A Weekend Adventure... and now camp has begun!

I apologize for taking so long to update this. Now that camp has begun, my updates may be few and far between, but more on that later.

Saturday was a chaotic day as we scrambled to get all last minute preparations done. As a staff, we felt good about the work that we had accomplished, but were still a bit on edge with the first day of camp looming and a lot of unknowns were still out there (such as how many kids would be attending, their English abilities, etc.) It didn't help that we discovered that our office key was missing at the end of the day and we spent an extra hour searching high and low for that! Once we finally got to leave, I acted like a native of Shanghai and flagged down a taxi on my own and explained to the driver how to take us to our hotel. Between that and taking charge of ordering dinner that night, I finally felt a basic level of competency here if I had to survive on my own. (Okay, so I had the directions written in Chinese and the menu had the English translation of all of the dishes, but still, I'm gaining a bit of independence here!)

Sunday was a sight-seeing day in which we visited two cities. The first was Suzhou, a more "authentic" Chinese city than Shanghai, which reminds us a lot of New York City, except for the language barrier, of course. In Suzhou, we visited two "gardens" which are more like summer residences. The first had all sorts of sculptures and intricate architecture. There was also an extensive art collection for sale here, most of which had been painted on silk canvases rather than paper. The second was more of a traditional garden, with all sorts of water lillies, traditional Chinese trees, pavillions, and streams. Both were incredibly beautiful and my words cannot do them justice. The only two things which made these visits not so enjoyable were the heat (39 degrees Celsius, over 100 Fahrenheit, with 80-90 percent humidity) and the crowds. Because it was Sunday, there were people everywhere, which made things less tranquil and enjoyable.

Between our garden visits, we went for lunch the the Suzhou silk factory and then toured the factory. It's the largest silk factory in China, making mostly quilts and bedding (even in China, they're still rather pricy). It was facinating to see how silk products were made. We learned that one silk worm produces a strand of silk that is 1/7 the width of a human hair that is over 1 km long during it's brief lifetime (about 60 days).

Our second city was the "Venice of China", called Zhouzhuang, which when translated, means "Water town", which made me feel right at home (For those of you who don't know, Watertown is my hometown.) Zhouzhuang had many canals throughout the city and we all took gondola rides through the various canals and under the stone arch bridges. We even paid our gondoleer 10 RMB (about $1.50) to sing for us while we were on our ride. This was by far, our favorite stop of our trip, aside from the fact that our driver had fallen asleep and we couldn't get ahold of him when we wanted to leave. Therefore, we were stuck there for an addtional hour! After the two hour drive home, we pretty much went straight to bed, in anticipation of the first day of camp.

We got up rather early for our first day at camp, took the first available cab, and got to the school by 7:30am. The time seemed to fly by for the next two hours until the students got there. After getting them processed and baking in the heat (it was over 90 degrees by 9 am), we had an all group program and got to know the students. One student, Dan, immediately drew to me because he is an avid soccer fan (I tried converting him to Manchester United, but he's still a big Chelsea fan). Some of the students speak very good English while others seem to have never spoken a word in their lives. There must have been some miscommunication because we were clear that this camp was English immersion, yet several young students know very little English which is making commuication rather difficult. On the other hand, we have a few native English speakers and we feel like we aren't challenging them appropriately yet.

Each day, we are focusing on a specific region and holiday in the US. For Monday, we focused on New York City and New Years Day. We ended the day with a New Year's Eve party, complete with the ball dropping (a giant newspaper ball being lowered from the third floor balcony), toasts (we used water instead of fermented or carbonated substances), skits and a dance. The kids really seemed to get into YMCA and the Chicken Dance! Finally, we sent the kids home at 5:30 pm. By the time we discussed all of the kinks in our system, it was 8:30! We hurried home (again with me flagging down a cab, although I was disappointed to find out that this one spoke some English!), ate, and went to bed!

We are really hoping that every night at camp does not go this late so that we have some time to regroup each day! On a side note, I found out that the local soccer team (Shanghai Shenhua FC) plays a game on Saturday night, so we may have to go check that out. More later...