese monument in Africa, his tough but tiny mother visiting China, and finally, a video clip of his grandchildren graduating from their Chinese Saturday School class.

Another ride through traffic, then dinner in the first floor restaurant for a change of pace. A good day and the sky finally cleared. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll have sunshine.

- Esther

Tuesday June 22, 2010

Thought for the Day: The wise person controls his ear and eye by means of his mind; the petty person controls his mind by means of his ear and eye. (From the Shuo Yuan, a compilation of sundries from the 1st century BCE.)

When I read this thought to Janet she asked me if it came from a Chinese source. I unhelpfully replied, “Where else?” since most of my thoughts come from Chinese sources. Then she asked how I account for my obsession with China. Good question. How does one account for an obsession, any obsession? It seems to me that the word’s meaning includes the notion that an obsession cannot be accounted for, that it lies beyond rationality. Perhaps I should ask my fellow team members to account for it, since for all but one of us this is a repeat visit to China. Some have returned several times, I think, even to Xi’an in the winter, and while that might not the symptom of an obsession, it certainly does suggest a fascination with and a strong interest in this place.

Perhaps one reason China has a strong appeal to those of us who return time and again is that it is so different from the US and its (by and large) Eurocentric culture. For instance, Chinese culture has for thousands of years loved and revered mountains—high, rugged, sometimes almost inaccessible mountains. Mountains of strange and haunting beauty. Mountains which emperors ascend to validate their reigns. Mountains to which sages retire to seek wisdom. That’s not true of Western culture. For almost all of recorded Western history mountains have been feared, not revered, avoided, not sought out. Only with the invention of the cult of the sublime in the late 18th century did people go to the Alps rather than flee from them. Before that mountains were the home of the gods (Olympus), not places for mortals to visit, with rare exceptions such as Moses and Sinai. There’s an early, impressive Chinese work titled The Classic of Mountains and Oceans which dates from at least the 2nd century BCE and describes over 550 mountains. There is no Western analogue that I know of. Hence these attitudes toward mountains constitute an interesting cultural difference. Why have the Chinese been so interested in (obsessed with?) mountains? Part of the reason probably lies in the Chinese tradition of geomancy, which we know as feng shui. This tradition argues that there are powerful forces moving through channels underground, and these channels often form junctions near or under mountains. (Those who are inclined to scoff at this theory might consider the locations of most earthquakes—near mountains.) Hence mountains, besides being beauty spots, and indeed many of them are deeply beautiful, are centers of powerful forces to which the Chinese tradition has paid attention for thousands of years.

There’s an eccentric echo in today’s USA of this interest in mountains and feng shui. My sense is that in the USA today feng shui is seen as a sort of interior decoration. Here’s a typical example: “Practitioners believe that by arranging our furnishings and decor in a way that aligns with nature, we draw harmony and good health into our lives..” But in the Chinese tradition feng shui is a much more serious matter which involves paying close attention to those flows of energy in the earth, to compass orientation, to proximity to water, etc. That this is serious stuff indeed is suggested by the story that Norman Foster consulted feng shui masters while designing the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building in Hong Kong. In traditional Chinese culture feng shui masters were consulted in siting temples, houses, and graves, arguably the three most important buildings in traditional Chinese culture. And today, as we have seen, feng shui masters are consulted regarding bank buildings 180 meters high in 47 stories. That’s a long way from putting the sofa next to the TV.

But I digress. I was trying to understand my obsession with China. If, as I suggested above, an obsession lies beyond rational explication, then that is surely a case of the ear and eye leading the mind, what my thought for the day says is the sign of a petty person. Given my regard for traditional Chinese culture I’m loath to suggest the thought is misguided. But it may be. After all, how rational is volunteering? We’ve all run into folks who think we’re nuts for paying to volunteer. “You mean you teach for three weeks and pay to do it? Huh?” But there may be a way out of this dilemma in the fact that the Chinese word translated as “mind” in the thought can also be translated as “heart.” (Isn’t it interesting that Chinese puts into one organ [the mind/heart] what we so definitely put into two [the mind and the heart]?) One’s heart ought to be tugged around by one’s eyes and ears. Specifically, in the case of volunteering, don’t we teach these students for the looks on their faces and the sounds of their voices? Don’t our hearts tell us volunteering is a good idea? As Betty put it yesterday in explaining to students why she does volunteer work, “It feels good,” and as she said it she put her hand on her heart. That’s why we do this—the heart controls the ear and eye, and we’re better for it.

- Michael

Monday June 21, 2010

Thought for the Day:
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
Robert Browning

I have always liked this defense of unreasonably high expectations and was reminded again of why on our first day of school. I think first days must be somewhat similar everywhere. People select their clothes carefully to make a good first impression and hope this time and learning will be better. I thought our first day yesterday seemed to start especially well when we walked into the room to applause and genuine smiles all around.

