Reflections on a GSL-filled summer
1/13/2010
by Tiffany L. '11
If you asked me how I spent my summer, I would tell you that I spent it mastering the art of using squatting toilets and melting in China’s polluted humidity. Of course, my summer was much more productive than this. But after telling the same story for the millionth time, I have come to realize that the double-takes this introduction attracts makes the tale infinitely more interesting to tell. The truth is, I went to China with Lakeside’s Global Service Learning program, and I loved it. Squatting toilets and all.
Our schedule in China consisted of a two week long home-stay in a village just outside of Xi’an, a week long home-stay in Xi’an, and a few days in Beijing. We experienced a mélange of activities, ranging from milking cows (this is deceptively difficult), to teaching young Chinese students English, to learning about Wokai and Microsoft Asia.
Without a doubt, my favorite part of the trip was the village home-stay. Our schedule in the village went something like:
6:30 AM: Wake up, brush teeth, help host mom with breakfast, and (and as the villagers did not seem to understand the concept of promptness) hurried breakfasts
8:00 AM: Meet with the group, split up to work (working in the fields, painting the school, sweeping the streets, picking fruit, etc.)
11:00 AM: Head home for lunch, rest indoors (because the outdoor world becomes a furnace)
2:00 PM: Meet with the group to discuss the assigned book (River Town) and write in journals
3:00 PM: Split up to work
6:30 PM: Head home for dinner, spend time with host family, write in journal/read, sleep
On paper our agenda seems strict and taxing, but in reality, our work was made easy by the hospitality of the villagers.
When we first arrived in the village, we were gawked at. I wouldn’t have been surprised if members of our group had turned green and grown antennae. Yet for many of the villagers, blond hair and pale skin were synonymous with ET. Most villagers had never stepped foot outside of the village boundaries, and the village itself rarely received visitors. Thus, we Americans and America itself was quite foreign to them. Yet our foreign novelty quickly wore off, and where the villagers once giggled at our accents and gaped at our peculiar habits (hugging, laughing uncontrollably), they soon began correcting our grammar and tackling us in intense basketball games.
There are some things I will never forget about my trip to China. Take, for example, the first time I convinced my host mom to let me cook scrambled eggs (she invited our neighbor over to watch). I had just poured a few droplets of oil into the pan when I heard my host mom and neighbor erupt in laughter, and saw them cry in hilarity. Shaking her head, my host mom came forth and dipped a large spoon not once, not twice, but three times into the jar of cooking oil. “There,” she said, “now you’re ready to cook.” Three enormous spoonfuls of oil for one scrambled egg. It was my turn to shake my head.
Or the people I met – my host family, my neighbor, and the village children with their scabbed knees, oversized slippers, grime-covered noses, and tattered t-shirts. Or the first time I saw old men playing majiang and marveled at their skill (by the end of the trip, I was beating them). Or the first time my fellow GSL-ers and I hand-washed our clothes (I’m sure our host siblings received an excellent ab work-out from laughing at us).
Nor will I forget the day we left, and the free-flowing tears. We parted as twelve-day acquaintances and lifelong friends.
These are the memories that I will cherish forever. The rest, well, they’re stowed away in a meticulously kept journal which I will stumble upon some day.
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