Rest of the Dream Vacation Journals - Final

Remark: I am giving up, the work of proof-reading takes a lot of time, I leave it, and will go back some time in future :( - but I can remember clearly that all the thoughts were straight from my mind at that time -) 5 December 2009


Little Son Guarding for the Wheat
June 8th 2005
Wednesday


After breakfast, we go to school, then we also work a little bit for the set-up of the library.

Have a talk with the headmaster Ms Lee a little bit about the present development of the village primary school education. She says that because of scarce resource, it always takes a long time to get the fund needed, such as to rebuild the damaged classrooms.

At present, in China, there is a policy for granting free tuition to the extremely poor students and allownance for the physically retarded students.

However, for some poor families in this village, they still have financial problems.

At the same time,the workload to the teachers is very big, for there are not sufficient teachers to the students. The teacher to student ratio is quite high.

The qualification of the teacher is also another problem, as whenever the students of the village can get the chance to receive university education in the cities, they usually would not return.

After the chat, we just go back to our normal work, and try to identify the potential "Seedling Fund Students".

As it is June time, and it is very hot during day time, the village people say that it is autumn harvest time. The collected grasses of wheat are everywhere (all the main roads of the village, front of all the houses). They are like a lot of hills everywhere. You may not imagine!!

Cheong KW, 13 years old, tall and a little bit skinny, very dark skin color, should be in 4th grade. He is one of my favorite students, though he is kind of naughty, and sometimes, a trouble–maker. He sits on the first row of my class, and he offers a lot of help such as getting chalks for me. He likes to hang around with me, especially when I am preparing for the drawing class, I do encourage him to use my color pencils to draw.

This morning, after the class, he tells me that he cannot come as he has to help his mother in the field. He said that his mother works very hard, and his father passed away with liver cancer when he was few months old. He has four sisters, and he is the only son, they have 13 acre paddy fields to take care, and it is very difficult for his mother. I tell him it is fine with me, if he wants to learn, just drop by and I can offer him extra lesson any time.

At the same time, in the afternoon session, another kid , Chiu Chu Pong, comes over to blame the prefect, his reasoning is Cheong likes to fight, however, I explain to him that I didn’t choose him for the prefect, but most of the students in class, I just accept the suggestion from the class, the election is there.

Also, if today, I tell the class, I change the other, does it imply tomorrow I may change another one, but I will accept his request, provide he can give me three strong reasons.

He has no words, but after the conversation, I tell him, I may consider, as I realize that Cheong may have absences for class, so, I better consider to let each student to have a chance to be prefect each day, and also let them to experience being a prefect in class.

It is a little bit surprised that in the late afternoon, after I finish my English class, he comes to the classroom, without saying any words, he started to move his desk out of the classroom. I ask him what has happened, and he starts to have tears in his eyes, and at the same time, a lady comes into the classroom, it is his mom, whom I saw one day that some kids told me it is Cheong’s mom.

This time, his mom also doesn't say any greetings to me, like the previous time, just focusing on shouting and biting on his son, it is kind of scary and uncomfortable. I have no clue on what has happened, and later on, my other students tell me that it is Cheong, who didn’t stay home to watch the wheat while his mom was working, he was naughty and went out to play.

His mother was angry and upset by the reason that he is not obedient and doesn't offer help, my Chinese expert buddies explained to me that for the case of Cheong's mother, she may hire someone to work in the paddy field, but for the caring of the final agriculture products, she can’t trust other than the family members, as Cheong’s sister may not come back at this earlier stage, it is only Cheong can help his mom, but he didn’t do his work!!

For the work in the village, there is plenty of work for the wheat harvesting. Before the wheat get out of the grasses, it is much more welcome that the village kids walked over the grasses, so that the wheat can get off.

And all the people are very busy on working for the wheat harvest, after cutting the grasses out of the paddy field, they try to pile all of them, then some use the machine to get the wheat off the grasses, some, by man power, to let them fall off from the grasses, then the grasses will use for the other purpose, like fertilizer. The wheat are put in one side, they need to be dried a little bit before selling.

So not only the parents, but also the kids may offer help for this busiest season, that’s why there are two weeks off from school. It is the village practice, I was told by Ably’s grandma, that it is the great difference between the city school and the village school, the village school can have school break very often, depending on the needs of the local villages, thus, it may some how affect the children ‘s learning plan in school.

It was about 4’ o clock, the president of the dream corps, W left us, she has to leave as she needs to go to visit her parents before going back to Beijing to prepare for the forum. I think she is smart, she organizes everything herself, and she has a lot of networking on getting the key persons and the experts. For lunch, the cheong’s family cooks a very nice meal for us, it is noodles, simples but it is very very good, with tomatoes, eggs.

For dinner, we also have plenty of food, though we have 2 people left, we have many fresh vegetables, and I also realize that the family has to go to the country to shop the food for us, which they don’t eat that. Also, they don’t have habit of eating fruit, while, whenever we have chance to go out shopping, we usually want to buy fresh fruit, like water-melon.

Have been in the village for eight days, I have no problems on the food, as I can always be happy for the vegetables,and I am not a meat-lover, but I find myself deficiency of water.

I feel that preparing drinking water for additional 7 team members is too much work for the Old Auntie Cheong, besides, the quality of water is not good, I can always see some substances in the water, as a result, I asked WP, to shop for bottles of water for me, when he takes Wu to the station.and on the way home back to village.



9 June 2005,
Thursday

Rainy Day of LMZ


It is a little bit cool in the early morning, because it rains. After breakfast, we walk to school, though it is only 3 minutes walk, the little path is full of mud and makes it very difficult to walk on.

I am careless, and almost fall on the muddy ground,. however, I only get dirty on my hands. After getting back to the main road, which has finished the cement construction work few days ago, the walk is much more better.

Before the class, I have to wash my hands to get rid of the mud. The kids are very punctual, all of them are waiting there for me, though it is raining, As usual, Cheong didn’t show up.

Today is a little bit unusal, because according to my plan, they will have a test. I told them yesterday about that, but I don’t want to give them any pressure, and I also did revise lesson to them before asking them to take the test, the test included oral and written, for the oral one, only a few can not do well.

For the written part, most of the work are very well.

And after the test, we start to form four groups to have competition, and each group has to finish counting the number from 1-50, each student take turn, and check which group can finish without errors.

The kids seem like the competition very much.

After the class, I ask the kids to submit their homework -spelling the numbers, however, I find out that they use the copybook to do the work, as a result, I need to grade the work and return to them the same day, in order to have other homework assignment.

Basically after few days classes, I start to be familiar with my students, and the number of students can always maintain over 20++, most are very attentive, except 2-3 boys, they always have problems on quarrelling.

After today’s morning class, three primary kids come over to me and ask if they can go to my class as they want to learn English, as a result, I offer an extra lesson for them before them joining in my normal class.

As a result of raining, the farmers cannot go out to the paddy field to work, and stay home. We decide to have home visit for our potential candidate – Ren. The village head also goes with us.

Ren lives with his uncle who has eye-diseased problem, it is very dark in his house, and there is nothing valuable inside the house>

It is really really terrible, first time in my life to see so many flies, thousands to uncountable!! some are very lazy, it seems that they lie forever and be part of the furniture. Our bodies are also bothered by the flies from time to time.

Mr. Cheong tells us that Rie is very obedient, he helps a lot at home, his father passed away and his mother re-married and now is living in NortEast part of China.

