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.