With Your Eyes Open: 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.