Rie responds us that his English is not good, but he final grade is always among the first 10. It is because his family is poor, and they don’t have money to buy fertifizer nor hire someone to do the paddy field work, it also disables them to finish the work within the suitable seasons , and their seedling or harvest work is always later than the others.

By the time we chat, another uncle of Ren appears, he invites us to pay a visit to his house. He has 2 sons and 1 daughter, the daughter has completed junior high school education and now is in Shanghai to work in the factory. He explains that it is common that the village people go out to work, and usually, there should be at least one family member working in the city, this is the way that they can impove the living condition.

Returning home, the road is still very muddy, especially on the small paths, thus, it is very difficult to walk,

After lunch, as it is not so hot, the guys decide not to take the nap, and we start to have a chat, and a party of melon seed talk, we exchange opinions and views, expecially the chiniese way and the western way.

After that, go back to work a liitle bit of the lesson plan and grading the test.

Suddenly, I have a thought that life can be very satisfied as I find myself very occupied and work in something I enjoy.

It keeps on raining, and I hear from outside, some kids ask if we have lessons in the afternoon.

Huang said that as we didn’t announce in the morning, it is better to have the first lesson, than we should finish the school earlier than that. However, we worry that the sky is dark and it is very hard to walk along the paths, especially, it rains and we have to carry the umbrella and the school stuffs. As a result, we agree that if the rain remains, we finish the first class earlier and cannel the rest of the lessons.

For the kids, I only know some of their houses are far away (White cloud hill)and they have already arrived school. I also observed for a while, as there is not any public facilities in the village, the kids always spend a lot of time in school, and they also go to school very early, before than the class starts. Later on, I know that these kids are Alby and her buddies.

We have drawing class today, from 4PM, the sky is getting very dark, but for the classroom it is worser, since they are not equipped with lights nor fans,

However, when I walked in the classroom, all the kids are ready for classes, I felt bad as by the time I walked from home to school, I complained that we should cancel the class as the muddy road is very worse.

However, my kids are so eager to learn, the whole class is in very high spirit, nobody excape the class, remember that the classes are not compulsory!! Over 40 kids studding in one dark classroom, no lights.

As Tiffaney is helping me to separate the class in two, she took the elder ones and the quiet ones to the 6th grade classroom, I kept the younger kids and the excited ones, which most are from my English classes two. I started to draw on the board, and let them to learn how to draw, I also distrubited the previous drawings and let them watch how some of the classmates can draw very well. 30 minutes may not too short, but it is the plan fixed at the begiiing, and the class came to noisy whenever and they are so excited to get the color of pencils they want, I sometimes feel frustrated when the kids didn’t listen my advice for getting one pencil for one time. Anyway, I wish I can have more pencils to give them.

During the class, WP came in and announced that all the rest of the class are cancelled as a result of the rain, and asked the kids to go home earlier. After the class, all of my students came and circle me to ask my homework assignment. What loverly kids, I think it is very strange, they should be happy that no homework assiganment as class cancel, but it is a good sign, that they are very eager to learn, I wish I can stay longer to teach them all I know, this is my dream

By the time, all my kids are gone, and I am ready to join my other buddies, I saw alby outside the 5th grade classroom, she told me that she and her friends are waiting for the other friends to walk together, as they are from the other village , they live in white cloud hill, it takes a long walk!!

In the afternoon sesson, cheong KW goes to my drawing class. Actually he did go to the teacher’s room to see me after my normal English class. He apologized for yesterday’s naughtiness, I encouraged him and said he can come over in his spare time, and I can teach him privately, after that I give him the test for today, but he didn’t do very well. IN the afternoon, because I have so many students in the classroom, I can’t find time to talk with him in details.

As a result of the cancel of the other English lessons in the afternoon, I find we have plenty of time after going back home, we have dinner at 7 and after that, we (girls) didn’t want to go to co-opt and as a result, we can go to bed earlier.

June 10 2005,
Friday,
After raining in NMJ

As a result of going bed early last night, wake up around 6AM, the morning is a little bit of chilly, we have soy bean bean, bean sprout and green beans, and buns, a lot of food for our breakfast, I sometimes compare with my breakfast at home, I have only cheese sandwich, not so rich hot breakfast.

We head to school after breakfast, though the path is full of mud everywhere, but the high morale of learning didn’t be affected, as usual, my 5th grade classroom are full of students, raning from 6-13, but most around 8-10 years old, I have only 7 girls, while rest are boys, periodically, I have minium 25 kids in the class, and everyday, may be new faces come in, I welcome them to listen but have to observe the rules, I can remember 2 younger mothers sit at the back to learn – they are so excited to learn the numbers and the days of the weeks too!!

For today, I distributed the test paper, and did the correction, I also teach new things according to my plan, and as usual, grade their homework after the morning class.

When all the parties finished the lecturing in the morning, we headed home and have a meeting again, as we need to finialise our scholarshop candidates.

We decided to visit the Pang’s family, but they were not in. we returned home for lunch then. Then, some took nap and I washed my clothes, as I want to catch the sun, after the rains yesterday.

Later, we walked to Pan’s home again, her home is in poor condition , it didn’t mention her father, but she has two brothers, all in the university, they don’t have any aluable stuff at home, but a lot of award certificate on the wall. It prove that the Pang’s kids are very good students, all the of kids are in school, only her mom in, we took some pictures and we also drop by Betty’s house, we talked a little bit,a then we headed to school for class.

It is getting hot in the afternoon, the mud gets dry, and the people in the village go out to work again. I was getting frustrated again in the afternoon, the kids are not observing the rules, and some quarrels with the other. May be I didn’t explain well or some are talking with others, after the classes, the kids come over to ask for the assignment.

As the bell rang, the junior high English starts immediately, I commerce to get my material written on the board, when I was writing, at the back of the classroom, one parent and one junior high students get quallreal and frights, many kids , including the primary ones stand there to see, it is WP, finally, helped me to separate them to get the things settled.

It took almost one week, I found out the level of the junior high school students are varied, I and Tiffaney decided to break the kids into two groups, I had six in once and she had six in once, so that we could have small group conversation, I had myself introudction I made them to have self-introduction, but the time was short, 30 minutes went fast, the class finished very quick.

At night time, after dinner, some of us wanted to stay at home, rather than going to co-opt, but the boys said that as a team, we needed to have action together, though only one guy taught the class at night. We had quarrels for sometimes, and we finally agreed that we told them we were tired of the daily class, and some of us needed to stay home to rest. As a result, I went upstair and got ready to rest. But suddenly, the head of the group changed mind that all of us should go, it seemed that communcaiton was always a problem among us, as a result of the Chinese and western thinking.

When we arrived, the farmers were there waiting for the lessons, we went to the tiny room to prepare for tomorrow 's lessons, I myself draw some pictures for next day ’s class. No soon, Pang came over to see us, we didn’t talk much, Tiffanely didn’t join us but staying out of co-op, in the square.

We went home early tonight, 10:30, but unfortunately because of so many people in the house used one bath-room, and for 6 of them (four girls), starting after 10:30 , I have to wait until after 12 to use the bathroom to do the clean up, It was a long day again. I think the leader Mr. Cheong, his day is much more longer than ours, and not one or two weeks, but most of the time.

By the time of waiting for the showeer, Huang reminded me and Tiffanney, that our main tasks are building up the library, scholarship, computer skills traning and research. But it seemed that we spent all of out ime in teaching ( it was W set up the Dream Corp Heavest
School for the kids as we found out that they needed them, and it was also W planed the class schedule, which also includes six days a week!!), we have discrepancies on ideas, and I felt a little bit disappointed, and thinking should I leave earlier.

