Our Work at the Special Needs Center So Far

I want to talk a little bit about my work at the special needs center, to describe a typical day and to talk about some of my experiences with the individual kids.

On our first day, Sherry (the student who is here until this upcoming Saturday from Shenzhen, China) and Lisa (also here for the same amount of time from Vancouver) and I waited for the staff at the hotel where they were coming to pick us up and show us the way to the two locations of the special needs center. I would first like to point out that it is such an amazing thing to have Sherry around. None of the staff at the special needs center speak any English. We would be entirely lost if it were not her, even in giving and receiving basic directions about how to best help at the center.

We got on the Xi'an public bus K631 which takes us on a short route, just three stops, from our hotel to the special needs center. I have already mentioned this but there are two locations- one for the more advanced kids which is located in a school with teachers and one for the more severely challenged kids which is located in a somewhat large apartment on the thirteenth floor of an apartment high-rise building near the bus stop. We first followed the teachers to the apartment building to watch and play with the more challenged kids. We then went to the school in the afternoon to "teach" a small class which often involves us just coming up with a short craft, some songs and games or teaching some little bit of English to the kids. It has been one week since that first day and we now have a regular routine worked out, which has taken sometime to figure out. We now walk everywhere, to the school, the apartment and back to the hotel, just to get a feel for the city which is always bustling and always hurrying to get somewhere.

We first go to the apartment to pick up the kids who go to the school (in the evenings both groups are housed in the apartment building) and help some of the teachers walk them a short distance to the school. We then walk back to the apartment to play with the more challenged kids. After eating a short lunch, we walk to the school just in time to arrive for the beginning of nap time at the school which can last anywhere from 1 to 2 and a half hours. During this time, we have often planned and prepared for our afternoon activity, played some card games, gone out to explore some of the shops and booths in the surrounding area, and entertained one of the three girls in the more advanced program, named Ya Qi who does not nap with the others and instead spends her break looking through our bags for food and asking to play with our cell phones. She is pretty quiet and did not answer when I first asked her what her favorite color or subject in school was or how long she had attended the program. Despite this, we have seen her act as a sort of mom to the other kids, bossing them around, making sure they are line and caring for the needier ones. She is also practical. She used Sherry's phone to text pictures of herself to several of Sherry's friends and used my phone to call her dad, who was quite surprised to get the phone call from a strange number.

After nap time at the school is over (literally everyone goes to sleep, including teachers and staff), we usually entertain or play with the kids for the remaining two hours. Then we walk the ones who are residents with the program back to the apartment before heading back to the hotel.

I will first talk about our work at the apartment. This is a little bit more difficult because the kids are very severely challenged. Some have problems walking and moving, many have problems talking and several occasionally have emotional breakdowns. We have had two kids break down screaming, kicking the floor or banging on the table. There is also one girl (whom we haven't seen for a few days because her parents had to take her to make sure she was okay) who was not able to properly take care of herself or go to the bathroom. She also kept falling on the floor and did not want to get up, laughing the whole time. The caretakers were especially concerned because they said she had stopped eating and sleeping for the past three days. The next day her parents had come to get her and she was gone and we have not heard about her since. Some of the kids have problems being around the other students and the caretakers too. One girl will often come up to Lisa and use her nails to dig into Lisa's arm as well as slapping her in the face. It takes a lot of patience to be sure. But that is not the majority of the stories we have.

There is a small boy who calls Sherry jiejie (older sister) and who constantly talks to her. He is pretty aware of what is going on and often sings some of the songs that are playing on the karaoke station they have going on the television of current Chinese pop songs (I think now the constant loop they have playing is up to ten total playing over and over, so things are better than they were before when it was only five). He loves to play around with the balloon hitting it back and forth.

