Friday concluded the summer camp tour! It was probably the toughest of all the camps. We had just under 200 students at this camp with roughly the same number of volunteers as the other school camp. It still ran really well though! The kids seemed to have a great time and that’s the part that matters. We were blessed with the presence of a team of volunteers from Sichuan (the province just to the north of Yunnan {where I live}). Their specialty is with various ‘acrobatic’ type skills. They juggle, ride unicycles, balance on a board that’s on top of a cylindrical thing, and hula-hoop [can that be a verb?]. They ran the “games” rotation so they taught the kids the basics of all those skills. This camp copied the same schedule as the “Bringing in the Hope” post. So it was nice to have some familiarity with how things were to be run.
The school that we were at this week is the same school that has the library we’ve been working at. It’s also the same school that has had Camp Hope come for 3 years now. I think that our previous presence at this school created a different dynamic from the last school camp that we did. A lot of these kids were already used to the whole routine so the novelty had warn off. It was good in the sense that it forced the teachers to be a little more creative so that the kids weren’t ‘bored’ or uninterested in what was going on. The curriculum was mostly different from my understanding from the previous years but there were still parts that were similar.
I particularly bonded with a group of the older girls. It was really great to be able to communicate and understand what was being said! These girls loved to tease me so it was nice to know WHAT I was being teased about as well as being able to tease back! An interesting note, while this was a camp for Kindergarten to 6th grade, some of these girls we really think are more 7th or even 8th grade aged. Sometimes parents can have a difficult time having the proper documentation for the kids to attend the school as well as not having enough money to afford schools. So with these set back sometimes kids won’t start kindergarten until age 7.
This week’s camp had a lot less emotions at the end. I think that these kids have the expectation that the camp will return and even if not the camp they will still see some of the volunteers at the library. It was also about to downpour rain as we were ending camp so it made the final exit very anti-climatic and even chaotic.
We had another great group of volunteers at this camp. The Singaporean team was a really fun group of girls [I suppose ladies is a more appropriate term]. Now that I’ve met like 10 Singaporeans I think I’m pretty close to knowing everyone in their country… haha.
Alright enough words… I’ll let the pictures do the talking!
Here is the school courtyard. The classrooms are the white buildings that surround the courtyard. The library is to the left of this picture in an add on like room. This school will have over 1000 kids attending this coming semester. I think we counted 16 classrooms. So that’s averaging 62 students per class… the school is about 600/semester to attend. The tuition goes up as the grade gets higher. The cost only covers books and a few notebooks. If the child wants to live and eat at the school the cost goes to over 1000 per semester. A decent salary for a parent who’s kids are attending this school might be around 500-800 per month. So having multiple kids in school can really add up (Especially when you think about how it costs at least 500 a month for rent). And this school is considered cheap. Our first camp used a different school’s facilities and that school costs around 1200/semester just for tuition and books.
Here’s the whole group! We were about 180 kids and 40 volunteers (the acrobat team was about 15 people).
Does this little guy look familiar? Back in February we helped him get a heart surgery to repair the hole in his heart as well as some other procedure. Back in May we had dinner with his family to celebrate his recovery and now we got to see him again at this week’s summer camp. I’m pretty sure that his face says everything as far as how he’s doing. Such a cute kid!
A craft class showing off their project!
Aren’t kids cute? We taught to “Stop, Think, Act” this day, but I suppose our signals can duel as fun glasses!
There’s always the option of using your hands as glasses though.
Here’s Andreas and his very fashionable bear hat. He’s here visiting from Sweden!
This was a really cute game to watch but I have no idea what the appeal is for the kids to play… and yet they played forever. The kid in the middle skips around the center of the circle while the rest sing something like “looking to a find and meet a new friend, where can I find one”. Then they stop at someone and sing something like “hello new friend I salute/greet you and shake your hand, you are now my new friend, good bye.” Then the two kids change places… and now the new person in the center skips around… and it goes like that forever.
Here’s Pei trying the unicycle. She was rather determined to learn. She did quite well but couldn’t quite get up enough confidence to not hold onto someone or something while going. I didn’t try for fear of killing myself. Visiting a Chinese hospital was/is not high on my list of things I want to do while in China.
Chinese Pipi Long Stockings!
I think this one is a little confused about the hand motion for this part of the dance…
To infinity and beyond!
The red team!
Rain was a problem throughout the week. It would downpour and then be sunny then downpour again. This particular morning the kids were lined up and the principal wanted to address the kids. As he begins to talk it starts to rain pretty hard… now you’d think that the principal would try to speed up his speech or something… nope. He continued to talk and talk while the kids all had to stand at attention. It made for great pictures though!
This is about how we felt by the end of the week!
Here are the acrobat people. This was their grand finale!
Just as proof to show that I was there. These were two of the girls I was talking about at the top of this post.
That about sums up the week! Hope you enjoyed the pictures.
Lup
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