OK, This is almost the end of Day 3 now! I was not able to send this out last night. So I will continue with our 3rd day event.

Last night, we learned calligraphy. Principal Liang’s father was very thoughtful to prepare a nice brush and water writing booklet for our students. They sent a teacher with great calligraphy skills to teach us step by step. Our students really enjoyed this hands-on experience and proud of their own progress after 2 hours of good lesson. We are more touched when the teacher said, he spent the entire day prepared 14 pieces of wonderful calligraphy for each of us and will give us as a keepsake! Wow, that is so precious and each of our students was delighted to pick their favorite and they should have learned what it said, please check out with them. We are asking one of teachers here to get it done nicely (zhuang biao) so it will be easier for you to hang on the wall at home.

Wed. Students had better sleep and jetlegs are almost over. We started rotating in each classrooms for the 4 classes in the morning. Our students not only led local students improving their English pronunciation, but also learning Chinese with them: they are teaching our students how to recite Li Bai’s poem, sing popular songs, etc. Lots of pictures taken,some students made beautiful flowers for us, all are so friendly and nice. Our students are very happy.

This afternoon, instead of visiting some local museum, we requested to have some Lab class with local students. Started with the physics lab. Their lab was very well designed and has hands-on devices. Our students were teamed up with local students and finished some great experiment and learned how to draw the experiment graph and how to calculate V0 (initial velocity). Then they did 3 chemistry lab tests and learned how to measure the temperature change, by different ways, very interesting. Last, they worked in the biology lab, watching the cells from onion, green leave or flowers. Our students did that in 6th or 7th grade, so they handled it well. But, physics and chemistry, they really think it is quite eye opening and fascinating.

Now, we are preparing for tonight’s presentation and performance. We heard the school prepared for it 2 months ago and did “hai xuan” from the 3000 students to select the best of the best performance for us tonight and our students are tryint to do our very best too!

More reports will follow!

In one word, we are doing great, nobody gets sick (knock the wood), all in open mind and positive mood to learn and experience, everybody gets along great! Nan and I fell very thankful to have such a well built team! Thank you for your support!

Cheers,

Jieying

Dear All,

We started our first day with a high note and ended with a huang mei diao! 🙂 Last program last night was learning how to sing the famous local style of music and was pretty fun for us all. They also sent us experienced teacher teaching us how to do the paper cut as well. In the afternoon, all of our students got a chance to do their presentation to their 6th graders for once and they did great job and audience were really delighted. After that, we were invited to play soccer with local students. The kids who played had lots of fun and all the rest kids were cheering for them.

We also went to take a shower in a nearby shower place. It is quite an experience for our students taking shower in a public place (only us though, no other customer). Oh, it felt great after 3 days without warm shower (and yesterday was 31C). It costs 28RMB a person. They all think it is quite worth it.

OK, today. This morning, we had a brief time using the computer room, but I was not able to log in, only a few students able to send email to their parents and I told them to forward to you all.

We had all our activities in High School area today and the weather was great, with beautiful breeze and blue sky. This morning our students were divided into groups to attend some English classrooms and some of them got to demo and lead the local students how to read and some got to share their personal learning experience with local students. Local students are very friendly and our students are very kind and it really warms my heart watching them communicating each other.

In the noon time, our students took a quick nap. Then some of us were invited to play basketball with them. Our team worked very hard, maybe due to the cement floor and  wind, we lost, pretty big loss. 🙂 Any outdoor opportunity our kids can grab,. they would play football, frisbee, etc.

This afternoon, the school hosted formal ceremony welcoming our team and welcoming the supporting education gesture. Many local leaders came and gave speech, our Principal Liang delivered speech too. Their student representative had a very impressive speech and our kids were very encouraged. The reason our NCLS get to connected with this school is due to Professor Liang  (Nan’s father), who graduated from this school many years ago and who thought about his hometown and would like to find ways to provide better opportunities for students here.

Before dinner, our students played ultimate frisbee, led by expert Bryan Xian. Wow, very intensive game! After watching for a while, some local kids joined us too and it was lots of fun!

The cafeteria here gives too big of portion each meal and our students quickly found their way to solve the problem: either two are sharing or three are sharing and they really get along so well, just like they are old buddies. We are so grateful to see that. Of course, after each meal, they love to have some icecream bars, soda (all bottled and well packed from the store). They said it was yummy.

OK, I got to go to the evening event now and more later.

All kids are doing great! So long!

Jieying