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Week 10 in China

Challis Hackley
Jan 22, 2018
6 min read

What I Learned

Kids are accident prone no matter where you are.

I nearly broke two of my kids while we were out on a field trip with them. I felt really bad about it until I remembered all the cuts and bruises I got when I was young. Kids are tough because they have to be.

Betternet is a terrible VPN.

I’m going on four weeks now where it hasn’t worked for me. Definitely don’t recommend it but I guess you get what you pay for...and I am currently paying nothing for it.

The Chinese take care of their trees.

I’ve noticed it more and more the people here don’t cut down their trees unless they have to. Whenever branches overhand or droop, they literally build support beams for them and don’t just chop them off. I’ve seen them build walkways around trees, so that they are sticky out of the middle of the side walk. And I’ve seen them take out chunks of the curb so that trees can keep growing. They just really like their trees and want them to grow. That's also why they paint the trees white.

What I Did

Sunday

Another lazy day. Sunday’s have definitely tuned into that for me, which I need because the rest of my week is jam-packed. Not much to say about it.

Monday

Because the next day was Halloween and I didn't want to screw up my lesson rotations, I decided to have a little fun with my kids and do a Halloween activity. So I watched a little video with them in the mummification process and then had them wrap up one of their classmates like a mummy using crepe paper. It was lots of fun. I think my students enjoyed it too.

Tuesday

Happy Halloween *Insert evil laugh here* I taught my kindergartens in the morning and had a lot of fun with them and then I got out of yet another day of actually teaching because we had a Halloween Party with our fifth graders. We planned a couple crafts and games for them and had a movie that they could watch: Monster House. It was so much fun just to hang out with the kids, give them candy, and see their costumes. Leftover candy for me, woo hoo!

That night I had every intention of popping some corn and watching a scary movie on Hong Kong Netflix but I heard whispering a of people going clubbing and hopped in with a group that was dressing up and going downtown to go dancing. Literally so much fun. A great way to end one month and start the next as I got home around 1 AM.

Side note: We saw the coolest balloons while we were out and, although they're kind of pricey, I might just have to get one before I leave.

Wednesday

That day started bright and early because we had to catch the bus. We weren’t teaching classes because our students were going on their annual autumn field trip and we got to tag along. The itinerary said that we were going to a farm but the place was a hodge-podge of different areas and activities

We exited the bus and made our way over to a field with an artificial climbing wall to one side. That got me really excited but we didn't end up using it. Sad day. We did a team-building activity first, which turned out to be pretty fun. Our classes were split up into a couple different teams and given a drum with multiple ropes tied to it and a tennis ball. Everyone held the end of a rope, hoisting the drum into the air and off the ground. The goal was to bounce the tennis ball on the drum as many times as you could. I was just kind of watching at first because, you know, I was the teacher and I thought I was supposed to be supervising or something but one of my Chinese coordinators pushed me towards a group and started taking pictures. I don't think we made it past two but it was a laugh trying.

So after we cleared up that activity, we were on to the next one. And this time it didn't take much prompting for me to join in. One of our students came up to us and was like "I will be on your team." and we were like "Cool, then you've got to pay attention to the directions because we don't speak or read Chinese." The second activity was a woodworking. There were wood pieces that we put together, making a little stool. It was more fun tearing it apart.

Next, we went back to the field where they had set up some mills. you put soybeans and a little water in the press and soy milk came out. Pretty cool. I learned how to make soy milk.

We then traveled across the street to a little farm with rows of plants and areas for animals like ducks and chickens There we dug up some taro/sweet potatoes. when we were talking with our Chinese coordinator about how cool it was to learn these different things she said something that I really liked. She was talking about talked to us about how it was good to have the kids learn these kinds of things and she said "Americans are very much 'Do it yourself.' It's good for them to learn.”

We had a break for lunch. We had picked up a sacked lunch the day before which included a couple of drinks and snacks, but while we were there picnicking on the grass, our kids kept bringing us more food, cooked sweet potatoes rolls, and warmed soy milk. It was kind of cool because the extra food was made by the last group, so the next group would eat and drink the food that we made. The kids, and us for that matter, kind of got to enjoy the fruit of their labor. It was great.

And then the kids wanted to play a game. "Teachers, teachers come play Red 'Over with us." I didn't think that was the best idea, and was even less sure when I realized that they had chosen the one strip of concrete in the otherwise grassy park to play red rover on. Guess what? First round, we clotheslined one of our kids and then landed hard on the ground. I felt so bad that we stopped plaiing after that.

After lunch they had some free time to play and have fun. And another one of my kids got hurt. There was a little jungle gym with a zipline. The kids couldn't reach it without help so I helped a line of kids get up onto the handles and then I had to give them a little push to get them going. They had all been doing great and then one of them slipped and landed pretty hard on her tail-bone I had just gotten over clotheslining one of my kids in time to feel bad all over again.

Anyway, she got up and was okay and we moved on to the next activity: making rolls. Just a simple recipe. They added the water a bit at a time to the dried part and used their hands to mix it up. Messy hands make for a fun time.

Last up on the docket was Chinese print-making. Originally printing was done my sliding mirrored characters or letters into a slat, adding ink, and pressing paper on top. They had ready made prints, poems, for us to use. We applied ink and used horsehair brushes to press the paper and transfer the ink. Our coordinator was telling us that their are four main inventions that China is very proud of: fireworks, compassed, paper, and printing. She also told me the translation of the poem that that I printed. Although I don't remember all of it It was about a farmer working during the summer. The seed were hard, the sun was high in the sky, and summer was a long way from being over. It was beautiful the way she described it. I really enjoyed it and I got a cool souvenir from it.

After that, our day was mostly over. We just spent some time taking picture and then loaded back on to the bus for the ride back.

Thursday

I'm the kind of person that gets really anxious when I travel, and I will not be able to relax until I am either sitting on the plane/train. So, I left as soon as I finished teaching at 3:30 even though our flight didn't leave until 7:50 PM ... well 9:15 PM... it got delayed. But I was on my way to Guilin!

The rest of my week I spent on vacation and you will definitely read about later.

Happy Travel,

Challis Hackley