Day Six: Back to work, the orphanage, and dinner with Hao Li Jun

Saturdays are the busiest days for the English school. Because they have to go to regular school for 12 hours mon-fri Saturday and Sunday are the only days that kids can have time for EXTRA school! Usually on these days kids go to English school, math school, and if they show some potential in art, they go to drawing class too. Because it is good for Wang Yan's school image to have foriegners around, we spent most of Saturday visiting all 6 of the different schools and talking to each class for a few minutes. Her school name is New Concept English as you can see here in this sign.
As you can also see here in this sign, English school is best represented by a red rose placed in the soft warm mood light gently falling on a bed.

So in each of the classes we would say hi and go over a few simple phrases, like their favorite color or their favorite food, or they would sing us "yesterday once more", and then we would take a picture so that the school could advertise it's white faces.

Here in this class we taught them to bow down to us.
JUST KIDDING- they are singing "Bingo B-I-N-G-O" to us.

We were especially excited about school #3 because that is where our really great friend Chou Chou (aka Tian Tian) now teaches.
Chou Chou translates to Ugly Ugly. and Tian Tian translates to Sweet Sweet. I prefer to call her Tian Tian but she goes by both. Anway, Tian Tian is so wonderful. I missed her so very much. She is so playful and kind and one of my favorite memories from 5 years ago was when she invited us to go out to her family's farm on one of our holidays. She comes from the most beautiful countryside and from the most beautiful family.

Back at the main school, which is the only one that was around when we were living and teaching there, we got all nostolgic and had to take a picture with Wang Yan in our old office .

Here we were asked to give some of the third year students an oral quiz. Following is an example of some of the questions we asked the students and the responses we were given:
Q: How old are you?
A: I'm fine, thank you.

Q: How are you doing today?
A: I am going to English school and math school and swimming.

Q: Are you French?
A: Yes
. . . .

I promised Wang Yan that I would not post any pictures from this next activity and I'm not really sure how much to even write but . . . well I mentioned earlier that when we were living here we used to take a bus once a week out to this orphanage and play with the kids and hold the babies. Well, since then Wang Yan has apparently been there a few times to do the same and talked with several people, kids and adults, about the concept of "volunteering". I really don't feel right taking credit for anything here but it really did just make me so happy to think that possibly in some round about sorta way, something that was so important to me possibly rubbed off on someone else.
So anyway, Wang Yan invited a group of her students to take a trip to the orphanage at the end of the day, and to bring them some treats. Most of the children there, although not all of them, have some sort of disability and because the culture tends to hide these people, your average person is just not used to interacting with them, so it was really fascinating to see these kids interact together.
On a personal note, I really did not want to leave the orphanage at all. The babies are where my heart gets stuck and it was near impossible to put some of those wet smelly little bodies back in their cribs and leave.
When Wang Yan first told me that she thought some of the parents were mad at her for this "field trip" I thought it was probably because they were all cramped on to a rackety old bus and driving far out of town after dark and so the parents were a little worried. But then I learned that they were just mad because they didn't think it was a useful activity and their kids should be studying. On the way home in the bus I couldn't help but feel a little bit sad that parents would have wanted for their kids to have missed out on that really touching experience.
One of the other teachers that went with us is actually not an English teacher at all but a lady who teaches kids about Confuscious in free classes (at Wang Yan's school). And she was talking to them on the bus about how they should all be grateful that they have a mom and dad and. . . . I know I'm looking at this from my very limited view point, and education is an amazing way to show love for one's children, but I still just have such a hard time with . . . "the way" that thigs are done sometimes. And again I think Wang Yan is so brave for doing something like this. It might not seem like much at all, but for the way of thinking and the behavior that is considered acceptable in her world, really- she steps so far out of the box.

Back at the school there was still one more evening class and we just hung out with Er Yi (being a vampire) and with our Japenese rockstar escort while we waited for Wang Yan.

That night we went to Hoa Li Jun's (Xiao Hao) house for dinner. When we left Xiao Hoa was neither married or a mother and now she's both. Here are some pictures of her cute baby boy, her husband who really dressed up for the occasion (it's great because as soon as people get home they take there pants off. It so cold there right now that everyone wears long john under their pants, and then just strips down to those as soon as they get home, open crotch and all).

And some pictures of pictures of her baby boy. Remember how I talked about the open-crotch baby clothes? This is the ultimate example. Xiao Hoa had some pictures of her boy done at a professional studio where they dress them up in a couple of cute little outfits and put all the pictures in a little book where they add great Chinglish phrases. And even here, for his big photoshoot, even dressed as a watermelon, do they let the jewels hang out. I've covered them up though since Alex warned me I could get in trouble for posting such things, but I'm sure you get the idea.
And one final TT hair sighting for today: