Virtual China '98

Mr. Fischer's Group

Virtual China 98

Moooooo.......

There are some things in life that don't make sense; this tops the list. Alright, listen up. What's so interesting about lunch? Is there something special about grass? I was sitting on the grass, peacefully munching on a four leaf clover, when these people came up in ugly red shirts. They had this weird dragon on it. Ok, this isn't so weird, but listen what happens next. They started taking these finger-sized things out of their bags and setting off a series of bright flashes. After every flash all I saw was black. Was this some sort of test? I snorted at them to signal I wasn't interested. But when I turned around, there they were with their flashes. It was getting annoying, so I let them no that by shying. This set off a series of more flashes, so I sat on the grass and sulked.

Now here is the interesting part. Right when I was ready to blow my cool, they all sat around me and another flash went off. Oh well, next time I see people in red shirts I'll chase them away.

It all happened the way a storm does...all of a sudden it just blows in. My long life friend was sitting next to me. We were just sitting there in our village, chatting with each other when a whole bunch of adults and children came riding in on bikes. They were different in size, shape, eye color, hair color and skin color. After a while a couple of people came over and started to try to talk to us. Then a man who acted like a translator started speaking and asking questions. I noticed that the kids and adults were wearing bright red shirts with characters and a dragon on it. I tried to make out what the characters were, but I couldn't because I have never gone to school. Some kids came over and they both were not Chinese. One had dark brown hair that was curly and the other one had strawberry blonde hair. Their names were Anna and Hannah. The children asked the translator to ask me and my friend some questions. They asked questions like how old we were, how long we had lived in the village, how many children we had, how many grandchildren we had and where they lived, etc.... I was having lots of fun, except that I felt like a fool when they asked me to write my name and the name of the village we lived in. I think that I remember some kids and adults coming last year but I am not sure, maybe that is why I have remembered the dragons on the red shirts. Well I can't wait for next year so they can come vist our village again. I can't wait for their silly and fun questions! I hope I don't miss them!

Today, while a thunderstorm was passing by, we stopped for lunch at a small village. It was very interesting because another student and I, interviewed this 74-year-old villager. She lived in the village all her life. She said the village has been around for a couple of hundred years. She has 3 children and the interesting part was that her children live in Taishan which was really cool because that was the city that we stayed in for the last 3 nights. After that we biked in our small groups. The sun was beating down on us really hard. Then we biked for a long time until we came to this middle school. None of the students spoke any English. And they laughed at us because of our helmets. Then three of our guys: Chris, Ted and Jason played basketball on an outdoor basketball court but the students didn't play with them. Personally I did not like that school because the students were really unfriendly and we could have been going to a nice village in the mean time. Then we saw the bus go ahead of us which isn't supposed to happen so we had to 'put the pedal to the medal' and catch up with the bus. Then when we made it there alive, it was time to go and move out to our next hotel. We were amazed at how fancy the hotel was. Then we stayed in our rooms until 7:07pm and went down to dinner at the restaurant in the complex. The dinner was really good because there were a lot of veggies and I'm a vegetarian. The day ended up being a really good day.

Virtual China 98

Mr. Fischer's Group

This morning was not the most eventful morning we've had so far, but it was interesting. We got up around 6:30 (way too early for me) and had breakfast at the Lakeside Restaurant which is on a lake. The lake behind the restaurant is man-made. It was built with funds from an Overseas Chinese man. The restaurant had similar food to that of our hotel.

After breakfast we packed our bags and headed out for the day. Mr. Fischer (our group leader) said we had around 50 km for the day. It sounds like a lot more than it really is. I think we biked a total of about 25 km in the morning.

The road started out gravel, and it stayed that way for about 10 km. We didn't really see much along the way, except this one really cool "city' that really seemed like a large village. It was pretty big and it had some places to get a coke.

Mrs. Wong (another small group's leader) spoke to one of the villagers and she was told that there was a school around the corner, sort of. A woman led us to the school, and we were amazed. This was no ordinary school. We went into the school grounds and started to investigate. We found this school very interesting, especially because our study group was doing education as our focus topic.

Jason (my groupmate) took some notes for our focus topic and I got notes for our Student Profile. We found out the school was completely funded by a Hong Kong organization. The facilities were no more than 10 years old. We found out that there were only about 300 kids in this very well kept school, and

they didn't have to pay any money to get into it. We wondered about why this Hong Kong organization would fund this school.

We left the school and the city, and headed toward our lunch spot. We found the place we were supposed to meet in a short period of time. Mr. Fischer took us along the road to find a nice place to eat. A nice little village was found, but Mr. Fischer said we had to keep going because a storm was brewing. We ended up biking about 10 km farther down the road until we found a quaint little village where we ate our lunch and relaxed for a while.

Moderator:

Technology Coordinator

Hong Kong International School (M.S. Div.)

Hong Kong, China

Fax: 852-2899-0809

"The wise teacher does not ask you to enter the house of his wisdom, he leads you to the threshold of your own mind." Kahlil Gibran