China2025

High School visit This Friday we took a trip to the county seat to visit the No 2. High school in the county! We each got to shadow a Chinese student for the morning. Together we went to three classes and got to experience a day in the life of a Chinese High Schooler. This school was different from the typical American high school; it was an art school. For our first class, Isobel went to Chinese language and Syndiely went to Government & Politics. Chinese Language was similar to an English class in America. The class was reading some difficult Ancient Chinese texts and analyzing them. In the Government & Politics class, students were working through some interesting problems about businesses and sharing. It was difficult for Syndiely to understand, but the student she was shadowing was really kind and took time to explain the problem to her. On the contrary, Isobel’s student would periodically look over at her and say “you don’t understand? Me neither!” After first period,...

China GSL in A to Z A  whole lot of rain in torrential downpours, trapping us inside for an hour B irthday cake and platters of fruit for Debby’s 62nd birthday C huang men (literally “entering doors”), meaning visiting from house to house in a casual manner --- Nara’s favorite pastime D ance class Mongolian style at the high school E verything Too Small for Hannah to find shoes in China F orty pushups in front of the Chinese high school class (Nara’s new record) G oing on our midtrip, where we spent time relaxing and reflecting, learning to cook local dishes, and touring a Hakka roundhouse H igh school visit on Friday where we each shadowed a junior student as they attended their classes of the day --- Hannah went to government, dancing, and singing class I ntent on filling your teacup and keeping your plates piled with food J ie Xiang Lao (old fortune) Hotpot as a group on Friday night K uai zi (chopstick) speed competition at the middle school, where we comp...

Daniel and I are living in a homestay on this trip. Our house has two floors, and we sleep on two separate beds in one room on the second floor. Our host family consists of a host dad, brother, grandmother, and grandfather. We communicate mostly with our host dad and brother, since it’s hard to understand our host grandparent’s dialect. We got to know our host brother pretty early on in the trip. He is in his last year of college, known here as “da si.” Apparently, seniors in college here are completely set free to do whatever they want, so even though school is still going on right now, our host brother decided to return to his home and plays video games and scrolls tiktok (“dou yin”) the whole day. From the outside, it may seem like he is lazy, but once you get to know him, you realize that he doesn’t really have a choice. He is a CS major and the main language he codes in is java. The issue in China is the pure amount of people and competition for the limited number of job openi...

Why Travel? This past Wednesday and Thursday our group headed to the Xiu & Tang Hotel for our Mid-Trip Reflection. These two days were about getting some rest, spending some time as a group, and reflecting on our first week and half in China. We’ve all had a wonderful experience so far, our host families have been extremely welcoming, the school visits have been so exciting, and our farm work has been rewarding. To help guide us, our trip leader posed us two questions: why travel (specifically, GSL type travel) and what do you do when our belief system and/or culture clashes with another community’s belief system or culture. I’ll leave you to ponder the second question, but I want to share what we came up with to answer the why travel question. 1.       Uncomfortable situations force growth We are all very lucky trip because we have been studying Chinese for at least 3 years which is different from many GSL experiences.  Many of us can practice our ...

Visiting an elementary school We visited an elementary school today where local kids, including my host family’s two sons, are students. It was about a 10-minute car ride from our homestays. In China, elementary school encompasses K to 6th grade, followed by middle school (7th to 9th) and high school (10th to 12th). At the school, we attended different classes, such as ceramics, technology, and calligraphy. The local students acted as helpers, assisting us with learning new skills and translating. In ceramics class, the 5th and 6th grade students shared with me that the racks of perfectly symmetrical cups, bowls, and plates were their own work. They taught me how to throw a bowl on the pottery wheel, and their proficiency at such a young age amazed me (they had to save me multiple times from accidentally destroying my bowl). I took Intro to Ceramics in 9th grade and never quite got the hang of the wheel, so I enjoyed finally being able to produce some bowl-shaped o...

One week anniversary Today was the first Sunday of the trip, and each Sunday is a free day to spend with our host families. Owen and I started off the morning by finishing then glueing together the 300-piece puzzle we started the night before. It was a community effort; Oliver, our host brother, and our host dad popped in and joined us. Owen taught me the strategy to best complete the puzzle: isolate the edge pieces and piece them together, sort the pieces by color (or animals in this case), combine the animals and plants, and lastly apply a layer of glue to secure the completed puzzle. Now we have a completed and glued puzzle that has become a gift created through team effort. We had an unexpected change of plans with our host family and so Owen and I joined Zara, Syndiely, Akal, and Sarah. Zara and Sarah’s host dad walked us to a water reservoir. There was a massive dam that was dried up. He told us that it was empty because the water was released earlier in the year. We continue...