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