Wheat watching Boy-
Dragon Boat festival in NMZ
11 June 2005
Saturday,

Choeng KW is one of my favorite students in the English class, we went to visit her mother yesterday evening, he lives not far away from the village head, and it is said that they were from the same ancestor. The house is not too bad according to the others we went. Mrs. Cheong should be in her mid-forty, however, she is very dark and skinny. She is very nice and she gave us to see her five daughter’s pictures, she told us her story: her husband passed away when KW only 3 months old, and she has to take cares all of the kids, she has 13 acre paddy fields, the eldest daughters was in 12 years only, this girl loves to study a lot, as a result, the mother can only asked the 2nd and 3rd daughter gave up and let the eldest finish the university eduction, the 2nd and 3rd also cried because of the decision, but at last, they agreed. The eldest daughter got a job in the city and got marry, now is living in Shanghai, and 2nd and 3rd daughters also staying in Shanghai, working in the testile factories, they come back to help mother during the farmers busiest season.the fourth daughter is now studing in university, and KW is the youngest one.

She explained that when the wheat is getting dry( ready) they cannot depend on the other people, as a result, KW has to do the work. She said that in the most difficult time, no body would offer help when asked for money, as village people noticed that she had no husband any more, which means she did not have bread-winner to get money to pay.

In her words, the world is very real, and sad. I can read from her eyes, that her life was very harsh. But back to now, she is happy that all is overcome, her daughters are doing good, and KW is helping her too.

At last, we took some pictures, when it comes to pictures, it can’t stop to tell woman loves to be nice in the pictures. When we let her see the pictures in the digital camera, she asked us to take another one, as she said the previous one is not good, she loves to take pitures, as we can see, she has plenty to show us in earler. She also made herself look nices when it comes to take picture. Before we leave, she insisted us to stayed for dinner, but as we didn’t have plan for this, we believe our dinner should be ready, and we explained that we can come back later next week, but she said that she may be pretty busy as they have to start planting the rice seedling, as a result, she insisted us to go on today for lunch. We cann’t deny her kindness and told the villager head that we do not eat at home for today’s lunch.

KW’s house is simple, normal house, but inside the house, we can see some old but fashionable decoration stuffs, which should be his sisters brought in from the city. They do have TV, but tiny and black and white one, KW also let us to visit his new family members – several little kitten, which were born in the night before yesterday, it is extremely tiny, I never have the chance to see that before.

At the same time, I also realized that mosquites are everywhere, I can use a number to describe how many of them *_*

As a result, I was kind of excited to have meal out of the village head’s home for today ‘s lunch. But we know that we have six, and we didn’t want to give burnden to his mother, we asked him not to make special food but the simples dish, or may be just noodles, and she said no problem, when the meal is ready, she will ask KW to go to school to let us know.


Today is Saturday, I was excited as tomorrow will be Sunday, and we will have a day off, and also today is dragon-boat festival. After breakfast, we headed for school. The weather is getting better, the forecast said the max will be 35c, and actually in the village, the difference between day and night can be big, under the sun and indoor can be cooler, but other than that, I can only say, it is like frying…. The mud on the road get dry too!!

Early wake up and go to work, and come home late after dark, every morning , about 5, we can hear the cock is telling the time, and also a voice from recorder that calling for selling bean sprout, kids start going to school, or playing before the class, while the villagers go to the fields to work. Overhere, not many people take naps, and most of them work very hard. At night time, the neighbourhood is quiet, the sky is very dark, I can see a piece of sky without blocking form the buildings, and I can see no neon nights at all, I find myself in a very remote area, but actually there are more than 1000 people staying in this small village.

This morning after English class, we started to speed up the work for the library. As a result of the lovely sun, we put all the books out to sterilized. Time flies, it was almost 12, and we didn’t see KW came over and all the kids have gone. We are getting hungry, we decided to go to co-opt and continue to wait, until 1:30, it is so quiet, but we don’t know what we should do, it is an invitation that she insisted us to go, and we don’t know what happen with Mrs Cheong, may be she is so busy that she forget, or she is very busy on preparing for the meal to us? At last, we decided to ask one little kid to stop by KW’s house to see what KW doing. Came back the result, his mother is still working in the field, and KW himself has finished lunch by himself. We decided to go to the tiny restaurant to have lunch and before that I and Huang stopped by his house and said that we have finished our lunch ( almost 2) and his mom no need to cook for us. KW said that we can come tomorrow lunch, but we told him that we can’t as we planned to go to KaiFeng. As a result, we had the lunch in the restaurant. It was a little bit luxury, as the boys ordered a lot of meat, it can be explained that we stopped by accidentally, and they don’t have vegetables to served. We also order noodles, and the portion is huge even for a tiny bowl.

Over the meal, we discussed that we really don’t understand his mother’s passion on inviting us for lunch, but easily forget or she is really very busy in the field, but seems that she may explain to us, but we can’t get the answer, and from that time, we even didn’t have the chance to see her again.

As a result, we have this special meal in the restaurant for the dragon-boat festival, it is obvious there is nothering special over here, and there is not any special activites at all, I think it is only the commercial tried to find chances to f\do business and selling food for the season to celebrate, may be there is no shops or money for the people to spend, no gimmips for the people to buy, like in the big city!

After lunch, only few minutes’walk back home, it is terrible hot, especially walking under the sun.

End of the week is usually good, afternoon, I have drawing class and English class, but whenever come to the dicplines, it is another issues. Some of the kids draw well, I handled out more than 15 drawings which I drew before, and asked them try to draw in similar way, however, I don’t know why, few students turned in my pictures with their names on, I really don’t know they don’t understand or they are accidently write the name on wrong places.

For conversation class for the junior high kids, situation are getting better, as they participate for the talking.

After the class, I start have nothing to do, as tomorrow we have day off. As Mr. Cheong moves his computer out of his room into the guest room, we can use his computer, it was an execuse as Huang said that he needs to build the web-site for the village. Some one use the computer, while someone took nap, I decided to take a shower before diner, to make good use of time. I find myself nothing to do after dinner, except writing journals, as a matter that we can stay in house, not going to co-opt, as a result, I went back our room to do a facial treatment and ready for sleep.


Observing stars -ceiling of the house of the village head
Wake up at five in the early morning, lying on bed until 6, as the other girls are still sleeping soundly. The ceiling of the guest room was planted blue like a beautiful sky, with moon and scaring start all over the celing, it is a little bit romance, lying on bed, watching the stars.

Entering into the village, the village head’s house is like a complex house, the front gate is decorative, with the door is in good material. In the front part of the house, on the left hand side of entrance is a working room for Mr. Cheong and father, inside are a lot of injection for animals, and we can see some visitors from time to time. Outside that room just in front to the door is a dog. It is very common that there are plenty of dog in the village, as a way to protect the villagers. The dog barked the first night when we arrived, but as we stayed in the house, it get familiar with us, and everytime we see it, it is lying lazy over there, especially in the hot afternoon. In the centre of the complex building is a piece of square, on the far end of left hand side, a little bit further from the dog lying, is the water closet, no running water, but there is one for man, and one for woman. Then in front is a piece of fertizer area and a piece of land, in which the family grow some vegetables,
There is also one to two fruit trees too.

On the entrance, after entering the gate, the first room on the right hand side is the washing room, while the family has running water and the shower bath, and also the washing machine too. It is in medium size. Then the kitchen is the next. Kitchen is about 2.5 times bigger than the washing room, and the family used coal to cook their meal, seems the meal preparation is closer to the city life. Then next to the kitchen is the sitting room, and also our dinning room for the whole trip, we have fans and telephone in the dinning room, it seems that as seems as the daily life in the city, but when it comes to the outage of electricity, fans didn’t work!

The other end of the square, which the northern part of the complex are the three living rooms, one for the village head, one for his parents and his elder son, and the next one is guest room for our male buddies . For us, our room is on the second floor. Along the stairs in the corner in the west-northern , hike up the stairs ( no light at night time, as a result, we have to use flash light at night time). There is a big balcony in upstairs, and our room is the area of the living room of village head and his parents. Our room is very big, comparing with the guys, we have 3 beds, one is extra big, which at most, five of us living in this room, At the beginning, there is no fan in the room, and Mr. Cheong bought one no long after we stay in the house, we really appreciate his generosity on hosting for our project, he also gave us advice and help us to solve problems. We know he is busy but still whenever we need helps, he will be with us.

The house is very spacious, and for most of us, we found not much big difference with the houses in the city, except the closet is far away from the bed-room and living room, my buddy said that it is because traditionally, the closet is dirty, they don’t like to keep it inside the house.


Sunday,
12.6.2005
KaiFeng visiting – University of Henan, and book street
Excited, after more than 10 days, we have to chance to go out of the county, and visit the famouse old capital city – Kaifeng, we have plenty of things to do, though it is our official day off for today.

After the breakfast, we take the local lorry to the high way to catch the bus to the city. The wheat is everywhere, but this time, some of fields have filled with rice seedling and a lot of green.. We can see villagers are busy working when we left the village.

We wait for a while on the highway, not long we get into the bus, outside the bus, the sceneries are more or less the same, plenty of rice field. It takes only about 1 hour, we arrived there, then we take the taxi heading to the University of Henan. Huang has some buddies over there and they offer help for us. The purpose of the trip is not sighting seeing, but developing the pictures, printing the material we need for our work, and most important, shopping books for the library.

The weather is hot too. The campus is quiet, as it is Sunday, and also at the end of the semester, later we also can meet some students wearning the graduation grown, for pitucure shooting.

The students we met there are also doing the work of researching on village development, they have also stationed in La Ma Chong for a while, thus, they know the village too. They took us to develop our digital pictures and the document we need for the library – instruction/rules for the library and the book lists, it takes about 2 hours to get things done, and also they said that we need a make a library plague, stating Dream Corps donate for the books.

Noon time, we have lunch in the university restaurant, the restaurant is quite superior, meal time is almost over, we have a private guest room, and we order plenty of food
By the time we set up, some of us are hungry and ask to buy some bread, it turned out all of us miss the fresh bread, since we have buns all the time.

When the dishes are ready, we have a table of food – magic Tu Fu, chicken, vegetables, lamb, sweet and sour fish, and siu long pou….. very delicious. We chat over the lunch, and also exchanged e-mail, the one sit next to me is a girl who is originally from Canton, later, her father migrate to Hunan for business, and she opted out to get in University of Henan. She can speak Cantonese, and I am excited to chat with her too.

After lunch, they took us to walk in the campus, we took pictures, and listened to what they told us. The buildings are very sophisticatic, and some are newly build, very special and old traditional chinces, we passed by the hall, the students dorms, geogratphy bulding, library.

Later we headed to the book streets for the library books shopping, Three remained in the shop, while T. Yang Yang and I went out with the girl, to do some other shoppings, Tiffaney spent her money on buying panting materials, as she wants to make the library nicer, later, we just shopping around for the clothing, the prices is fair, as it is a small city, and the buying power is limited, but still for ladies cloth, there is always demand.

As it is Sunday, there are plenty of people on the street, while the book street has a very strong favor of old capital, I can’t tell myself it is 2005, but may be back to the old capital buildings. By the time I walk on the street, I really have the feeling of going back to city, as I can deeply compare it with the life in the village, no shops, no people…..nothing over there, and also a lot of dusk and sand……but I know we still have another week work, at the end, it is almost late evening, and the girl has to give private lesson, and we have to arrange our own transportation back to village. We quickly stop by a hawker and choose a water melon, however, I think it is a little bit expensive, it sots over 30 yuen, and we choose for another one, still it costs for 25 Yuen. ( Later Huang said that the seller overchanged us as they know e are not local people, and we can also said that the water-melon is very sweet compare later we bought another, for also, this water-melon is seedless.) end of the day, they finally spend 300 Yuen on books for the library.

At the late evening, we got a van to go to the station to get our bus back to village. After dinner, we do the accounting, it is over budget 700 Yuen, and each person has contributie for 500 Yuen.

Kai Fen is a small city; it is not very populated and well developed. Only the streets with the shops are more crowded. University of Henan is one of the forth famous universities before, it is also one of the important schools in China. not far away from the campus, there is a tower, which is a famous symbol of the university.

The station of public transportation in KaiFeng is kind of old, and starting from the journey back to village, we have the feeling of back to village, and during day time, we did have a feeling in the city.

The feeling of walking in the book streets is like walking in an ancient city’s streets, however, people are present daily life people, and there are a lot of business over there, besides a lot of categories for books in different bookshops, there are plenty of snacks on the streets – pearl milk tea, ice-cream, rice pudding etc. For the choice of books, there are a lot of varieties, for exams, for archectic, for arts, music, for small kids, for university……


Monday
13.6.2005
After the breakfast, we have the normal classes, as this Friday, we will have finished the class, we have plenty of things to do in this week. We first finish dusting the library right after the classes. We also asks the kid to participate. By the time we saw the headmaster, we need to talk with her about our proposal on painting the wall of the library, she agreed. And at the same time, Huang also asked her again for the seedling fund things. After all the classes finished, all the kids rushed to the place we are working, most of kids want to read the books there, however , we were not officially letting them to read, as a result, we asked them to do the cleaning, this time, we move the bookshelf out to wash it and defected under the son.

For lunch, we don’t know why, we have plenty of food, 7 dishes, beef, the whole chicken, …. After lunch, we visited several students. Including Mike, my student from English and drawing, he can draw well. Two of the potential students, according to our home visit, we found out that they are good students, but the home is not as bad as we think they need the money, and at last, we realized that they are the relatives of the headmaster!

There is a story form Mike, he has a two-year old sister, his mother came from the other remote area of the other province, father is not at home, according to headmaster, a secret to the family, Mike ‘s parent is in jail as he commited some commercial crimes, the family members donot know what had happened with him, only know he didn’t return.

Mike is very tiny, in his 8 years old, not tall, but very big eyes, one of his eye is obvious smaller than the other one, he is willing to learn new stuff, like drawing.

However, he sometimes did quarrel with the other buddies in my lesson, as a result, his grade was not good.

He is not smart, but he likes to learn Englsih, he was the first one came over to ask for an English name, and later on many students wanted to get English name too.

Afternoon, after class, we went to Alby’s home, her home is in "White Cloud Hill", she told us that it takes 30 minutes' bicycles journey, she has her own bicycle.

We have 2 classes in the afternoon, however, we need to finish the home visit to decide the candidates as early as possible. As a result, we decided to pay the visit immediately after the class, we also need to borrow bicycles for transportation, otherwise, it takes ages to arrive there.

I asked Alby to wait for us in co-opt, and we could go after class together. However, it took very long time to get the things done, we actually left at 6:45, along the road, there are plenty of wheat grass. I sat at the back of Ti, the sceneries were good. When we arrived, Alby’s grand parents were home. They were happy of our visit, we just said that we were visiting, and we told them Alby studied well in class.

