Author: karenxiao

Allen playing violin

They always say that people who are disabled in some way tend to have another sense heightened. I have found that many of the kids at Bethel are very musically talented. Bethel is very special because they make music a very big part of the kids’ lives. They have a music teacher, Ms. Lu who is also blind and teaches the kids everything from singing, to piano, to traditional Chinese instruments like Gu Zheng. They also have the Bethel Choir and the kids in the choir travel all over Beijing to perform, and have even been featured on national television!

This afternoon, I found a bunch of violins while I was wandering around the music room. Ms. Lu told me that a few years ago, a volunteer brought them here and taught some of the kids violin when she was here. However, after she left, the kids didn’t have anyone to teach them anymore, so the violins have just been sitting there. So I decided to pull them out, fix them up a little, tune them and see if the kids still remembered some.

I handed it to Michael and surprisingly, he still remembered how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!

Vincent playing a toy flute that has piano-like keys

Michael playing Edelweiss on piano

Marie, Matt, Crystal, Lynelle, Nina and me with some of the kids: Christina, Allen, Michael and Hannah

Nina and I didn’t have a lot of stuff to do today, so we decided to go explore the village on bike again. We’ve been doing so much bike riding lately that our butts are starting to get sore!

This afternoon, we were riding around and saw this huge cherry farm on the side of the road, so we decided to go and take a look. The family that owns the farm usually takes all the cherries to the village to sell, but we really wanted to eat some cherries, so we asked them if we could buy some there. They were so nice and let us pick them off the tree ourselves! The woman let us climb up on the ladder and showed us which ones were ripe and ready to pick.

When were were done, she weighed them and we paid for them. We hung the bag of cherries off of the handlebars of our bike and ate cherries all the way back the orphanage! Yay!

The nice farmer lady

It was a very wobbly ladder…

Cherries!

Bethel has this shack behind the goat’s pen that hasn’t really been serving much purpose. Throughout the years, it’s gathered quite a bit of junk, from old couches and tables to unwanted toys and bikes. Recently, Matt got the idea to turn the area into a petting zoo and outdoor classroom, but with all the dust and dirt in there, no one wanted to take on the impossible task of cleaning it out, not to mention almost the entire Bethel staff is female. So Matt called up the rugby team in Beijing and asked them to come help. Where better to find big strong guys than a rugby team? They agreed and in return, we had a barbecue to thank them!

About seven huge guys came in the afternoon and they had everything moved out of the shack and cleaned up in a few hours. It was pretty hard to find large slabs of raw meat for the barbecue in the village for some reason because they have to have it brought over from the bigger villages nearby. Matt considered slaughtering a chicken, but finally we were able to buy a huge half of a cow from the back of a man’s truck and some pieces of chicken from the kitchen of a restaurant that we always go to.

The guys had a really great time and now our shack is clean!

The guys on the rugby team came from England, Australia, the US, Thailand and more! Some of them have lived in China for almost a decade!

Nina’s flight got in really late last night, but because our driver couldn’t go pick her up, she stayed at the airport all night! What a trooper! So this morning I rode with the driver to the airport to find her and pick her up. She was waiting at a Pizza Hut, so conveniently, I was able to get some food! Boy, was it nice to get some “real” food after all that orphanage food! I’ve realized that if you want to lose weight, you don’t need Jenny Craig or Slimfast; just go and live in an orphanage in China. You’re sure to come back a few pounds skinnier!

Nina and I decided to go explore the village in the afternoon. Bethel has a couple of tandem bikes (bikes where two people can ride at the same time), so we decided to take one of those out. The village basically just has two streets with shops and restaurants, and of course the fruit and meat stands on the sides of the road. We bought oreos and marshmallow pies, lots of fruits, and popsicles!

For some reason, people were really fascinated by our tandem bike. Everywhere we went, people would stop and ask us where we got it. Literally, people would walk up and examine our bike. It was so funny!

 

On the way back we passed by a HUGE field of wheat!! It’s so cool living in the countryside!

Rows and rows of wheat

First day at Bethel.

Before I came, I knew that Bethel was somewhat in the outskirts of the city, but I didn’t realize that it would actually be in the rural countryside. So as we left the skyscrapers and smoothly paved roads of Beijing and entered the vast wheat fields and dusty dirt roads of the small village of Fangshan, I suddenly realized that we were no longer in the Beijing that I know and love.

“You’re probably going to get lost when you get near the village, so just call me if you need help,” Matt, the volunteer manager, warned me over the phone. Sure enough, two hours, lots of asking local people for directions, and many bumpy side roads later, we arrived at Bethel Foster Home.

Matt is this 20-something year old guy from Holland who came to Bethel three months ago and is now planning to stay three years. As I walked up to the large salmon-colored building, I couldn’t help but notice how much the building stood out from the rest of the agricultural landscape. Like blond hair, blue eyed Matt, it seemed somewhat out of place in this rural, unknown corner of China.

Bethel was founded in 2003 by a French couple, Guillaume and Delphine, especially for visually impaired and blind orphans. From a mere three kids in a tiny building, it has grown to a large 17-acre complex helping over fifty kids. The kids take math, science, English, French, mobility, and social/life skills and music classes every day.

Just from the way the place looks, I could tell that this definitely wasn’t a typical Chinese orphanage. Perhaps the main difference is they just have higher standards, and because they are privately run, they are able to afford the higher standards. The classrooms and walls are all brightly decorated. “The kids can’t see them, but we still paint the walls pretty colors,” Matt said, “they deserve a nice environment.”

As Matt gave me a tour of Bethel, every time we passed by a kid in the hallway, they would come up to him, grab his leg and yell “Matt! How are you today?”

All the kids call Guillaume and Delphine their “Fa Guo Ba Ba” and “Fa Guo Ma Ma” or French daddy and mommy. In addition, all the kids live in one of the six huts with 7-8 other kids and their nannies. They all have “families” that they live with in the huts and they call all of their nannies “Ma” or mom.

After the tour, I met some of the other volunteers who were here. In addition to me and the other girls here through Harvard China Care, there are two other volunteers from France (one of whom has been here for a year!) and a blind girl named Crystal who was born in China but now goes to school in Sweden!

I’m so excited to be here and to get to start meeting the kids!!

The building where all the volunteers live.