There are several other girls who love to dance around to anything and to use the hula hoop to dance as well. One of them always seems to be constantly smiling and laughing. There are several kids who grab my hand and walk me around and around the room and in circles around the one column that stands in the middle of the floor. This is one of the primary activities here: walking around and looking out the window. Usually when we come back from the school to stay for the morning, the kids are outside the apartment building just walking from one side of the pavilion to the other. They actually love it quite a lot. One of them I talked about before, has trouble even catching and throwing balls and his arms are shaking constantly, but he gets excited when he sees me and calls me "Ge" (for older brother). Another one calls me "yeye" (for grandfather).

This is pretty much the extent of our mornings at the apartment building. There is not a lot we can do besides be there to play with balls and balloons and walk them around the room and outside. But they enjoy it and it is stretching me more and more everyday to be constantly supportive and cheerful even when I might be tired or missing people from home. I am constantly amazed how these kids receive joy from the simplest things and how they are able to laugh and dance even when they live their lives walking around a barren room with the only real view out the window being of other dirty high rise apartment buildings in this part of the city and a parking lot. They are happy to eat their lunch and happy to share it with us and even though it often seems pretty plain and sometimes a little bit difficult to get down for me, it amazes me to see how they are excited for it and line up eagerly to get their fill. This is the most difficult part of my service here but also the most eye-opening. I just feel like I have so much to learn about what really goes on in the world around us and that there will forever be so much I do not know. I am amazed at how different things are here and how different life is here, at least in this part of the city with these kids (you will for sure see the contrast in the next post) and I still struggle to truly put myself in the shoes of these children here and their experiences.

I just felt like I would share a bit of a song that has been on my mind lately. I know I am a little behind the curve as far as popularity goes for just now listening to this album fully all the way through, but I have been listening to this song over and over again and can't seem to stop. It is Mumford & Sons from their album "Sigh No More." The song is called "Awake My Soul." It kind of seems to get at what the experiences here have been like a lot of the time.

It goes like this: "Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all/But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall/Lend me your eyes, I can change what you see/But your soul you must keep totally free....In these bodies we will live/In these bodies we will die/Where you invest your love, you invest your life....Awake my soul/For you were made to meet your maker."

I don't pretend to know what all of that means, but I know that my service here in this entirely different world has opened my eyes to a very new reality and almost what it would mean to live in the situations that make up these kids' everyday lives.

Now for our experiences at the school.

I find that there will be many more anecdotes about the children at the school because we have already started forming relationships with them. Several of the days we have spent all day with them and their teachers and they are starting to play around with us and feel more comfortable. We have gotten to know most of their names (in Chinese of course) and, to make it easier on herself, Lisa started coming up with some American names for each of them. Charlie, Jimmy, Jackie, Howie...I think that's how it went.

The first day we only spent half a day with them, but the second day we went to the school for the whole day. We sat in their morning class which consisted of all of the kids reciting after the teachers some "life rules" about respect for elders, parents and teachers, some rules of the road, how to share and some others, broken down into little three word phrases, a popular Chinese method of learning. They often got very energetic and screamed the words after the teacher. We sat there and recited what we could along with them. We felt pretty useless during this period which is why we decided to go to the apartment in the morning and the school in the afternoon. In the afternoons we have done different things every day. One day, we taught them some English phrases (Good Morning, Good Afternoon and Good Evening) and took a shot at getting down some of the alphabet. They learned how to write "A" and how to say the phrases and I got to use some Chinese teaching, so it was a win-win. The next day we played with about twenty balloons we blew up. We also taught them songs like "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "The Wheels on the Bus." We have now done these more times than I care to remember and we even taught them how to say it all in English, which they quickly forgot. We had them make their names out of noodles and write their names on balloons. We showed them how to make thank-you cards in English and how to make play-doh animals. This is pretty much how everyday works.

Friday was a little bit different because we stayed with the school group all day, helping the teachers to take everyone on a big trip to supermarket across town. It was very stressful, but I think everyone had a good time and when we got back, the director of the school showed up (she is not always there) and had the kids perform something we had no idea they could even do: a drum and tambourine performance to several Chinese folk songs. It was really cool to see them light up and get excited about playing the drums. Some of the drums had to have extra padding over the top because occasionally some of the kids get over-excited and have the potential to break some of the drums.

