Hi Readers!
It's been a while since I've written something meaningful because I've still been pretty busy. It's kind of hard maintaining a blog when you're hardly ever in your room!
I've taken a few field trips since my last entry. On Saturday, my Religion class took a field trip to the Jade Buddha Temple. It was kind of nice being in a familiar setting because my Grandma is a Buddhist and she'd used to take me to temples all the time when I was younger. At the temple, I'd started taking pictures of the Buddhist statues, and then these elderly ladies came up to me and said that it's not good for me if I take pictures of the idols. Apparently, I would be disturbing the statues, so I stopped taking pictures (I am posting what I have though).
On Monday, my Shanghai Metropolis class took a field trip to two schools in the Shanghai district. The first school we went to was an elementary farmer's migrant school. This is an elementary school that exists for the sole purpose of educating migrant farm workers' children. Because their parents moved to Shanghai for work, they cannot enroll into regular Shanghai schools (China has a complicated resident registration system that I still don't understand). These children come from all over China, and have different backgrounds of education. We were lucky enough to sit down with a lot of them and just talk to them for a bit. I wish we'd stayed longer because the children were adorable! This visit made me revisit my dreams of teaching. I love being around energetic kids. I feel like the best occupation in the world is to nourish young minds. It's always been my ambition to become a teacher... but we'll see where that takes me =)
After the elementary school, we headed to a high school that was right down the street from our dorms. Fu Xin High School is a "key" school in Shanghai. This basically means that it's very competitive and hard to get in. Think of it like the Harvard of Shanghai high schools. The facilities on that campus was so nice! I couldn't believe I was at a high school. The students were all very intelligent, ambitious and hard-working as well. It was incredible to see the differences between the education systems in China and in the States. I feel like most Chinese students that are already enrolled in schools are a lot more ambitious than students back in the States. Maybe it's because back in the States, we don't have to take enrollment tests to get into middle schools or high schools. Either way, China's education system is a lot harder than American's education system.
I will be having more field trips coming up soon, so look out for a new entry in the future!
An incense burner. After you're done praying to the idols with your incense, you put your incense in here.
Going into the front yard of the temple
I forget which idol this was
Don't know these two either... there are way too many idols in Buddhism
Mi Le Fo (I nickname him the Happy Buddha)
Instrument god and god of dance?
Guan Yin Pu Sa (Guan Yin Bodisattva)
Going out for Jessica's birthday party (I know this picture is randomly in between my two field trips =P)
The students at the migrant school, curious about their visitors =)
Reciting their textbooks for us
Posing for pictures with us =)
I had brought some candy my mom mailed me from the States, but I didn't have enough to hand out to everybody =(. There are over one thousand students enrolled at this school!
Scott and Lisa posing with the kids
This little girl is so smart and cute! She sang a song for me and Sarah and we looked at her English homework because she had such beautiful handwriting. She's definitely going somewhere in life.
They're playing a game
Fu Xin High School (down the street from our international student dorm)
Their swimming facility. Their whole school was so clean and pretty--one of the best high schools I've seen in Asia
Their track
Our tour guide and MC. He was so nervous, but he did such ab awesome job!
