Chinese New Years Camp and probably the best week here in China

After saying goodbye to the last Harvard student, I was yet again alone...but not for long.  First things first, Chinese New Year on Sunday, which I celebrated with the tenth floor kids.  We had firecrackers, the New Year's Eve Special, lots of fruit, nuts, and candy (YouPeng had so much he threw up), and staying up till midnight(YouPeng couldn't keep awake and fell asleep on me, must have been all that candy...).  Though it wasn't a traditional Chinese New Year, it was definitely fun.

I probably shouldn't have stayed up so late, since the next morning I headed out to an apartment complex near Dennis Supermarket where I would be helping Flick, one of the Australian volunteers, put on a Chinese New Years Camp for the kids.

This week, I worked with a whole new set of kids.  The ages also range from the age of 3 to 14, but they lived in a very different, and also better, environment than the orphanage.  There disabilities were also very different.  In general, the kids were a lot younger, but their disabilities less severe (in certain aspects).  The first day was crazy, with only two of us and 19 kids, we were running all over the place trying to run things on schedule.  We played with uncooked rice and colored in the morning, and did dragon projects in the afternoon.  The second day, we made jiaozi and watched Mulan II, along with more craft projects.  On Wednesday, three volunteers from Zhengzhou arrived to help us out.  We did some more craft projects like play-doh and watched Monsters Inc.  Thursday morning, XiaoGuang brought the tenth floor kids from the orphanage over to play.  I was so happy to see them again (only three days and I started missing them!)  It was also really strange to see them with the kids I just recently met.  To make a bad pokemon reference, it was like the tenth floor kids were the original 150 pokemon, and the new kids were the second generation, and suddenly they were all interacting together!  ......yah, really bad reference.  What I mean to say is that, up till that time, these kids felt like separate parts of my life (which I guess is strange, since they all are part of the same orphanage) and suddenly the two parts of my life were being smashed together.

Thursday also was our chance to go outside, so we got to make kites and went to the park.  The weather was amazing It was pure chaos trying to get all of the kids from point A to point B.  I ended up driving a bike cart full of wheelchairs to the park.  At the park all of the chinese people were staring at us like we were some sort of grand spectacle.  They kept getting closer and closer to the kids, so we had to scare them off a couple of times.  Some of them sneakily stuffed fruit and money into the bags we brought, as a "donation".  I thought it was really weird.  I kept thinking, "Thanks for your leftover oranges.  I hope you feel super warm and fuzzy inside."  I'm sure their intentions were well meant, but how they just forced these donations on us like we were some sort of entertainment show and they were giving us tips felt really insulting.  Besides that, I had a great day.  It was probably one of the top days in China.  Friday was equally as exciting, starting with making lanterns and having a lantern parade outside and ending with playing games and face painting in the afternoon.  I was so sad it was over!

This week was definitely my busiest and most fulling week here in Jiaozuo.  This was what I had envisioned when coming over here; working with kids and actually doing activities with them.  I was able to do this to a certain degree with the tenth floor kids, but it was a lot less structured than this week, and I had a lot less man-power and supplies to work with.

Overall, this post does not describe fully enough how amazing this camp has been, because I'm too exhausted to find the words to express my feelings.  Sorry!  However, just trust me that these kids the volunteers(aka. Donna and her kids) are the most inspiring people I've every met, and I'm definitely going to try and return.

Pictures to come in the next post!!!!