What is different about this trip from our last trip to China (well, there are many differences, but these are the most significant...) is that I feel like I am not just a tourist here. I do some touristy things (more on that in the next post). But while working at the center, I get to experience and share a piece of everyday life with these kids. While we drop the first group off at the school in the morning and wait for the go ahead to head back to the apartment, we see a little mini fruit market assemble in the street below the surrounding apartments. Retired men and women watching their children's babies (with wholes in their pants instead of diapers as is the Chinese way) as they work show up to let them play on the playground equipment near the school. A group of retired women show up every morning, bringing a small little radio, to practice several traditional dance routines. On Friday we got to see the culmination of a week's worth of work as they performed what was probably very close to the final version. In the afternoon, more retired men and women play board games on tables in the courtyard, letting their grandchildren mingle with the kids from the center. It is definitely a little community here and it is neat to experience that aspect of it.

There are so many kids here all with so many different backgrounds and so many different situations. Some of them only come to the school during the day and live with their family who either drop them off or have them walk if they live close enough. Some live with the program for the week but leave on the weekends. Others are with the program permanently. This could be for a variety of reasons, some better than others. Sometimes parents have turned children over to the program, usually under the supervision of the government in some way because they believe it is best. There is probably still minimal contact, but oftentimes the kid's families live far away, maybe in the countryside, maybe in other cities. Unfortunately, David told us something really sad this weekend over dinner. There are quite a few cases in which the kids are permanently with the program because they were abandoned and their parents do not want to take care of them anymore. Sometimes parents will promise an arrangement with more involvement on their part to the program, but just never show up again. David told us the story of a girl at another special needs center who told a volunteer that she knew where her family was, grabbed the volunteer's cell phone and pretended to call her family because she didn't know the actual number because she hadn't heard from them in years. Stories like this make me wonder what the situations are for each of the children in the center.

There are several kids we have gotten to know and I will just go through some of them briefly telling some of our experiences with them. First of all, though, I need to say that the boys definitely outnumber the girls. Lisa said that might be because of genetics, that boys are more likely to have mental disabilities. Whatever the reason, there are only three girls, Ya Qi, Ding Hui and another whose name I do not know who mainly acts as a caretaker but also lives with the program. Ya Qi, as I have said is the girl who waits with us in the classroom during nap time playing with us, eating our food and using our cell phones to make family calls. Ding Hui is a really sweet, older girl who lives just down the street and comes to school every day. She knows a little bit of English and always congratulates me in English when I make attempts at explaining things to/learning things from her in Chinese. She always has a smile on her face (as you can see) and loves to play every game we are playing and every game we have organized.

We have gotten to know several of the boys really well too. There is Wang Zi Hao who is quite chubby and has extremely round cheeks that wiggle when, for instance, he is playing the drum. He always has a smile on his face and has a thing for Lisa, who also really loves him. He is always getting in trouble and is also always attacking or tickling me.

Wang Zhen is an older boy who has the severe back condition I spoke about earlier. Everyday he comes up to me and holds me and hugs me and tries to get the others to back off. I was touched one day when I accidentally took off my shoes in the house (as is the custom here) at the apartment because I didn't know we were walking them to the school. He knelt down and put my shoes on, tightening the straps. He retied Lisa's shoes earlier today too. During nap time, he takes a short break only to go around the school sweeping up and cleaning. He has kind of a mean streak sometimes but also loves to help the younger children.

Liu De Xia (we just learned this today) who Lisa called Jackie Chan for forever because didn't know his name loves to sing and knows a fair amount of English. He always greets us with "good morning" and always is behind my back grabbing my neck, pulling my hair and tickling.

