China – (CHI) – June 27 – July 21

Welcome Global Works travelers, parents and friends.  We are excited to share with you trip updates from around the world.  As our main office receives updates from the trips we will update the page as we receive news from the field.

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Update #1: The GW China team is awesome, we are all getting along great and it is so much fun getting to know each other through games, activities, touring, shopping, eating, and traveling! We are having the experience of a lifetime and will fill you in with more details and photos soon. In the meantime, here is a glimpse into a day in the life of a GW China Program:

June 30 :
Thai Chi/ Temple of heaven:We met our Thai Chi instructor in park a beautiful park after breakfast. He was a 70-year old yoda-esque master who had been studying the art for 55 years. We learned that That Chi requires a lot of focus, balance, and patience. It felt very natural.

In the afternoon we all gathered and filled our bellies with some delicious lunch at a Yunnan restaurant. We sampled some spicy noodles and potatoes. The fried chicken was surprisingly sweet, thanks to the coconut oil.

Lam Temple: Incense. Smoke. Prayer. Many ornate and lavish Buddha shrines decorated the temple. The center of the temple was built around an overwhelmingly large 16m golden Buddha cut from a single tree.

Shopping and Dinner: Some of us stopped at a western café in a popular shopping district. We encountered (but did not eat) green mustard eel pizza. We all met for dinner at a rooftop eatery. The lemon chicken was the gold-medal entrée.

After dinner everyone was feeling tired and ready for some rest to prepare for our adventures at the Great Wall tomorrow!  We’ll keep you posted on our our upcoming days over weekend as we jump into our community service work.

Update #2:
July 2: As I stepped off the bus the sour smell of the streets rushed into my nose. We all headed toward one of the side streets looking for the school that we were going to paint, I noticed all the trashed the resided on the streets, the people looked displaced and all the buildings and shops were a far downgrade from what I had been seeing in the center of Beijing. I felt an aching in my heart to try and do my best work today because it really seemed like what I was doing was important and could genuinely help this community.

We turned another corner and arrived at the school but what I saw was something you could barely consider decent. The only way you could even tell it was a school and not just a run down abandoned building was the faded cartoon fishes painted on the outside of the walls and the rummage of random chairs and desks inside the rooms. This place needed a new paint job, and I am glad to give it to them.

We began by cleaning all the equipment. Scrubbing and soaking all the paint brushes and sweeping the dusty room. These rooms looked like it had been a while since anyone had even been in them, the white paint on the walls were stained and dirty. After we began to chalk out the mural, it seemed very difficult and that it might take forever to finish and I was beginning to get frustrated with it. But as we began, things calmed down and people began to concentrate more. We split up into groups, people were assembling all the IKEA furniture and some were mixing the paint and some began painting. It was a crazy mess the further we got, but it was so much fun. Everyone was working with each other and bonding on a whole other level. By the end of the day at 5, we were almost done and I was amazed at what we had accomplished.

July 3:  We awake to a truly shocking and rare sight.  The blue sky, accompanied by the sun, greets us for the first time in days.  We return to the school for children of migrant workers, and are immediately assaulted by the smells of outdoor cooking and outdoor bathrooms.  After an arduous battle against paint that drenched our paintbrushes, we reward ourselves with a feast of takeout noodles in Styrofoam boxes.  After working in the sun this was absolutely indulgent.  Finally we start to paint.  We gaze with pride at the brightly painted walls and Ikea bookshelves, tables, and chairs, all of which were made with our very own hands.  The room has transformed from a filthy useless space, to a fully furnished and beautifully painted reading room in a matter of two days.  For many of us this is the first time we truly did something significant. At three o’clock sharp we rush back to the hotel.  We race through showers to try to clear away the paint that cakes our skin, and run to an equally rushed dinner.  Suitcases vie to get through the door as we pack into the bus.  We arrive at the train massive shiny station with surprisingly good time.  Once settled we set off to the KFC in the train station to dine on deeply missed fried potato-y goodness.  We also sip at cool glasses of bubble tea, a sweet tea, like iced coffee, with tapeocca pearls on the bottom.  Finally the hour beckons and we board the night train for Xi’an.  We fight for space and air in the dense crowds as we squirm with our luggage down the train hallway.  After confusion in broken Chinese we manage to get everyone into rooms with other people on the trip.  At last we settle comfortably into the luxuriously sized closets called four person rooms, and try to squeeze in a few hours of sleep before we awake in Xi’an

PHOTOS:

 

Update #3:
July 5: Today we embark on the orphanage.  Upon entering we are immediately met with the heart melting sight of three babies in a carriage.  Immediately overwhelmed with love for these helpless babies, we throw ourselves into orphanage duty.  The next two and a half hours are filled with bouncing, cooing, soft singing, tummy ticking and cuddling.  Some babies are trapped in highchairs, their heads to heavy for them to lift.  One baby, Jack is truly inspiring.  Despite a swelled skull and paralyzed legs he still sings and plays and interacts with exceptional intelligence and vivacity.  Those that spend time with the babies also bond with each other. A new side of many of us is pushed to the surface by the emotional intensity of the experience, and the sincerity and gentleness needed to nurture the babies. Others of us, those less experienced with small children take time to clean and sanitize some of the rooms in the orphanage.  During lunch we meet with an unassuming woman with a slightly frayed Aunt-like appearance.  With the utmost modesty Amanda, the director of the orphanage describes the struggles involved in running the orphanage.  Quietly exceptional and utterly selfless.  Goodbyes linger, but we at last wretch ourselves from the orphans and depart home with tired arms, and emotionally exhausted.  It is bittersweet the babies are easy to love, but the tragedy of their abandonment, not only by their family but by the world hangs in the air.  After time to rest we explore the Muslim market.  We wander through a twisting alley of tourist goods and haggling.  We are on our own for food for the first time. With a bit of pointing and flailing we find a sumptuous and pleasantly inexpensive array of steaming food before us.  This small accomplishment was a source of great pride.  Back at the hotel we take time to talk as a group and reflect on our experiences thus far in China, and as a group.

July 6, 2011 – After another American breakfast we board the bus for another day at the Starfish Orphanage. By now most of us have gotten over that early awkwardness with the children. Some of us jump on the children with excitement, yet others still shy away, but that’s okay. As for the kids themselves they seem overjoyed with having us with them. Jack is learning how to use his wheelchair at four years of age, and Isabel is still the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

Today was my day to do lunch, and it was the group chose to eat the same thing; peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with ramen noodles. After an excellent lunch we head back to the hostel for a quick shower. The night’s plans are that we go to an oriental music and dance show right here in the city. Before the show we decide to go to a noodle place after the disappointing dinner at the Chinese/Western restaurant. Though the space is cramped with about 20 people we all mange to get our fill on amazing noodles, chicken, and lamb on a stick. It is not long before our bellies are full and we set out for the theater.

We get lost in the middle of the bustling city Xian, and have to stop and ask for directions. We arrive at the theater 10 minutes late and I arrive 5 minutes after that. The night was a success though because the dance show was wonderful! Too bad I forgot my glasses.

Photos:

 

Update 4:
July 9: The bus filled by the voice of our local tour guide, Daisy. Even though most of us couldn’t really understand her broken English, I helped the group understand the history of the Terracotta Soldiers. After a long bus ride, we arrived at the first of many ticket stations. The sun was out and proud of its rays, we all drank at least two very large bottles of water and perspired intensely. We walked around all 3 pits filled with terracotta soldiers; it was an amazing sight to see. All the detail and faces on all the soldiers were so fascinating; there was still a lot that hadn’t been uncovered. It was a good day.

July 10: We all woke up at around eight thirty, ready to fill our bellies at a restaurant down the street before packing up for a bus ride to the panda reserve.  While getting to the reserve we faced lots of unforeseen travel challenges, which prepared us to be better travelers! Once we got onto the panda reserve we waited for a bus to come to take us up to our hotel. Four bus rides, a hike and about three and a half hours later we were finally here. We put our luggage into one room and went to go pick up our uniforms. We went back to our rooms and explored the panda reserve grounds until dinner, after dinner half the group stayed in the dining hall and played several intense games of cards. While the other half hung out in Taylor and Karen’s room talking about our home lives and bonded.

July 11th: The rest of the group was already at the panda reserve, but Willie and I slept in Cheng du last night because we took a plane a day later because I had been sick. We had a nice breakfast in a restaurant that was open to the street. I was grateful that for once we didn’t have to find a restaurant that could accommodate twenty very hungry people. We had a relaxing drive to the panda reserve through the countryside while our driver bickered comically with his wife. Unlike the rest of the group, our driver was able to drive us almost all the way up the mountain and then we only had to get on one bus to take us the rest of the way up. Willie and I were greeted by a lot of hugs and then cries of delight when everyone realized we brought snacks. After lunch, I went down with my group to feed pandas for the first time. The pandas were unbelievably cute, taking specially made bread directly from our hands. For the rest of the afternoon we all hung out and learned to play mahjong, a traditional Chinese game played with tiles instead of cards. After dinner we played a round of mafia, talked for a little bit more, and then went to bed.

 

Update #5:

July 16 - After a comfortable night in our new hostel we started preparing our lesson plan for our new volunteering work at the school. Even though my group knew that we had level 2 English and that there was about 6 kids we still didn’t know how advanced their English was which made it difficult to plan at first. After some thinking, we managed to create a lesson plan based around simple vocabulary which we hoped was new to them. After we finish our lesson plans its time for lunch so we go back to old town to grab some awesome food. We go inside one of the few western restaurants around to find an extremely small place with a tiny kitchen, so it takes forever to get our food. After some food we get to the school and my group finds out that we have about 7 10-12 year olds and that our vocabulary is perfect for this group. After going through our lesson plan faster than my group expected we managed to finish the 3 hours with some random activities and decide that tonight when we make tomorrow’s lesson plan we will write down a lot more stuff to do in our lesson plan. When we get back to the hostel we have an hour to kill so we do some shopping, and then we go to get some hotpot dinner, which we haven’t had since Beijing so it was delicious. We get back to the hostel; finish our planning for the morning, then go to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow’s volunteering work goes smoothly with our new and improved lesson plan.