Alby’s mother passed away, and father was disappeared, she was borned in KaiFeng, and went to school there, she was intelligent, and she took the Music and dawings lessons, her mother took poision to commit suicide, and one of the teachers wanted to adopt her and let her could continue the study in the city, but the little girl preferred to stay with the old grandparents.

Grandpa has heart disease, he used to have some money and have a shop, but because of the second daughter-in-law 's sick, and he needed to get spend his money for her medical expenses. Unfortunatley, this daughter-in-law also passed away. The old couples have no sons nor daughter-in-laws.

When grandmom told us the story, she was very sad, we really didn't want to remind her of the unhappy stories. We didn’t stay long, as it was getting dark and we needed to go back to our own village. We also took time to buy some food back ,as we wanted to relieve the work load of the host family, they spent a lot of time on preparing our meals , especially during their busy season.
After the home visit, I have the feeling that in this village, there are not plenty happy and perfect family, except the village head, however, each family has some misfortunate to tell. Health is very important, the family member’s passed away always a lot of misfortunate to the next generation, as they can not have a better environment to grow, they don’t have choice.

Education is very important for the kids, it is very key factors for them to grow, however, the parents are not educated, and also cannot put the kids to have a better environment to learn.

It will be a long long way.Rural area of China, the huge population, it is not easy to say how to improve the quality of life. I thus understand why Ms Ho said that higenge of the village people is a big problems, it takes time, sick did’t come in one days – flies, mosquites everywhere, populations problems also come in, as a result of new product consumption from the city, the change of environment. Long life or not. To how the children grow up, I can see two years old kids just walk around the floor, trying to get things everywhere.

Children grow, … a lot of issue, but the government can do limited, it is the personal option, the future of the farmers, their own benefit, their retirement, their protection of the health, there are a lot of issue of equaily between city people and the village people, and most of all, education is the huge problem. Let them to realize how they need and why they need them, and and what they should do.


14.6.2005
Tuesday
Children ‘s English Education in china rural area

Morning went to class to teach as usual, I was a little bit anxious that I want to teach them as much as I could, however, the time is scarce, I really feel I am uncapable to do anything, since, the kids need them to digest too, I can just teach and don’t allow time for them to pick up and learn, otherwise, they learn nothing.

The library work is still very slow, though we have few days left. We spend more than one hour on the table for lunch as we also took the time to discuss our plan for the rest of the trip. Huang said that if possible, we would plan to go back to Beijing on 19 or 20th, however, I remind him again that we have plenty of things outstanding, such as the scholarship and the library. It was because during the past few days, he occupied himself very much on his thesis for his school, and he didn’t do his group leader work very well, our group didn’t have much time for group discussion or thoughts sharing etc.. Actually, after the talk, we decided that we should fix the candidates for the scholarship first. As a result, he went to talk with the village head again for comments.

Time is going very short, seems we have about a week, but the wheat harvest school will be ended on this Saturday. Also, we need to finish the library as early as possible, as the teacher’s room is full of the books and bookshelves. As a result, we plan to fix the library in 2-3 more days, than put all the books back and have a trial opening of the library.

At last, we have a group meeting and we decided we have enough candidates for the scholarship and we need not to visit any more new students home. However, we need to pay second visit for the recipients.

After the meeting, as we still have some time before the class starts, Tif. and I went back to school to work on the library. Around 4, we started to have drawing class for the kids. Today, I planned to take the kids out to the ponds to have drawings on the lotus flowers…trees, houses…. There are many nice pictures from the kids, the purpose of the outdoor drawings is I want to let the kids to appreciate the beautiy of nature.

4:30, I have English class, may be we have already pass the honey moon period, for the boys, some of them are not displined, and I need to remind them from time to time.

For the middle class kids, it started to have some progress, I asked them to have brain storm how they can improve their English language skill.

Acutally I learn something from them, they cannot access any enclish radio channel nor TV ( originall I though they should have the CCTV English channel), nor any English newspaper nor magazines. ( I also realized from the trip, that for getting daily newspaper from Kaifeng , it takes about 5 days by the time I live there, Cheong explained that it is because the deliveray man is the farmer too, as it is the businest season in LMC, they would focuse the farm work rather than distributing newspaper. At the same time, I am thinking what is the demand of the newspaper in this small village)

Through the discussion and the reflection by the junior high students, I hope the kids can discover how they can improve their situation.

Having the chance to talk with the kids, and what I saw in the past few days, what I can see is not the difference on culture, and also the allocation problem, the weakness of human being, greedy ( I am not quite sure as ….)or the problems of question teenagers, hygiene, health, education, this village is only more than 1000 people, it is really a micro economy, there are many things to do, but seems that the things can be done is very little, especially the old habit, to break the old tradition, and how they can come out from the valley.

15.6.2005
Wednesday
Being a valuable interviewee by the journal reporter
Today, I have test for my kids, the result is half and half, the part I think the kids can do well turn out to be out of my expectation, such as the counting of numbers. The students did well are: Chan Hou, Wong Sai Kit and three little girls ( Pang Sau, Hau Ming Wei and Trisha – Cheung Soi keu).

It takes a long time to grade the paper, I really prefer to have private turtoring, however, it is impossible to have one to one teaching for my 30 students, expecially their standards vary. Such as Betty ( Cheong Im Mui), she can’t count from 1 -20, I have tried very patiently to help her, but she can’t remember well, as she told me she was sick and it is the illness affected her learning, but she really want to learn.

About noon, we went to home visit to a problem kid, who set fire to the tree of the campus yesterday. His parents are out of village to work, and he stays with his grandparents. He is very naughty, and seems that he has money to spend, he can have snacks all the time, his clothings are very nice. Originally, WP wants to see if we can do something for him, because no one teaches him at home, however, when we see his old grandparents, we have nothing to say…. The situation is quite weird. Actually because of the dialect, again, I understand very limited. At last, we left WP’ s contact address and mentioned that if they need any help, he can follow.

After lunch, we discusses the scholarship and it is allocation problem again, scarce resource but seems there are so many candidates. During that time, George called and he said that Wu agreed that on Monday, he is sending his student and her mom to have a site visit for two days, his student is a high school kid. However, all of us disagree, as there are many issues coming with it.

Most of the girls said that it is something relating buiness, we spend 3 weeks and someone stop by 2 days and telling other parties that she is the member of this volunteering work. Besides, all of us should be university students, while she is only high school, and also, she didn’t go thorugh all the application process nor the preparation nor the work, and just come in, besides, we are ready to leave, and it is impossible to take care one more girl and her mother….

However, we don’t know how wu’s deal with him, so we need to talk with wu directly, however, we called several time, but can’t get her.

As such, we went back to our work on selection of the potential recipients of the scholarship. At last, we agree that the scholarship should be guarantee the kids can receive the fundauation education, the primary one, for the middle and university, if the kids are smart and intelligent, they should be able to find the sources, like the girl pang, we think she should be able to get scholarship elsewhere, but for the kids they are in primary, we hope that our little money can provide them to finish the education. As such, we find our the financial needs urgently students, and most, have parents problems, we sponsoured Ren 350, Hau 150, Mike 100, Fan 100 and also the co-opt accounting Mr. Fan 100, then, we also need to talk with the receipent, and then I discovered that Hau’s father may be in jail too, he has affairs with a woman, and it makes Hau’s mother commited suicide. Also, we need to talk with Ren,as he is in his junior middle school, without parents; guide, we need to know how he will spend his money.

Y is leaving on Friday night, and we plan to leave on 20. we decided classes ended on Sat.