Zhou Ming is an older member of the program who also lives nearby but who is very sweet and who is a favorite with the younger children. He is always laughing and smiling and is very gentle. He is constantly coming up to me, laughing, saying "Mei lao hao" (Hello, American guy) which the others pick up, giggling as well. There are differences in conditions among the kids as well. Some seem to not really have a problem besides behavioral issues caused maybe by ADHD, while some have Down's syndrome.

All in all, it is a very loving, affectionate group, difficult at times to manage, but also very energetic and caring both for each other and for us. They are hilarious both because they are so loving and also so difficult all in one. It is such a privilege to be able to work with them and to get to know each of them.

Lisa and a little friend at the apartment for the more severely challenged kids.

Kids at the apartment, just sitting and watching.

Dorm rooms at the apartment.

Traffic we see everyday from the pedestrian bridge on our walk to the apartment in the morning.

The school for the more advanced kids.

Teaching the kids how to make English thank you cards.

Ding Hui, one of the only girls at the school

Several of the "kids" and I

The singer (Lisa calls him Jackie Chan because no one seems to know his name) and I

One of the kids during our trip to the supermarket.

Sherry and Zhou Ming at the supermarket.

One of the teachers teaching the kids how to play the drums and tambourines to a traditional Chinese song.

Wang Zhen.

Wang Zi Hao playing the drums and loving it.

Local, retired women practicing a dance with fans in the school courtyard.

Last Few Days in Xi'an and the Start of Volunteering at the Special Needs Center

When I first arrived in Xi'an, David Zou, the program director here asked me if I would be comfortable switching to work at a special needs center instead of an orphanage, which is what I applied for. This was because he said the orphanage had had a recent influx of local assistance whereas the the special needs center currently had no volunteers. I told him I would accept and that I would do whatever work he had basically. This set me on an interesting path over the next few days which I will cover. But first, back to where I left off. The volunteer house.

IVHQ is an international organization based in New Zealand that sponsors volunteer projects with local program directors and local staff all around the world. IVHQ-China has only existed since 2011 but already is well-established and has a constant stream of volunteers from really all over the world working at the different projects available throughout the city. Throughout the time I have been here, there have been twelve volunteers total. One of them left on Sunday after I got in on Saturday. Her name was Riley, she was from Ontario and she stayed for about 4-5 weeks using the trip as a break from work. She worked in the orphanage.

Right now there are eleven other volunteers working in Xi'an with IVHQ besides myself. There is June, a student from Shanghai who is here until this weekend and she works primarily with another special needs center. She works with Joelle, a student from French Canada, also here until next weekend.
There is Jeff from San Diego who came to China on December 28, 2011 and has been working with this program ever since. He had just gotten out of the military. He hopes to go to UC San Diego and then work his way back to Taiwan through study abroad. Since he has been here so long, he has worked almost every program there is. He will be heading to Taiwan to work on a farm for the remainder of his time in China in about a week and a half.

There are two boys from Denmark, Nicolas and Rhys. They both work at a primary school and I am not sure how much longer they are here.

Alyssa, from Detroit arrived a day before me and will be here until the middle of June. She works at a primary teaching school. She works with Andrew from Pittsburgh, my roommate, who will be here for the same amount of time.

I work with Lisa from Vancouver and Sherry a student from China (Shenzhen) at the special needs center. They are both here for only two weeks until next weekend.
Finally there is Naama, the about-to-be college student from Israel who took time for an extended stay in China following the close of her mandatory service in her country's military. She is really outgoing and energetic and has made friends with many locals. She is going home this upcoming weekend.

Other people you should be introduced to include William and Charles, two college students living in Xi'an who volunteer for David to come eat with us, talk to us, and make sure we are okay. They are really nice and got me my bus pass because, which I needed in order to save money since I take the bus all the time to work. So, back to the story.

