Category: Uncategorized

Christy, the orientation and mobility teacher (the person who teaches the kids how to use their canes) did a workshop with us today, teaching us how to use the walking canes, how to guide and work with blind people, and just in general, what it’s like being blind. So we put on blindfolds and for an hour, walked in the shoes of these kids.

Until now, I’d never really seriously thought about what it was like being blind. Sure, when I was little I walked around with my eyes closed and that sort of thing, but I’d never met and spent extended amounts of time with a blind person before. The time I’ve spent at Bethel with the kids and with Crystal has really made me think about how difficult life is for blind people.

1. Walking up and down the stairs was a pretty terrifying experience and at all times, I was really scared of running into something and falling.

2. I usually have a pretty good sense of direction, but with the blindfolds on, I couldn’t tell where I was facing at all and found myself walking in the wrong direction a lot. Orientation is another part of what Christy has to teach the kids because knowing where you’re facing is a big part of being able to get around.

3. Walking canes are great! For part of the exercise, we walked down the hill to where the kids lived. We felt like we were walking forever! But maybe that was because we were walking really slowly…

4. Sounds really helped orient me. One of the classrooms was playing music, so from the sound of the music, I knew whether I was getting closer or farther away to the end of the hallway. It’s also the only way to recognize people. The kids have learned to recognize me by my voice. Or sometimes, they’ll feel by bracelet and know that it’s me.

I guess this experience really showed me how much harder life would be as a blind person. At the end of the day, I’m able to take off my blindfolds, say that was a fun experience and carry on with my life. However, these kids don’t have that option; this is their reality. Then, on the other hand, I suppose, I may not be able to imagine life without vision, but since this is all they know, life might not be so bad.

Last night, the kids were invited to perform in a concert celebrating Children’s Day at the Beijing Children’s Palace, 少年宫. It was a typical over the top, hectic, and wonderfully unorganized government-sponsored event. We arrived and it was clear that none of the nannies or kids even knew where we were going before they got on the bus. When we got there, no one really told us what we were doing either. Apparently the kids were going to sing two songs! Alright!

They sat the kids down in the front row, in front of a bunch of kids from a school for the deaf. Why they decided to put kids that can’t see in the front and kids that can’t hear in the back is still a mystery to me. It was wonderful because none of the performers knew what they were doing and the organizers ran around like crazy, yet somehow they were able to put on a picture-perfect show.

As always, the kids were great. The older kids in the choir sang and the little ones sat in the audience. The entire time the older kids in the choir were performing, little Yang An sat there saying “I wanna go on stage too!!” Later, I brought Yang An to the bathroom and he peed all over his pants. Poor Yang An.

Today, June 1, is 六一儿童节, or Children’s Day. At Bethel, it was an absolutely hectic day because tons of people, organizations and companies came to visit the kids, bring presents, and do activities with them.

We had a church’s worship team come play a concert for the kids. These women from a company in Beijing came with a huge cake and stayed to play with the kids. A gymnastics Olympics gold medalist came and signed autographs and helped plant trees. Basically, the entire day, people were coming in and out.

The kids, however, had a great time!

Michael is 11 and a really really smart boy. He’s only been at Bethel for 3 years, but he has learned everything really fast. I teach his English class in the mornings and he gets really excited when I read a book to him in English and have him write it down in braille.

Michael also really likes playing piano and said he wants to be a pianist when he grows up!

Crystal is one of the volunteers that I met at Bethel. She was here for six months as a consultant for Bethel because she is blind herself and has accomplished so many amazing things as a blind person.

In China in a fairly rural area where she would’ve been barred from doing a lot of things, her parents were really adamant about her learning how to read and get an education. When the local school refused to accept her because she was blind, she tested into an even better high school and she moved to Beijing with her mom.

She then went on to be a gold medalist runner in the Paralympics and became a really great flute player. She was eventually able to go to Sweden to study music at a conservatory and go to college.

Now she works for a PR firm in Sweden and is pretty much self-sufficient as a blind person. Crystal was really a really inspiring person and taught me so much about the difficulties of being a blind person – things I hadn’t really thought about before.

She said that her company would send her to business meetings because as a blind person, she couldn’t judge someone based on their appearance. Therefore, she was especially attuned to the things a person said and the way they spoke. As a result she was pretty good and accurate at judging people and a company.

She said that because she was a blind person, she could also go speak to the janitor of a company (something that normal “businesspeople” wouldn’t do on a business trip). She said that the attitudes of the lowest level employees of a company are a great reflector of how a company is and how it functions.

 

I learned so much from Crystal during the short time I spent with her at Bethel. She was such a happy person with such a positive outlook on life, in spite of her disabilities. Crystal gave me a lot of hope in people, just like she gave a lot of hope to all the children at Bethel who were blind and hoped for a better life.

Cha Lu, or LuLu as everyone calls him, is an ADORABLE three year old little boy. Everyone loves him because he is really cute and cuddly and likes being held.

Lou is in my “Panda” English class and is quite the chatterbox. He’s really curious and is always asking “What is this? What is that?” I can’t get him to be quiet and sit still in class, but he’s just so darn cute that I can’t get mad at him!

when they turn on the irrigation system to water the plants in the fields during the day, it messes up the water pressure in the volunteer’s building, so everyday we come home and hope that there’s going to be running water for the night! two nights ago, we didn’t have running water. last night, we didn’t have hot water, so i had to take a shower in the freezing cold. well, that’s rural china for you!

Every month, Bethel has a joint event with the kids from the International Academy of Beijing (IAB). Each kid is paired up with a “buddy” from IAB and they go on field trips together, have events, and write each other notes, etc.

This month, the activity is a sports day. The kids were divided into four teams based on color and competed in relay races, long jump, bean bag toss and tug of war.

Lining up the teams and getting ready for the relay race.

Alan with his “buddies” and all their awards! Go Red Team!

Cindy is so excited about her prizes!

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