{"id":214,"date":"2014-04-25T13:06:24","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T17:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supportchinaeducation\/?p=214"},"modified":"2014-04-25T13:06:25","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T17:06:25","slug":"day-4-5-report-from-2014-trip-team-leaders-jackie-and-peter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/2014\/04\/25\/day-4-5-report-from-2014-trip-team-leaders-jackie-and-peter\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 4 & 5 – Report from 2014 Trip Team Leaders Jackie and Peter"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hi all,<\/div>\n
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We\u00a0will be\u00a0leaving\u00a0tomorrow\u00a0morning.\u00a0 Please see updates for Day 4 and this morning.\u00a0 We will finish the rest when we are back home.\u00a0 Thank you for letting us have your wonderful children this week.\u00a0 Peter and I are so fortunate to have your trust to lead them at this meaningful program.\u00a0 We thoroughly enjoyed this experience because of your children.<\/div>\n
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Thank you and see you soon.<\/div>\n
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Jackie & Peter<\/div>\n
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Day 5 – Friday, 4\/25 – AM<\/div>\n
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A huge thunder woke us up today.\u00a0 We are disappointed that it was still raining but excited about today’s agenda.\u00a0 The kids will be sitting in on some classes with the Yizhong students.<\/div>\n
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One group went to sit in on a math class, another to a Chinese class.\u00a0 The math class was pretty hard but the kids understood\u00a0most parts.\u00a0 The Chinese class was about “Lei Yu”.\u00a0 It was very hard to understand but some of the kids actually got the essence of it.\u00a0 They also sat in on a geography class and a biology class.\u00a0\u00a0 We are all very proud of our kids for their eagerness in learning.<\/div>\n
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Between the classes, we participated in\u00a0a formal donation\u00a0ceremony when our donation was officially announced.\u00a0 Our kids were so happy to see all the scholarship recipients again.<\/div>\n
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More to come….<\/div>\n
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Day 4 – Thursday, 4\/24<\/div>\n
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We got a short break from the rain in the early morning hours.\u00a0 Most of us got up early again and went out to the Athletic fields for some excercise.\u00a0\u00a0 Peter and the boys plus Savannah played basket ball.\u00a0 Brian had a ping pong match with an Yizhong student, and Sam played tennis with Jackie on a wet court.\u00a0 Yizhong was very nice in providing us with all the sports equipment.<\/div>\n
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We were slightly late for breakfast and just made it for the first class at\u00a08:05am.\u00a0 By now, all our kids can navigate the buildings and find the classrooms they are teaching by themselves.\u00a0 Many Yizhong teachers approached me and told me how mature and independent our kids are because they know what they are doing and there is no need for the teachers to give them instructions or directions, and they wish that the Yizhong students could\u00a0be as capable.\u00a0 I told them that Yizhong students can be the same if they are given the freedom and opportunity.\u00a0 Most Chinese students are more reserved because they are taught so.\u00a0 They appeared to be more reliant on teachers because they are used to yielding to authorities.\u00a0 Our kids are stars here for a variety of reasons, their\u00a0openness, outgoing personalities, engaging and respectful attitude, and their Chinese with cute accents.\u00a0 To Yizhong students,\u00a0our kids\u00a0bring a breath of fresh air to the campus and they are taking in wholeheartedly.\u00a0 To our kids, Yizhong students’ showed their sincerity and friendliness and we are\u00a0soaking\u00a0in their hospitality.<\/div>\n
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A morning of 4-hour classroom\u00a0teaching was rewarded with another delicious lunch.\u00a0 We had pork with mei cai “mei cai kou rou”, another local specialty, seaweed soup, tofu, scallion beef,\u00a0and baby bok choy.\u00a0 We encouraged everyone to eat more as we need the fuel for our afternoon activity of visiting the scholarship recipients’ homes.<\/div>\n
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It proved true that we needed all the fuel we’ve got.\u00a0 Accompanied by the Gao Yi director Chen, we walked about 5 miles on foot in the rain\u00a0and visited 4 families living in Chongren.\u00a0 Even though we all got wet and the walk was tiring and at times “adventurous”, it was a memorable experience as we saw how those students and their families lived.\u00a0 Most of them rent rooms and have very small living spaces and simple furnishings.\u00a0 “Bare minimium” is what depicts most of their homes and life style.\u00a0 One of the students took time off from school and returned home to greet us and introduced his mom to us.\u00a0 His mom was surprised to hear Justin describing his son’s\u00a0career aspiration of becoming a writer, favorite food of fried rice noodle and friend sticky rice cake, favorite music, favorite\u00a0movies and idols, nodding her head with a shy smile\u00a0to show that Justin got it right.\u00a0 She knew we had a meet & greet last night but didn’t expect that they would know each other\u00a0this much.\u00a0 The home visit is an important part of our program because we would like for our kids to\u00a0learn first hand that you can still thrive in school\u00a0and society and be your best even if you have very little materially.\u00a0 Many of the kids we are supporting are so positive in their outlook even with the most difficult and sometimes unfair life situation.\u00a0 We all can learn so much from them and their families.\u00a0 And yes we\u00a0learned as no\u00a0one complained about soaking wet pants, sneakers and socks when we go back!<\/div>\n
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We were delighted to\u00a0see visitors upon our return from the home visit.\u00a0 Ryan’s grandparents and aunt came all the way from Fujian to see Ryan and us.\u00a0 Ryan beamed with joy.\u00a0 We were thankful for all the goodies they brought us.\u00a0 The kids couldn’t wait until dinner time as they were all invited by the students\u00a0to a party at the Gao Yi Classroom 2 for some fun at\u00a07:00pm.\u00a0 All had a fun time at the party.\u00a0 The Yizhong students were sad that our kids will be leaving soon but happy to have all of them in their classroom for chatting and photo opportunities.\u00a0 Cards were exchanged and signatures given out.\u00a0 It is then time to go back to the dorm for some rest as the kids had a long day.\u00a0 Peter led the kids for all the evening activities while Jackie was doing a Q&A for an assembly of students\u00a0on American schools and education.<\/div>\n
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The rain did not seem to want to relent.\u00a0 It probably sensed the saddness that\u00a0tomorrow\u00a0is our last day at Yizhong.\u00a0 Everything\u00a0was wet but we all felt warm at heart.\u00a0 After the girls\u00a0finished writing up a card for the Yizhong students, we went to bed.<\/div>\n
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Jackie & Peter<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi all, We\u00a0will be\u00a0leaving\u00a0tomorrow\u00a0morning.\u00a0 Please see updates for Day 4 and this morning.\u00a0 We will finish the rest when we are back home.\u00a0 Thank you for letting us have your wonderful children this week.\u00a0 Peter and I are so fortunate … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.newtonchineseschool.org\/supporteducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}