I woke up pretty late on Sunday morning (compared to my other mornings here which have all been early). I was still pretty exhausted from the jet lag, but I also knew that I was ready to get out of the volunteer house and begin seeing China for the first time. I woke up pretty early with my schedule still off from the jet lag and Alyssa was the only other one up. We walked down to the local supermarket, having to cross a busy intersection to get there. At the busy intersections in Xi'an, there is either an overpass over the road for pedestrian crossing or there is a light system with little green and red men to indicate when to go and when to stop like we have in the US. The only problem is that cars making right and left turns frequently still have the right of way whenever pedestrian crossing is going on. So, what is supposed to be "go" is more like "stop and go" and dodge the cars. If they honk, it means they are not stopping and to get out of the way. This is typical for China: expecting more than two objects to occupy a space at a given time. Alyssa and I also saw cars parking and driving on the sidewalk and cars and buses using the bike lanes as a turning lane. Here, they have whole lanes for bikes that are separated by a median from the rest of the road normally. Sometimes, however, cars decide to go down these lanes honking to get the bikes to move.

At the supermarket, I looked for a cell phone and we tried to buy some basic necessities like bottled water. I could not figure out the ATM to get Chinese renminbi or RMB (Chinese currency) nor was my Chinese even quite good enough to try to get a good conversation started with the clerk about how to purchase a Chinese cell phone and what it could be used for. We ended up returning to this same supermarket that day three times for different reasons and with different groups of people. There were three levels to the store and there was a large produce section as well as a fresh meat section with all kinds of meats and all kinds of body parts of animals available including ears and tails of pigs and chicken feet as well as whole chickens with the neck and head. The colorful oreos pictured below are just an example of the Chinese variations on American products I see all the time here.

I eventually found an ATM that worked and David eventually took me to buy a very cheap (and pink which was the only color they had; the store owner looked peeved that I would want another color so I just went with this one) Chinese cell phone into which he inserted a Chinese sim card so I can call people over here, especially if I get lost or need something from David.

That afternoon, David took the volunteers who wanted to go out to eat at a local restaurant and afterwards out so a specialty tea shop where we sat around trying green tea for free and talking to the shop owner. The restaurant food was very good and Naama's list below shows a little bit about what we ate. We also had this fizzy pineapple soda, which tasted a little bit like beer. So Naama dubbed it pineapple beer. Afterwards we went to visit a shop owner which the other volunteers had named "Tea Man." He was an older man who sat behind a huge, knotted pine table with a built in tea stove for boiling water. When we walked in, he motioned for us to sit on a bunch of stools standing around the store floor. He put out about a dozen small glass cups and began to boil water, pouring it into a large cup with tea leaves and then again into another tea pot. Huge glass jars of different kinds of tea lined the walls on shelves of many different varieties, there were slices of lemon, rose petals, several varieties of jasmine (mo li hua) and many versions of green tea. Tea Man and Naama despite sharing no common language had this connection and interacted back and forth throughout the whole time we were there.

At one point, Naama and Felix ended up breaking a jar while trying to open it to smell the tea inside. Part of the jar cracked all the way down. Naama and Tea Man began having this dialogue through some of the Chinese students and Naama insisted on paying for the jar, but Tea Man would not take it and said that they could not be friends if she paid for the jar. He said he just wanted us to keep coming to talk to him and visit him as he poured us tea over and over again. To show he was telling the truth, he poured hot water over a metal frog (for good fortune) sitting on the table. It turned gold all over when the hot water hit it. He said that this was because they were friends, so there were no hard feelings over the jar. It was a really interesting visit and a neat thing to see.

The next morning (Monday morning) we had to get up really early because, as we had been told, we were being moved to the hotel. We stood in the street dodging pedestrians, buses pulling over to drop off and pick up people and bikes, scooters and carts. We hailed a few taxis and shoved all of our things into them letting a few people ride with them to the hotel. The rest of us took a bus to the hotel where we waited for our site directors to show up to take us to our first day of work. The hotel is nice and is considered a three-star hotel. It is called Zhongyuan Jiudian (Jiudian is Chinese for hotel). Here, we eat breakfast and dinner at the hotel restaurant paid for by IVHQ and our rooms are all together, so it is a little like how the volunteer house was.

