Week Without Walls

This past week I ventured up to Yangshuo, China-- a rural farming community-- with 24 students and 3 other teachers from school. We travelled by an overnight train to Guilin and then caught a bus in the morning. Here are some students hanging out in one of the cabins. That was a fun experience, even though it was dark the entire ride! :)

We arrived to Yangshuo on Monday morning and pretty much jumped right into the adventures of the week. We started by checking into our "hotel". It was an old converted farmhouse out in the countryside. The scenery was absolutely beautiful! We had breakfast every morning on the terrace overlooking the fields and mountains...not a bad start to the day! Then, we visited a village called FuliTown, where we learned how to do Chinese fan painting. This village is well-known for their fan painting, so it was neat to see part of the process. They say it takes 200 steps to make a fan...including growing the bamboo and rice needed for the process. Wow! Here's my fan before it was bound.

The rest of the week we spent the mornings serving at a local school there. We taught English lessons, did crafts, and played games with the 2nd-4th grade students. Being able to see behind the scenes of a rural school in China was very interesting and caused me to reflect on a lot of things.

Here are a few observations: When we arrived each morning around 8:30 a.m., the students had reading time in their classrooms. I'd peek in the classrooms and was amazed to hear the students reading out loud, even though no teacher was present! Teachers didn't necessarily seem to be an integral part of the education process there. I could be wrong, and maybe we just didn't see them, but we really didn't see the teachers in the classrooms once when we were there. I'm sure part of that was because we were kind of taking over the lessons for the mornings that we were there. However, even in the younger students' classrooms, I never saw teachers in there. Also, during lunch time, we noticed that the students had like a 2 hour break! No supervision either...it seems to me that much of the education there is self-taught.

The classrooms were very basic...a chalkboard, desks, and a teacher table...that's literally it. However, the classrooms did boast some amazing views! Here's the view out the 3rd grade classroom...

Every morning they have an all-school exercise break where they all gather together outside and do a little exercise routine. I tried the first morning, and quickly realized how uncoordinated I am! :)

I led the craft time with the students and was blown away by how excited the students were about the little things...like paper and gluesticks! It really made me realize how blessed we are to have any supplies we desire on hand when we need them. At the same time, I realized how great of a responsibility we have to be good stewards of what we're given. We had lots of fun doing all sorts of crafts, from God's eyes to paper weavings to sticky styrofoam pictures to friendship bracelets to scratch art and many other activities.


The bathroom at the school were also another interesting provider of culture shock. The "stalls" were about chest high...no doors, just a little "trough"....definitely watched the amount of water I drank during the mornings!


All this to say, we had a really great time serving at the school and getting to know the kids. I actually really appreciated the stress-free environment, and it really made me question what the major stressors are in my life. I get frustrated b/c I know there has to be a happy medium. I do not think that China has it figured out, because so many of their people are living in poverty and do not receive the proper education to escape this cycle. I don't think HK or the US has it figured out either, because we chase after so many material things and activities that we're often too busy to enjoy the company of the people that we love. So...much to reflect on...I just know that I want to simplify my life.


In college I heard the phrase "too blessed to be stressed", and in many ways that's very true. We have so many things that would qualify us as "blessed"...comfortable homes, clothing, food, jobs, friends, family, etc. We don't have to worry about where our next meal will come from, how we will sleep at night, how we will stay warm, etc., and for those very reasons, I'd agree...we are very blessed. However, sometimes it's those very things that make us stressed. It feels like a chase sometimes. I'm not saying that it would be less stressful to live in a hut in Africa or a small brick and mud house in China. I'm just wondering again where the happy medium is.