Afternoon we plainted in the libarary, but I think I didn’t draw well. Later, we don’t know why, one of the new books was stolen, I didn’t know which, but it is Tif put close by the window, it is registered in our record, but now it is changed with an old book. Tif asked around, and we don’t know what we should do, all the kids are aourdn, I asked my kids, but no answers. With the crowds of students, I walked straight to the 5th grade’s classroom, there are only few students waiting for class. I searched around and I discovered the book in the teacher’s desk, I brought the book out, and at this time, all the buddies arrived the school, we can’t guarantee who stole, but the suspect one is Cheong san kit, but we don’t have proof.

Afternoon class, I focused on explanation of the quix, and for the middle school kid, we discussed the library, and they expect that they have their own library as at present, library is just for the teachers. They also hope that they can use the library on weekends.

Time is very short for class, after the class, Betty came over to see me, most of the kids can count from one to twenty without any problems, but her, but she has difficulties, she told me, she has……, when it happens, she doesn’t know what is going one, as a result, her memory is bad, what I can do is to comfot her, and ask her to pay more time , if one hour can’t , she can pay more time, only she can be succed with – confidence, patience and consistenly.

Tif continue to paint in the library, we went home about 7 o clock, because we have appointenet with Ren at 8, but after we arrive home, waiting for dinner, some wants to check e-mail failed, all we know Huang spend the whole afternoon for his own these.

By the time, the three reporters of Kaifeng daily came over to visit hus again, actually they are doing the follow up report on us. When they discovered that we have a new member, a western white girl, they focused to interview her, the comparison of western and oriental. For me, out of my expectation, they remember my name, and keep on talking with me, the leader told his subornate to do a special interview with me…. My feeling, my views on the village education, the difference between city and village, he asked me whether I like it or not, will come back or not…. And at the same time, they also asked us to go back to the campus and call for the kids to do interviews and pictures, however, it seems that some members were not treated the same as they don’t have much value on writing articles, or the reporters didn’t discovered the special value of each person.

One thing upset me is that, originally I though it will be exciting to let them see the half finished library, we painted a lot of beautiful pictures on the wall, but they didn’t take an eyes on it.

About 8:30 night time, the reporters left. We originally planned to invite e Ren to have dinner with us at about that time, but our plan was ruined. Also, it seems the Ren didn’t want to stay in Cheung’s house to have dinner. As a result, we can’t really force him to do so, and we have to let him go.

Also, today, during the day, we had a big discussions on George’s plan for placing his students to join our work for just two days or so, besides, the girl he proposed is not qualified to join our activities, the purpose of his action is clear, to add value to the girl, so that she can get in the famouse university, liked Harvard, as a result, all the members are not happy, and didn’t understand why Wu didn’t get our conseus before, then, we kept on calling her, but her answer to us was that she hasn’t confirmed with him yet.

I really feel that even though an NGO can be a very complicated community, like the previous one I joined before, at the end, it is only the interest the people matter most, and people tried to use one another.

16.6.2005
Thursday

The earliest morning in NMJ
The morning tutoring for the kids was foucs on revision, at the same time, we tried to play game with their English name, and it did help them to memorize.

Actually this morning, everybody woke up early, about 5 AM, Tiffe got food poisiong, and her stomach upset a lot, she moved to sleep in the guy’room downstairs, for me, I can do nothing, but I was awake, thus, I also got up and washed my clothes, I finished about 7am.

After the class, Abby Cheung Im Mui came over to see me, at that time, Chris was abound and I took time time to talked with them, and encouraged them to study, Mike also love books very much, he usually hanged around in the teacher’s room,

At about the time, there was one liitle girl came over to the teacher’s room to claim that she lost her key, she was very afraid, and she kept on crying, and all of us started to look for her losing key.

as I think we don’t have anything special to do, and the school will start very soon, the trashes were everywhere, so I asked them to wipe the whole field ground, and the campus, actually, it is not an easy task, we spent a lot of time on that, being exchange, actually, I should say, I offer the award to them, they can choose the books they like and stay in the teachers room to read, they actually like them very much. They are so obedient to help me, there were so many trashes in the campus, everywhere, sometimes I don’t understand why the kids have plenty of pocket money to buy snacks – ice bar, snacks….

we worked very hard on the big task, but unforately we can’t find the key, nevertheless we got the campus trash free…… and actually, the key was accidently found out in the afternoon, and the little girl and also her infant brother got back their smiles, one may not know how the village kids’ great responsibility and task at home, especially when parents are out for work.

We didn’t have lunch at home for today, because we know the cheung are busy for their field work, we finished checked out Tiff, then we went to the only restaurant in the village, however, they didn’t have vegetables, as a result, we have lunch with chicken and beef only, 26 Yun for five, everyone think that is is overbudget, at the same time, we ran into a communication problem, two girls after lunch left immediately, withoug saying words, and when all returned to home, YY asked the reasons why she had to pay 100 Yen extra, and yellow explained for several times that since she needed to leave earlier and she need to buy her train ticket first.

I really feel that there is a great discripency in our team, especially Wu left. During the time when I prepared for the ledger, three girls left for the library, and VP and I wnet later, I started the drawing class a little bit earlier, I started to have nothing to teach, I made up three options for them to choose on their own: the village of NMJ, my classmate, my family, the students finished very quick, and the time also flied. It was 4:30 and English class started, we started to have revision on what they learned during the past few days, they enjoyed the exercises very much.

For the junior high students, all the kids went to YY’s class, and I went to the teacher’s room to talk with the headmaster, she welcomed me coming back any time. And she said that I can stay in her house she asked how was my feelings about village and how I view things there, at the same time, she said that they don’t have sufficient resources, and many of the facilities in the school are old, even though as simple as a computer, if they have one, it can improve the teaching quality, we chatted for a while. All I realized is the problem of allocation problem in China, it is the time and place, city people are rich and have a lot of resources, but in village, nothing, I was thinking my old computer put aside at home, it still has a lot of functions, but it is only slower that the new version, then, many people, like me, change for a new one, and let the old one obsolete, actually, in the world, many things still have its value, but we just focuse on the advancement, and let many useful things became useless besides us, if we think more for the othere, for the whole world, and we appreciate what we have and the others in the world, such as some people, who are not as lucky as we are, even though we have this thought, I think the world will became better.

At the same time, I think it is a matter of the appreciation, I think we have computers at home, we can do many things, we can chat over phone for thousand mind away, but I don’t think we have that tight relationship in the village.

I agree that the kids may not have good resourses to learn, but I think they are happy, they don’t have pressure like the city people, have a lot of activities to attend, and also everything is well prepared and they are propotected by the parents. I don’t mean that the kids are not protected by the parents, they are still their loving kids in their eyes of parents, but the kids in the village have a great sense of responsibility , in the family, cooking, taking care of younger brothers/sisters, still, they can have their free times to hang around with their buddies, in farm, ponds, a lot of fun, that ‘s what I admire from them, and I deeply believe that we, the city people will and never have that wonderful time, so, in a sense, we are also scarce of this precious resources, but I think for the city people, we received more knowledge than them, but sometimes we may not have common sense nor practical experience, like knowig the nature, anway, the god is fair to everybody.

About dinner time, we went back home, and had dinner as usual. After dinner, the girls were preparing the letters to the receipents of the seedling fund, however, I was pretty tired( may be the morning ‘s campus work and woke up at 5, I went back to the room to sleep.