As it started raining, the director of the special needs program showed up to bring us to the special needs center. We ran across the street dodging cars again and climbed aboard a bus. We arrived at the apartment in a high-rise building, on the thirteenth floor, which housed one half of the program. The kids who are more severely challenged stay in this room all day long except for short breaks outside. It has a large, open living room, several bedrooms a washroom and a kitchen. Most of the kids sit in the room or just continually walk around and around holding each other's hands. Their conditions are often pretty severe and are made worse often by other physical disabilities.

I have to admit that this was extremely challenging for me, especially for the first day. Not only is the language barrier severe, but so are the kids' conditions. I did not even really know what to do. When we first got there, we pretty much just stood in the middle not knowing what to do. Eventually one of the teachers turned on some Chinese karaoke with pop songs for the kids to dance to. One of the smaller ones with some back problems grabbed Sherry's hand calling her jiejie (older sister) and inviting her to come see his room. He also could sing some of the words to the songs. Eventually, as the barriers started breaking down we played some hula hoop, made paper airplanes and just danced around and around holding hands. One of the boys is much older but his condition is pretty severe. So severe that the teacher told us yesterday that he could not catch and throw balls. His hands and his legs are constantly shaking and he doesn't say much. But he grabbed my hand, saying the word "gege" (for older brother), which is what Chinese children will often do for older teenagers or young adults they meet and do not know. We just walked around and around the room for a long time going over to the window to look on the bleak courtyard below. On the window was a little piece of paper with the Chinese character for "jia" (home). Slowly and surely we began to make connections. One girl didn't really know what else to do besides clap and smile and jump up and down, twirling around the room. So, we followed suit. One boy is too afraid to come up, but still will approach slowly and then quickly grab my hand and rub it on his face and laugh and run away.

Eventually, the kids had lunch which consisted of a huge pot of pretty bland broth with tofu, small bits of meat, little noodles and tons of vegetables. After they had all finished, they washed and went to bed. In China, at almost all the schools and even some colleges there is a nap time that lasts from about 12 pm until 2 pm. Everything shuts down until nap time is over. Even teachers nap most of the time. For the special needs center, the break is basically from 11 am until 2 pm (or later, depending on when they can get the kids up) because they start lunch so early. During this break, we followed as one of the workers showed us the way to the school where the other half of the program is based. Some of the kids live at home, while others live with the program. Everyone lives in the apartment, but in the early morning the kids who are less severely challenged can be walked to the school where they stay for the whole day until walking back in the afternoon.

We arrived at the school and everything was pretty quiet because it was still nap time at the school. Some of the kids were awake, using the time as a break, milling about. They came to talk to us, instantly grabbing us and hugging us and kissing us. One of the kids who has severe scoliosis causing a prominent hump on his back grabbed both of my hands, not letting me touch any of the other kids and fighting off anyone else who came. He speaks in such a thick accent that not even Sherry can understand what he is saying. Every now and then, he will pick up a broom and dust pan and just go about the school cleaning because he sees it as his job. We left the rooms and went to one of the classrooms where there were no kids napping to wait out the nap time. One of the little girls came to visit us, asking Sherry and I for our cell phones and for little snacks because she was hungry. I asked her how old she was, what her favorite subject was and how long she had been there.

Soon, kids began to wake up around the school and we followed the teacher into an upstairs classroom where the kids practiced introducing themselves and writing the characters for their name up on the white board. They were of all different ages with some older ones in their twenties and one who is thirty. We sang and played little games for a while. One of the kids actually knows a little bit of English and likes to sing, very dramatically with his hand on his heart and his eyes closed. He joined us in a version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then we taught If You're Happy and You Know It to the group, singing several times over and over and even teaching some of the words. We put our names up on the board and introduced ourselves to the group. The kids kept attacking me over and over, taking pictures with me, punching me, kissing me, grabbing me by the neck, hugging me and were very affectionate over all.

