This past week, our program hosted weeklong
trips to four different locations, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Yunnan (Tea Horse Road),
and Sichuan. I chose Sichuan because it was a community service trip in which I
would get to engage with the locals and have a unique experience I could never
organize on my own.
The first day, we got off the plane and
drove to Ya’an, the city of rain. Our tour guide Shirley told us that Ya’an is
known for three things: 雅女nu (women), 雅雨 (rain), and 雅鱼 (fish). Our plane was delayed so we did not get to hike down the
mountain to our guesthouse, but the drive was beautiful nonetheless. Due to a
power outage, we spent the first night playing cards and getting to know each
other by candlelight.
 |
| Baby panda!! |
The next morning, we walked five minutes
down the road to the Bi Fang Xia Panda Base. We all put on the clothes they
provided us, so we looked like the Ghostbusters, and split up by group to go to
our respective panda enclosures. In each enclosure, we would clean poop and old
bamboo out of the panda’s “garden,” break new pieces of bamboo by slamming them
on the ground, and then let the panda come in and eat while we cleaned out
their cage. Our group got along really well and had a lot of fun, even while
cleaning poop (粪便!). One of my highlights of the morning was when we came out of an
enclosure to see a baby panda being fed milk right in front of us.
 |
| Breaking bamboo |
After lunch we went back to feed the
pandas. The pandas would come up to the cage and stick their arms out. We
handed them carrots and a special bread and sat right in front of them as they
ate. It was an incredible experience to be sitting with a panda, only separated
by metal bars. At one point, one of the pandas put its paw right onto my hand
while I was feeding it. The panda trainer freaked out a little and kept asking
if I was okay, but nothing actually happened (although I secretly hoped I would
have a cool scratch so I could say I got mauled by a panda). After feeding
them, we watched a documentary on pandas until it was time for the next
feeding. It was truly an awesome experience and very peaceful just sitting
right across from the giant panda as it munched away. At the end of the day,
they gave us all certificates and pins for volunteering with the pandas.
Nothing fancy but definitely a nice way to remember this once in a lifetime experience.
 | |||
| The group, our teachers, and our tour guide with our certificates |
 |
| Shangli Old Town |
In the late afternoon, we traveled to
Shangli Old Town where we planned our lessons and prepared pencil cases and for
the elementary schools kids we would teach the next day. That night, we strolled
around and came across a variety of karaoke bars (KTV), which was totally
unexpected in this ancient town.
 |
| Group 1! |
The next day, we woke up early to pick
mushrooms. Mushrooms are the livelihood of many families in the area and each
group helped one family. There is only a certain window of time that the
mushrooms can be picked. Our group got very competitive and picked four rows of
mushrooms before the other groups had even finished three. Naturally, we were
very proud of ourselves and as expected, our group dynamic allowed for us to
have too much fun while picking mushrooms.
In the afternoon, we went to the local
elementary school. The 2008 earthquake in Sichuan destroyed their school so
they were all in temporary shelters serving as classrooms, although who knows
when the government will actually rebuild their school. Many of the students
were traumatized by the experience but our visit was definitely a big event for
them and all the kids really enjoyed the experience. Each group had one class
to teach English, art, and sports. The kids did not speak any English so we
taught them how to say: “hello, my name is ____” and “I like (color).” The kids
had a lot of fun learning the colors and I really enjoyed being at the front of
the class with them.  |
| I'm the one second from the left |
For art, we taught them to sing, “If you’re happy and you
know it clap your hands,” and then we gave them markers and paper to draw. Some
of them drew the pictures we put up as examples, and wrote the English translations;
some copied pictures from their workbooks; and some drew pictures of us.
For
sports, we had brought a ball but when they were playing with it earlier they
nearly killed each other, so we decided to play other games such as Duck Duck
Goose (which we called Dog Dog Cat 狗狗猫). I led a few rounds of Simon Says (老师说) and then let the kids take turns being the teacher. We ended with a
game of Hot Potato, singing songs in English and Chinese.
Personally, this was
the most rewarding day of the trip. The kids all seemed to be having a lot of
fun and over the next few days, whenever our tour bus drove by students, they
waved at us and smiled. That night, we made dumplings in a local restaurant.
Then after dinner, almost everyone on our program ended up in another KTV where
we played games and did karaoke with some other Chinese people around our age.
 |
| All the students we taught |
The next part of our service was helping
the poorest family in the village pave their driveway. Our tour guide told us
that the couple both had surgery so physical labor was hard for them, and when
we arrived, it was clear that this sort of work would have taken them days and
days without our help. We spent the morning mixing cement and laying it down,
and then putting a layer of stones on top. Our group obviously dominated (while
being totally humble, of course), with two of us running the wheelbarrows back
and forth, and the others consistently shoveling cement and stones. After
lunch, we added the top layer of cement and mixed it with water. They had an
interesting way of paving but at the end of the day, it worked fine and we all
went back to town exhausted. In the evening, a few of us chilled on a beautiful
bridge in town and eventually found a cute café where we drank tea in the loft
and talked for hours.
The service part of our trip was tremendously
rewarding and while our small group got a little competitive at times, it felt good to help
others and directly see the impact we had on their lives, especially after the
trauma they experienced from the 2008 earthquake. I definitely would not have
gotten this experience on any of the other program trips and the community
engagement made it all worth it. Working together towards a common goal
definitely brought us closer together and I became good friends with people I
would not have known as well otherwise.
 |
| The whole group after a day of paving (try and find me...) |
Stay tuned for part 2! Hot springs,
glacier, spicy Sichuan hot pot, and Chengdu!
No comments:
Post a Comment