Chengdu 2 update for Monday

It was nice to be reunited with our students again after a weekend apart. It turns out that almost all of our students had visited the Panda Research Center over the weekend, and a few of the kids ran into each other there. Erick told us he took about 200 pictures of pandas! Some of our kids accompanied their host families in celebrating the Lantern Festival. Penny and her host sister had some fun with fireworks. Doug visited his host brother's grandparents and Avery went to dinner at the home of his host's friends. Madame Leff and Mrs. Chase fell asleep to the sound of fireworks last night.

This morning while Mrs. Chase visited an English class, Madame Leff and our students had a Chinese language lesson and learned some greetings and basic phrases. The teacher was great and our kids seemed to enjoy this experience. Later they spent some time chatting and playing volleyball with some Chinese students. In the afternoon, we had a lesson in origami - let's just say some of our paper cranes looked like birds and others...well, there was a learning curve. This activity was followed by a conversation session with a group of 14 Chinese students and their teachers. These were students who are preparing to go to college in the US and were very interested in learning about American culture. The two groups exchanged questions. The Chinese students wanted to know: "What kind of food do Americans eat?" "Can you bring your cellphone to school?" "What do you do in your free time?" Our questions for them included "What kind of religions are common in China?" "Have you ever seen a blue sky?" and "What American movies do you like?"
Many of the Chinese students were very shy but everyone seemed to be having fun. One Chinese girl stood up and said that she thought American boys were very handsome! (They also think Obama is very handsome!) Everyone returned "home" with their host families for the evening. We hope they are getting plenty of rest because tomorrow we will be leaving the school about 7:30 am for a field trip to see an ancient irrigation system and also a giant Buddha. We are not sure what to expect but it sounds interesting. Today the weather was pleasantly warm and the sky was bright gray. We hope for another nice day tomorrow.

Darcy Chase