17.6.2005
Friday
Team member’s leaving
Today was YY’s leaving for Beijing, she woke up early( first time for the whole trip)and all the girls dressed up very nice to go to school. We ate not much for the breakfast, we had soup, eggs and buns. The time went fast for the class, the kids enjoyed the game, and after the class, I had to grade the paper, the headmaster was also in the teacher’s room, the reporter of the Kai feng daily stopped by for the interview again, and both of them did not understand why the girls trim the certificate, the girls said that they look better on that, and the headmaster suggested us to ask for the comments from the kids, who they will receive our hand-made certificate, as the kids also said that the certificate look better without cutting the edges, I decided not to trim.

About 11:30, we went to visit Ren (not in), Pang Nim Nim (not in). on our way back , we met Nim Nim, we want to give her some encouragement.

We didn’t accomplish anything, and we took lunch first, time was short, as YY left in the afternoon. At the same time, we got plenty of food for lunch.

After lunch, we continue to visit the kids’ family. We started to Fan Ion Fai’s family, he got 100 yen, his mother was motived to cried. I really have nothing to say, I kept on saying to myself that just a small sum of money, like 100 yen, it can help to relax a family’s bunden~~~


Ren got 350 ( that ‘s what he proposed that he needed) when we arrived his house, we talked about how to mange the money for him and at last, we agreed that all the money will be kept by his relative, who is also one of the member of the co-opt. for Mike, he also get 100 and Ming Wei got 200. We hiked White cloud mountain to see Ming’s grandmother,her grandmother was busy on attending us, such as thinking we are very hot, she got some well-water for us to wash faces, get the fan connected for us to cool down, ask ming to buy ice-bars for us….. she was motived by our action, and cried, I have no words to say, there are so many unfountarely stories, we can do just little, but if many of us can do, I believe that many will improve their condition, at that time, Ming started to cry, this was the first time I saw her crying, as the English teacher, I can say I knew her well, for the past 20 days, I saw her almost every day, in class, without knowing her family background at the beginning, I can conclude that she is a smart girl, has several buddies, and whenever the naughty guys teased her, she would be very tough, a tough lady, and it gave me the felling that in the village, one has to be strong to protect oneself, it also made me remember one tiny kid in my class, I saw he was fighting with one elder kid, I didn’t understand at that time, and I think it was not fair for the elder to beat others, but I can conclude that even though he was tiny, he would survive, like the other kids in the village, because of the environment, he knows how to deal with in order to find room for himself.

Back to Ming, I was really touched for the time I saw her crying. Yes, she was tough, she was strong, but as I knew her more, and her story, I really want to give a hand, but I know, I need to find a suitable way, as the story I heard form her grandmom, she was loved by one of her teacher, who wanted to adopted Ming and let her have good education, but she would like to stay with her grandmom. I know she doesn’t want us to mentioned what had happened in past. But when we visited her family, memories came back from her grandmom’s dictation. All I hope is she can cry loudly if she wants to, otherwise it will not be good for her. She has a very long way to go, grandpa and grandmother are old, she has to be strong and independent.

On our way home, I can clearly see the greenly rice field, and it keeps on reminding me that busy time for farmers.

By the time when we went home for lunch, I realized that school needs some teaching equipment, yellow suggested me to consider. I agreed, and the headmaster was very happy to hear that.

Fro afternoon class, no new stuff, revision, but still students were very attentive. I was very motved by the students. They were very hard-working, though I can tell, some can do well, some can’t, but they did try their best.

For the junior high kids, there was only one boy, and I took the chace to talked with him, in English, later one, the son of the headmaster joined our converstation, then we started to talk about the method on learning English, I mentioned that listening, reading, speaking and writing are the essential skills, later on, the headmaster and her husband, also the headmaster, but for the junior high school stopped by, then we started to have conversation together. I turned in my 300 yen for the contribution of buying teaching accessories for the school.

Later , we came back to the teacher’s room, the students were very eagered to get our address and telephone no. some students even drew, for the kids, paper is also scarced resources, some found the left over of our teaching materials to draw and write, they put all their best wishes. I can tell this kind of truth feelings from the kids made me feel the world is full of love, why in our life in the big city, the distance among people is so far away. Interesting enough, one kid send me one blessing, I believed she didn’t understand at her age, may be in future….. she wished me hanged around until my hair is grey ( this one should be to a marry couple, not to a teacher like me!!)

As YY left in the afternoon, and yellow helped her out to the station, we didn’t have dinner at a very late time, later than 9pm. I used the time to finished the certificate and my words to the kids, and I didn’;t finish until 11 pm, then I went to bed.

During the time when we had dinner, yellow asked each of us to write down something like the conclusion, and the personal feeling about the trip, and when we asked for what purpose, he told us that it is for the reporter of Kaifeng daily, for his article, we were all in the opinions that he should not promise without asking our views, and we concluded that we would ignored this request.

18.6.2005
Saturday
Big party of the last gathering

Today was Saturday, that means one more week to go for my trip, and is going home from Beijing back to Macao, but ¾ of my time had passed, and the activity was almost finished in NMJ.

I went to class to have the final exam for the kids, actually no one was absent, it was not compolusory, I was happy to see all of them, very punctual sitting in the class to wait for me. I also felt honour to teach the lovely kids. The exams included two parts, one was oral – introduce oneself, like name, age, what does he/she want to be in future, the second part was written – matching, English to Chinese, recognizing numbers.

My main objective to them is I wish they like to learn English, this international language.
The result was quite good, one got the full mark – ming wai, 8 students got 90 and above, 8 got 80 or above, 2 got 70 or above, and 3 got 60 or above. The three were Cheong Hui Fong-David, Chris and Mike, it was under my plan, as David didn’t show up for a while, didn’t know why, he was very tiny, he joined the class few days after we started, and later I realized that he was on class 1 or 2, he just wanted to join us to learn, and I was not expected him to take the exam, so I also put some extra hours for him when the class was almost over. Even though for the girls at the back , they joined my class very late, they ca also did well. Cheung also did fairly good, I was quite pleased with their effort. I really hope that they can have English class very soon.

After the classes, I asked my kids to take photos, they were so excited. When I graded the paper, they were also keen to watch me to grade the paper. It took a while to finish it, then I joined Tiff in the library, I didn’t have confidence on drawing, but she insisted that no problem.

We had a very delicious lunch, 5 persons, 5 dishes, and most of them were meat. After that, each on took care with its own, it might be the food, or it might be the water-melon, I started to have diarrhea.

It was planned to have the party at 3pm, I started to realized that it was such a hot afternoon in NMJ, 37C, outside was so quiet.

The weather was really hot, the party was postponed to around 5, and before that, I gathered my kids and distributed the result and the certificate, almost most students came, I also gave them some prizes, like the color pencils/exercise books, I wished I have all kinds of thing I want to give, but they are available in the village, not to say a small shop.

I gave a flashed light with different lights embedded in a pen to ming wai, but later on, i discovered that the battery was almost gone, as I didn’t want her to spend money on the expensive battery, I offered my little electric fan to her.

I started to know what a party means for the main land kids, at the beginning I was thinking why we didn’t have to prepare for food. Actually party means gathering of people and everybody sings song, for us, each of us was also asked to sing, me too! We also got bunch of beautiful grasses for reward, so natural and so beautiful. Finally, Yellow asked us to go to the stage ( in front of the kids) to say few words, because we didn’t have preparation, we read out YY’s letter , but VP asked Ming Wai to read, this little girl use her putonhua to read out our thoughts to all the kids.