We left and waved goodbye and a teacher and the little boy took us back to the bus stop in the rain to get on the bus on the way back to the hotel. I will have more on what has happened since Monday at the school and the apartment where the kids are housed soon.

Welcome to Xi'an: The Apartment on Ke Ji Road

Well, I finally made it to Xi'an, China after taking my Korean Air flight from Seoul. The airplane touched down at Xianyang Airport on a runway surrounded by fields of crops and occasional clusters of brick houses. A uniformed officer on bike met us as we taxied to the gate and as we got off the plane, more military personnel met us at the door of the plane. I made my way to customs and got through easily enough. Then I went out to the area for arrivals to try to find my contact from IVHQ but no one was holding a sign that I could see. I wandered for a while, before a shorter man came up to me and gestured to a sign he was holding that said: "Landon Webber- Volunteer." This was it.

I nodded and he didn't say a word, beginning to dial a number on his phone. He put me on the phone with David Zou, the project director here who works with Volunteer China International/IVHQ. I talked to David who told me that the driver was hired by IVHQ and would be taking me to the volunteer house, an hour from the airport. I got in and rode through much of Xi'an, which reminded me so much of my trip to China with my family in August 2009. A filmy, white haze seems to hang in the air here, making distant objects, like posts holding electric wires, seem distant. The driver and the driving was also characteristic of China. There was one point (pictured below through the bars of the taxi window) where there was a literal traffic jam, all cars inching forward and wheeling right and left shoving each other out of lanes in order to get forward. It was like a crowd of people pressing forward, but with cars.

At another point, there was a four-way intersection. Simple enough. However, the actual place where the crossing lanes intersected was much wider than typical intersections in the U.S. There really should have only been four directions for cars to be going. However, what happened in the middle was definitely not going only four directions. It was some kind of cross between a roundabout and a game of musical chairs. Cars and bikes and mini cars drawn by bikes were all spinning around and swerving to avoid each other in order to get the direction they were going. As I learned last time, lanes are only a suggestion here. A suggestion that often goes ignored.

I arrived at the apartment on Ke Ji Road and met David for the first time. He was happy to see me and took me six flights of stairs up in an apartment building where the volunteer house is located. A sign on the door read: Please take your shoes off before entering the house. Inside, I met the other volunteers who I am still being introduced to as I write this. From my open window (pictured below too), I can hear the sounds of the street below. Loud talking, Chinese music, honking of car horns. The room has several bunk beds. I spent most of the day getting settled and napping and letting people know I arrived safely over email. Still trying to figure out the whole Skype thing. The word here is that this apartment will only be my home until Monday when all the volunteers are being moved to hotel rooms at the request of the government.

More on that later. For now, I will be getting adjusted to the time zone, sleeping. It is evening and the sun has already set here and all the nightlife is just beginning. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be adjusted to the difference in time and not feel as tired. I will keep you updated as I continue to get settled but thank you for all the prayers and support again. It means so much.

Welcome to Seoul

I am sitting now at the boarding gate for my flight to Xi'an, China at the Seoul Incheon International Airport. And I am three hours ahead of schedule. Everything went pretty smoothly, as smoothly as it can go for a thirteen hour flight.

Headed to Xi'an soon.

Things I am going to have to get used to: The time change.

Currently it is 5:16 am here and I am wide awake, because "really" it is 3 in the afternoon. We'll see about that.

I am a little unsure about what to expect, but I know that I am in for quite an experience. Thanks to everyone for your support and prayers. I will let you know when I reach China...and then head to sleep.

On the way....

As I write this first post, I am sitting in the Los Angeles airport waiting to take off to Seoul, South Korea where my connection is. From there I will head to Xi'an, China to begin my work with International Volunteer Headquarters. I will post as soon as I get there and get settled.

Welcome

Welcome