The speeches for Global Volunteers don’t vary much. Our hosts always thank us for coming and we always thank them for inviting us. This time the thanks were accompanied by a hope that the “peace and friendship between America and China would last forever,” – certainly a wish we can all support and an expectation that seems extravagant. But a room full of teachers is a room full of realists and idealists, probably combined in the same people. And all of the global volunteers this year have volunteered globally before – chiefly in China. So with our renewed hope and experience we went off to class. Michael and Janet practiced goal setting and at lunch learned about the progress that other volunteers had made with the goals our teachers had set. Betty and John’s students had a very honest discussion, learned a lot about how their teachers felt about their work and may have learned that their teachers had never had a good teacher. Jim’s students practiced listening to English with a “find the lie” game, and Nancy and Ester began getting to feel comfortable interacting by arranging themselves under various categories.

At lunch we had a discussion about why Americans volunteer when people in other countries don’t. I offered a historical explanation I had learned in school, but then decided that even if the Puritans had originated the idea that explanation really didn’t explain why volunteering was so widespread in 2010. Bao Li told us that the Chinese only volunteer on March 5th because they are told to. An ungenerous interpreter of Americans could argue that the Chinese, with an extra billion, have so many people who will work for so little money they really don’t need volunteers. Their highways, for example, are beautifully and elaborately landscaped and free of trash. And Europeans seem to be willing to pay higher taxes for services that people volunteer to do in America.

But neither of these interpretations explains why we volunteer to teach in China.
While I am here I frequently recall an exclamation from a former principal who often volunteers in Xi’an, “I was shooting at these people 50 years ago!” I don’t think he was trying to atone for past sins. He loved teaching and he loved teaching Chinese students.. And that surely explains why many of us are here. There is nothing better than teaching students who are eager to learn and grateful.

And I also recall in Haikou a very nervous looking 9th grade boy pushing himself up from his desk to stand and ask, “Is America a good country?” We really can’t know whether our students will continue to love Americans because they have met us. And it is sobering to admit that Mao and Richard Nixon probably did more to promote peace between China and America than we have done. But helping people to have better lives, particularly people who are so warm and grateful, feels wonderful. And trying to contribute to peace and friendship between our two countries with our money and our time may not make us friends forever, but we think it is worth the reach.

-Janet

Sunday June 20, 2010

Thought for the Day:
Start where you are
Use what you have
Do what you can.
It will be enough.


Global Volunteers Team # 184, the 18th team to serve in Kunming began to get acquainted at the opening dinner on Saturday night. So it was quickly down to business at Sunday’s orientation meeting, with formulation of six team goals and eleven characteristics for success. Team Leader and Country Manager Wang Baoli gave an informative presentation on the mission of Global Volunteers and the history and current activities of the program in China. Wang Baoli also informed us that our team will be working with English teachers from the City of Pu’er in southern Yunnan Province, the first time that the program here has reached out beyond the City of Kumming.

Team Goals:
1. To create positive interaction with local people
2. To help Chinese teachers
3. To learn about Yunnan
4. To learn/improve our Chinese
5. To enjoy the challenges
6. To enjoy teaching

The evening brought a festive and delicious banquet at the Opening Ceremony. We were warmly welcomed by our hosts: Teachers Training Center of Kunming University, the Kunming Municipal Education Bureau and the City of Pu’er Education Bureau, and then enjoyed a bountiful array of varied and delicious dishes.

All of the nine members of this team have previously served as Global Volunteers and many are multi-time veterans in China. With much enthusiasm for teaching, commitment to helping the teachers in this program and a desire to learn about and interact with the people of Yunnan, Team 184 is off to a great start.

-Betty

International Children's Day

Today (June 1) is the International Children's Day. The festival is celebrated in many countries, including China. It's a day to remind all the world of how special and important the children's are and all children should be well-treated, respected and taken care with love. We should all, in particular, spare a thought for those children who are less fortunate.

To celebrate the special day, our community partner, Xi'an La La Shou Special Education Center had been thinking of organizing a field trip for all the children in the school. Global Volunteers was so pleased to help make the idea come true. With the donation from some volunteers, we were able to donate funds for the transportation cost of the field trip. So, on May 21, the group of 70, including the children, some parents and volunteers made a trip to the Wild Animal Zoo. The children were all so excited to be outside. They played, laughed, watched the animals, some children even presented their performances with the help of their teachers.

Yibo, who was a young Global Volunteer in his twenties and had been working in La La Shou were on the trip too. He was so happy for the children and the parents to have outing day like that. In his three weeks service, he had developed a close relationship with the teachers and the children in his class. "I am really glad to have the chance work here. I’m very impressed with the amount of devotion the teachers have towards these kids and their well-being...I was really surprised at how much the students missed me when I left the school at the end of my volunteering program. Although they may not be as responsive as normal children, they certainly have strong emotions, and apparently I have made a bigger impression to them than I thought."