No words, time has passed, there is time to gather, and there is time to leave. After the party, we started to clean the classrooms/teacher’s room and the library. Yellow also disribted the English game set to his class, I was thinking why for the Chinese writing class, not for the English class. As a result, some kids who didn’t attend the Chinese writing clss, but in my class, wanted so much to have the game set, came over to me to see if I have some for them. Chou HOu and Cheong Husan Kiu eventually got a set, at the time, Ming wai ‘s best friend came over to ask me when we were leving, as Ming’s grand mom would like to say good-bye to us. I asked her not to tell her, as we ddin’t want to bother her.

On our way home, we met King Wai, even though he dropped out in my classes, I think he was quite a good son, he received my little letter to him, and we exchanged address, for that I really have my opinion that I would love to hear and receive letters from them, but for the postage, it will be a bundle for them, but it would not impolite to not give them mine, as would love to write if I have time.

I encouraged him to study well, be a good student. Tiffay, knowing he like drawing, and offer her paints and materials to King wai, actually, all the materials were divided into 3 students. Tiffancy encouraged him to continue to draw, if one day he became famouse, he would draw one picture to Tiif at free. I just have a special feeling towards King Wai, a boy who never saw his father, and was bought up by his super strong mother. He is only around 12 or so, but he has to do a lot of heavy work in the field, skinny and dark, he is quite growth up in mind comparing with the kids in the city. When I was thinking about him, a kid stopped by and handed in a letter for me. The letter is from Charlie, he wrote for he wanted to represent the class to say that they appreciate my efforts to teach, I felt out that it was his initatie to write for me, as he took absence at the later stage. He was quite considerate, he said that he know it was very tough for me to teach the naughty kids, he also wanted to continue the lessons, but there were so many work in the field, and he has to take care of his 3 years old sister, suddenly the scenery of a boy with a tiny girl sitting at the back of the class came to my mind, I didn’t pay attention or have time to ask the reason, and just thinking may be the girl want to join the class for fun. I think I should done more by talking with him, discovered the reason, and offer extra lessons, it was not easy to manage a tiny girl in class, and sometime he had to leave the class. I didn’t realize until the last day, I think it is a failure. He used to be an active person in class, in front row, and he wanted to be the perfect. He used to hanged around me, but just suddently disappeared, like Keing Wai, they have many household stuff to take care, and has to give up their own favorite.

Form this, I can also conclude, the village kids are much more hardworking on learing, they have to pay effort to reach the aim, if they succeed, there are many struggleing stories in behind, if they don’t , they should have tried a lot, as the environement was not favorite for them at all. At the end of the letter, he promised me that he would study well the materials I taught for the past two weeks, I was really motivated.

After dinner, yellow still had his lesson. Tiff told WP about her break-up with her boyfriend, then we started to have conversation about dating in two cultures.


19.6.2005

Today is Sunday, also Father day, last night forgot to call home, but in the early morning, it is kind of early to call, actually, I have only few days to return.

After breakfast, actually, I didn’t take breakfast, as I have stomach flu and went to toilet twice during the early morning. Around 9 o’clock, we hired a van and we went to the high school near by the village. It is Sunday, but is the first day of school for the junior high, there are plenty of students, and by the time we arrived, it was the recession session. Tiffany’s students were excited to see her in the school.

The headmaster greeted us and took us to see around of the school, we visited the teachers’ office, some classrooms, library. Mr. Fan, the headmaster, is the husband of the primary headmaster, I used to see him around during our time in the primary school, but in the earlier time, I didn’t know who he is!

There are not many useful books in the library of he junior high school, especially, no English subjects reference books or reading books. The school is a newly built cement building, and for each student, their tuition fee is 156 Yun per year ( for primary is only 80 yun per year). However, there are plenty of students, the biggest class has 80 students, when we passed the classrooms, some are taking the algebra, English, originally, we wanted to attend the English class, however, Mr. Fan said that it is the first day after the break, the teacher is not well-prepared and suggested us to see around of the campus. When we were on the third floor the the building, we were able to see the plenty pieces of green rice-field, and many farmers are busy working in the fields.

Mr. Fan said that the middle high school also needs to have English teaching, this is because in villages, students can only start to learn in junior high,they don’t have teacher, as after the special training for the English teachers, they would like to stay in the city, as a result, they are shortage of English teachers.

After the visitng, we went to the post office to buy stamps and some suppliers, and also the food for our lunch. During the morning, we discussed that Ren didn’t show up the nights before and Tiff said that probably he was scarred of us.

After our lunch, Professor Ho arrived, and we shared our experience and feelings for the past three weeks, and she asked us to write down our thoughts.


My feelings throughwards NMZ

Staying in NMZ for almost 20 days, at the beginning, I can see the wheat everywhere, and just for 20 days, the scenerye has changed to powing. But I can feel that the farmers were very hardworking for the fields, especially the weather for the past few days are 37C, and they have to work under the sun.

We have finished one of our tasks, to teach, and I think during the process, I am also in the learning stage, it made me to under how to make a teaching plan, what is my expectation to the students, and how to stimulate their interest on learning. I really appreciate my lovely stuents made me unforgettable dreams vacation.

Starting from day 1, I learned nobody of the students to the last day, all the students took the exam, everyday, they are so excited to attend the clases, all this become my memory, and printed in my mind. They have a very strong desire on learning, some are quiet, some are active, some are flighting-lover, love to get challenge, all reflect in the classes

My deep impression is that during the revision game, the little kids may be upset for losing points , some may get anger or some cried, it is a true expression, and it stayed in my mind, I really want to tell them that in our life, we may not be smooth and have some difficultes or failiures, but we need to transfer the pressure to be our motive, we need to change the history, it is in our hands, however, my portughua is not good enough to explain that deep theory, and I would send my best wishes to them.

I think I learned a lot in Georgy’s lesson, it has stimulating, it is encouraging. We have to accept the fact that we cannot change the fact of the educational problem in the villages, the problem is deep-rooted, and it is affected by the external factors like resources allocation, as a result, all they can do, is to raise the kids’s moral to struggle for higher education, to improve their living condition of the village.


20.6.2005
Monday,
Goodbye NMZ

Last night, after dinner, went to co-op at around 9om, there were plenty of students, Mr. Chau, the chair-man of Co-opt talked to us. He told me to come back and he said that june is the busiest month in NMZ, he asked my feelings, and I told him that my deep feelings are the kids, they are very truth, their friendship are very real, and it is not like the outside world, many things are not real. By the time, we chatted, his daughter arrived, and she offered us some of her paintings, which are very nice. I chose one for mine, and CCW wished to get one and we kept one in the library,

As we know the kids need to go to school on Monday, we asked them to go home earlier. But the kids were so excited and they didn’t want to leave. As a result, we left co-opt at around 10, and later, the people left also.


The last day in NMZ, wokeup at about 8




16.10.2005

It has been few months, whenever I have time, my thoughts go to the kids in NMJ, last week, yellow e-mail me a letter of Chau Man-fei, I felt guilty, as I told myself that I should establish a good habit to write to the kids, they are so nice and they consider me as good friend of them. As everyday I am occupied by my work and weekend, just lzay and don’t want to do anything,….. just can’t believe it is almost four months.

About the mid-autume festeverl, Village head Mr. Cheung e-mail me a letter, he is so kind and he told me that the primary school got fund for the re-construction of classroom, and they will make room for a new library for the kids, and he said that by the time we visit next year, we will see the new library, to be honest, I really want to see their new school, and the lovely faces. But don’t know whether I will make the trip or not.


Life, world, peace, poor, rich, happy, unhappy, healthy, ……..