Tagalong
I suppose I should write about my little venture up the mountain. Two weeks ago, the girls and I were invited to tag along with some of the other Americans here in town. They do development work and had been invited to visit a local school for International Children's Day. I jumped at the chance, Ga Dai declined and Siu Wan--without much enthusiasm--decided to also come along. (Yau Neih had to work, alas.)So Friday morning, we got up bright and early and presented ourselves for the trip. Our friend, Marty, and his family picked us up and we headed out. The place we were visiting, a village named Nanxin, was rather close. Just outside of town we hung a left to take the road to the village. I don't know what the mileage was, but it wouldn't have been more than a ten minute drive in Illinois. In Yunnan, however, it was up a mountain on a dirt road, so we spent about an hour in transit. It was another example of how sheltered my life has been. I've driven on mountain roads, and I've driven on dirt (well, gravel) roads, but I've never been on such a narrow, rutted stretch of mud. Without guard rails. Thank God for four wheel drive. Anyway, I'm complaining like I had to drive. I didn't. I got to ride in style, enjoying the scenery and trying to snap a few pictures.
When we got to the school, we were warmly welcomed by the school officials. The kids watched us arrive and unload the bags of goodies we brought, and then were hustled back into the school rooms. We had the obligatory cup of tea and discovered that our main course for lunch was going to be fresh goat. (They had not quite finished the butchering process.) After a bit we were ushered over to a play field where the children were assembling. The hauled out some desks and benches for us to sit upon. There was a flag raising ceremony, some songs and a couple of speeches. Then the head honcho came over and started talking to me. Thankfully one of our bilingual companions hurried over and translated. It seems like they wanted me to hand out some awards to the kids. I thought it rather amusing that he had picked the person in our party who the least involved in all the good stuff my friends have been doing for the school. Later I discovered that I was using the wrong logic. I was selected because I was the oldest male in the group. Anyway, I smiled and handed out the awards. After a few of the students had saluted me, I lamely tried to salute back. I dearly hope I hadn't insulted anybody. Oh, well.
After the ceremonies, we handed out some toys and snacks. The kids were then released to have fun. They put the new balls through their paces, and later in the day we saw at least one of them had been deflated and converted into a couple of skullcaps. Our kids went off to play as well, though there wasn't much interaction between the locals and the foreigners. After an hour or so, it was time for lunch. The goat was quite delicious, as were the taters and veggies. Over lunch, my friends were discussing how to determine when it would be the polite time to leave. It turns out that the polite time was right after lunch. The children had been given the best of all Children's Day presents--a half day of school. So we trucked on down the hill back home. All in all it was a pleasant outing.
posted by John @ 8:59 PM
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