Saturday, May 26

Family Fun Day at QAIS!  Woo woo! We had to meet the school van at 7:15, just like a regular school day.  It was foggy but humid this morning, and the humidity got intense by about 10 am—my favorite!  You can see from the photos that a good time was had by all.  It got pretty busy, and the obstacle course I was working on was quite popular, especially with boys 7-10 years old.  We were supposed to be chary with the 1^st place tickets, but with about 45 minutes left, I became profligate with them—the boys were perfecting their style and times, and that seemed worth rewarding.  Many of my students were there, very cute.  They have a sweet approach/avoidance thing with me—based in good part on the language barrier.  Meanwhile, Julia did the circuit, collected a good handful of prize tickets, and spent endless amounts of time perusing the prize choices.  There were hotdogs, so she was set for the day!

Here are an assortment of Family Fun Day pictures:

Boys having fun!

Julia at a tire event

Everyone loved the potato sack races - many of these little ones are in my class

There was beautiful, intricate face painting

Happy Julia!

Twister was familiar to us and lots of fun

I tried to prod Julia to find the fourth 2^nd grade girl—Sunny—to hang around with, while she wistfully asked about Maci a half dozen times.  She understands that the Maci/Jessica thing is an obstacle to extensive friendship, but she can’t seem to find a working option other than that.  And, in truth, I believe I watched Sunny drift around the yard for 2 hours; she would like a friend too!  Is that the real secret, that most of us are a little bit of an outsider some or most of the time? 

The Chinese staff worked so hard, and they do the grunt work.  My eyes have been opened, a bit, to this part of the situation, and it makes me a little uncomfortable.  Is it a class thing? A cultural thing? A gender thing?  I’m not sure I can answer that.  I have had some interesting and somewhat frank conversations with the aides, but they are completely capable of going into Chinese mode on me when they choose to.  Sometimes I know they are talking about me and I just have to play dumb; no point in pushing things, as there is no actual long term investment here!

The school shares its property with an organization called The Children’s Center, where all kinds of enrichment activities happen for children during the week and through the weekend.  There were students taking painting classes in the rooms we use as lunchrooms during the week—while we were outside Fun Fairing, they were painting, for a long time.  I have been repeatedly told that Chinese students work really, really hard for long, long hours!  Also today, there was some kind of ceremony happening in the stadium; you can see students in uniforms and in formation.  I was told it had something to do with International Children’s Day (June 1).  There was a display of pottery out on the plaza area; several children were intently examining the pieces.  One outgrowth of lots of hard work and long hours is that everything takes on added significance.

The children in formation

The art class we peeked in on

Some of the pottery on display - or drying?

Julia wanted something more out of the day when the Fair was over.  We shared a taxi home with our upstairs neighbors—he teaches math to the upper school, and she is from Thailand and is a fabulous cook; cooked a bunch of foods to sell at the Fair—which was a disappointment to Julia as I had suggested we might walk around to the beach afterward.  The Fair was a more tiring experience than I had planned for!  I was really beat—and felt sweaty and dirty.  So, we came back, cleaned up, and took a snack and our book out to a shady spot around the lake.  We met our bus stop friend on his bike!  I wish I knew his name; as I said to Julia, it’s silly that she eats candy from a person she doesn’t know the name of.  That remark cracked her up to an inordinate degree!

A beautiful waterlily in our community lake

Our bus stop friend

We are finishing “By the Shore of Silver Lake,” Laura Ingalls Wilder, which makes for some interesting cultural contrasts!  China, part 3^rd world country, part cutting edge 21^st nation, and 1870s western America.  The plumbing question in either context is less than ideal!

That interlude of reading didn’t satisfy Julia’s urge to be doing something (spending 4-5 hours in the apartment is not really that satisfying as there is so much less stuff and therefore activities than at home.  It can feel a bit depressing to be in the apartment for a length of time because it becomes more apparent that ‘we’re not at home.’)  So we walked down to the store SPAR which Maggie introduced me to yesterday, to purchase a small birthday present for the little girl whose party we are attending tomorrow (a child in my class, from a staff family who’s been really friendly to us).  The concept of department store has a curious expression here.  The floors look familiar, but in reality, each small section—shoes, children’s clothing, hats and umbrellas, etc, -- is run by a separate vendor.  The children’s shoe section in this store was extensive; but in reality, it was about 6 separate shoe stores sitting check by jowl.  So too with the extensive toy section—actually 6-7 separate vendors selling similar –and very, very cheap—merchandise from one section of the floor to the next.  In a more high-end store, this would be different, I should interject here.  But in this particular store, there was little difference between the sellers here and the vendors right outside, hawking the same items from their car trunks.  I saw a van today which had a specially designed clothing rack that could be pulled out of the trunk of the van to display clothes on!

Inside of the SPAR store

We walked back through another community—there was a lovely and visually interesting brick stairway/stadium-like area, which, upon close inspection, was a bit rundown and poorly cared for.  It had a watercourse that clearly hadn’t been used in a while, as in our community.  And this brick area was surrounded by paths and plantings, and some sculptures; it was pretty, peaceful, scenic—really curious, in the midst of the city, in a community that is pretty run-down.  I find this contrast constantly in China—thoughtful, careful attention hand in hand with rubble, dirt, broken windows.  SUVs pushing past hand carts pulled by men to remove the trash from the community.  Or, a restaurant with a rack out on the street (the very busy street) on which gutted fish are hanging, ready to be cooked on the grill.  Imagine that happening in the US, even in a rural or small community!  The pollution, the sanitary issues, the bald presentation of dead meat, the list goes on and on!  And 100 yards from this urban and somewhat unappetizing situation are water lilies blooming on the lake in the center of this housing community where many 100s of people live stacked up in apartments!

The rack of fish outside a shop

One of the calmer, prettier views on our walk

Julia enjoying the sculpture!