Molly Loves Pandas

Molly’s blog
Wednesday April 22, 2009
School and Pandas

Today, we took a long bus ride to visit a rural school in Xian. As we traveled on the bus, we passed the Qing Ling Mountains, which are huge and green, and passed by lots of fields and crops. Once we arrived at the school, it had already started raining a bit, and we lined up in two lines to greet and pair up with the students. My girl immediately grabbed my hand and we all went up 6 flights of stairs to a big room where there were tables with vegetables on them and a projector screen set up. We were led to our seats, and they had all sorts of welcoming songs and presentations for us. Groups of students performed songs and played guitar and recited poems for us. They unexpectedly called on a few of us to sing songs, so, even though no one had prepared, Hamish and Mike sang ‘Kiss the Girl’ from the little mermaid, and Cassandra and Matti sang ‘A Moment Like This’ by Kelly Clarkson, which they had sung at karaoke last night. After more introductions, etc, we were led downstairs on our own with each of our ‘friends’ to classrooms. In my classroom, the teacher spoke English, and asked his students to ask us questions, but they were too shy. He wanted to know some advice for how to learn English since it’s so difficult, but how do you answer something like that? For us, we just do it – there’s no real trick to it. Next, we had lunch. We lined up by some windows where we got bowls of rice and vegetables or some other kind of meat, etc, and then were led to classrooms to eat. The students’ teachers told the students to teach us how to use chopsticks – we thought we were doing it right, but apparently not! After lunch, we had free time to spend with the students – some were shy, and wouldn’t ask questions, others were pretty open, asking about hobbies and subjects in school. One girl even asked me “Explain your country”. What? I’m thinking, do you mean democracy, or how it looks? If I ever didn’t understand their questions, I would ask them a question back to clarify, and then they’d go “Oh ok”. Um, wait, what? I was able to give them my postcards about Massachusetts, and other kids had stickers or pencils or fun things to pass out, and they would give us little books, things they had written, candy or trinkets. We spent a while going between classes, getting introduced and just chatting, until finally we got back on the bus. Some of the students even got on the bus with us to say goodbye!
Once on the bus, Li Jin had a surprise for us – pandas! We stopped by a zoo, and even though it was raining, we walked outside along the paths to visit first pandas that were in dark rooms, and then peacocks, crested ibises, pheasants, and even some more pandas in open air enclosures. We even got a chance to see some pandas that were close up, as they were in little rooms about to be fed. By the end, everyone was pretty wet and miserable, but we were all in a good mood, and no one complained because we had gotten to see such cool animals. Back on the bus, wet but happy, we’re about to head off to the Wild Goose pagoda. What a morning!