So on Friday we said all our final goodbyes.

 

Its hard to reflect on my whole time here, so many things have happened.  This morning we are packing some final things (last minute washing).  I will write a better post when I'm in the right mind space.

 

Here are some pics!

It all started last Thursday.  Some of my students students had organised to visit an elderly community to teach them some English for the Olympics.  They had asked me to come with them, and after some shuffling of things, I told them I would be able to come.

The students were really excited about me coming and they told the people who they were organising it with that I was coming.  When we got there, there were tv cameras.  Yes, TV cameras. 

I guess foreigners are still a bit of a novelty in little Fengtai…so it looks like I’m gonna be on BCTV…Beijing CTV.  I don’t know when yet, but I'm hoping to get a copy of it. 

We left school at 12.30pm - on a public bus and then for a jay walk accross a highway.  We arrived and after waiting for about an hour and having a whole lot of photos taken, which of course all have me in them, we sat down in a room (I’m in the front row) and first a choir of the elderly people sung two songs in unison.  My students said that singing in union has something to do with the strong spirit of the community.  Then ladies in costume did a version of Chinese rap.  It was totally cool!  After that the class monitor got up and said something, then I got up and said about how happy I was to be there and what a privilege it was to meet them all – with my student translating.  The students took turns teaching different English phrases and asking the people to repeat them and practice them on me.  Of course almost the whole time the camera was on me…oh man.  I may be ok on the stage when I am all prepared to sing or talk…but being filmed and taken photos of constantly is a different story.   

Next we went and visited a couples home, and they told us (I’m still being translated to) stories about their youth, about some of the hard stuff they went through, drought, war and other things.  They were all really kind to me, exited that I was there and wanted to talk to me.  My students did an amazing job of translating, teaching and of course asking me if I was ok every few minutes.  Soon it was all over, we were taking the last group pictures and then we walked back to the bus. 

All in all it was a pretty cool experience!  And as my students kept asking, 'Its something that will be my last impacting moment in China'.  Thank you class 1!  Thank you for the impacting moments of Friday, they'll stick with me for life.

Imagine this...never ever having eaten mexican food before.  In a country of a billion, this is definatly a possiblity. Now imagine the scene where you are trying mexican food for the first time.

 

If you can't imagine, I will imgaine for you...

 

We are sitting in Pete's Tex Mex, my absolute favourite restaurant in Beijing, and the waitress who speaks amazing English (basically because she's worked here for ages and has learnt from foreigners) comes to take our orders.  But no one knows what to order, and the Chinese on the menu doesnt make any sense (according to my students!).  Joell gives a little tutorial on the differences between nachos, tacos, burritos and chimmichunga's.  Finally after about 20minutes we place some sort of order.  When the food arrives we hear: "Its so messy!", "Do we share food or um what do we do?", "I pick this up with my hands?".  It was so fun seeing them completely out of the their comfort zone, but trying something new.  I guess in the West we eat so many different foods from different countries.  At my house we have mexican, dutch, italian, chinese, english, and kiwi (whatever that is) variations of food all in one week.  So new flavours dont come a long often.

 

It was a great night though, everyone ended up enjoying their food and went home with warm hearts and full tummies.  Precious times like these make it so hard to leave all my friends and make the journey back to NZ and the unknown.  But its ok.  All we have sometimes are a few days, and they are ordered by someone above...so I trust he has a purpose for all of them.

 

Enjoy the pics: