Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Days 3 - 6 : Our You Zha Days

If pictures are a thousand words, then this post shall be many many words. Day 3 - 6 were our You Zha days, and when our dailys became a routine, are best represented by pictures. See our continual progression!

DAY 3

Now that we had settled in comfortably, our daily schedules fell into a routine, which went like this:

7am : Wake and wash up
7.30am : Breakfast at motel - 桃范旅馆
8am : Leave for school
8.30am : Reach school, prepare for painting in library or at dormitory/interaction with preschool children
12noon : Gather in library. Walk back to motel for lunch
12.30pm : Lunch
1.30pm : Walk back to school
2pm : Continue with our tasks - dormitory & library
3.45pm : Pack up, finish tasks
4pm : Interactive lessons with the primary school children
5pm + : Dinner
6.30pm : Back to library - sorting books, C&W discuss performance, Logistics prepare for Sports Day/packing
7.30pm : Walk back to school. Discuss bathroom queue along the way
8pm : Reach motel
9pm (some days, 9.30pm) : Facilitation and debrief and preparation for performance
10.30pm : Dismissed. Some days, interactive games amongst ourselves

So, the start of our day three - breakfast. We had very good noodles prepared by Lao Ban!

We saw the children having Gym lesson and joined in for the fun of it.

无敌战士 started drawing.



Do not belittle the face masks. We discovered that the windows were sealed shut so there were no ventilation. Even if there were, we might not have done it anyway because it was freezing.
So did 金刚战士 and Ah Gong.







月光仙子 had interaction classes with the preschool children, and later joined the dormitory .

Lunch


This ah ma sells very nice mala french fries.

Break for lesson. We wanted to teach the children the importance of water especially when water is such a scarce resource in mountainous areas. So we taught them a song called the Save Water Song. To further emphasise and encourage team work, C&W had ingeniously thought of grouping them into teams to brainstorm ideas on how to save water, draw it out and they would win a small prize from us!





Our final pick of winners!

Dinner was in the school, braving the winter cold by sitting outside the canteen.

After dinner, we worked on the flooring of the library.


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DAY 4

The library progress was slightly slower but we continued to work hard! We started painting the wall, discarded some of the older shelves, and the new tables, chairs, bookshelves, television and Hi-Fi system had arrived.

Ah Seng and Alvin said "No sweat!" The children helped us to carry some of the tables and chairs up as well (the library was on the 4th storey!)



Meanwhile, the dormitory people were doing some very professional toning. We treat our mural paintings very seriously okay!

Lunch. The famous authentic Mala Tou Fu.
For this lesson, we taught the children Origami - namely the Heart and the Crane. We also bought coloured paper for the children to write their gratitude to the teachers for their unconditional teaching and care.


Dinner was Sichuan Veggies and Mala Veggies.

After dinner, it was back in the library again. We had to move the books onto the new shelves. Once again, the famous Human Chain formed, and we roped in Director He (He Zhu Ren) and Yang Lao Shi to help us out as well. I think they were enjoying themselves =P

This is one last picture to show our exhausted faces.

On the way back to the motel, we were excited to see fireworks! Setting off fireworks is a very common occurance there, which we learnt from He Zhu Ren that there was a marriage around the corner and the family was setting off fireworks as blessings for the newly wedded. We stopped to admire for a very long time :D --------------------------------------------------------------------------

DAY 5

We love Lao Ban's noodles! Today we had mantou as well.

We touched up the mural painting in the library, and cut wall stickers into flowers and grass to decorate the tiled walls.

We were doing the finishing touches for details - more toning, as well as the background.

We didn't have interactive lessons with the preschool children but the teachers let them out and play. So, we took the opportunity to take more pictures with the endearing ones.


We had maggi mee for lunch because we were very intent on finishing the artworks and going back and forth the motel for lunch could save us a good 1-2hours.
Our lesson with the primary school children was a game invented by Zack. Basically all the children would be an animal, and attempt to form a long animal chain. Then we would teach them the english vocabulary for these animals.

Dinner was in school. I think He Zhu Ren was very astonished by our small appetite and attempted to fill us with more food!




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DAY 6





It was a surprise because we discovered that Qiong Lai Shi TV station had came to interview us. Our 3 minutes of fame!


We were finishing the little rats and drawing the outlines.






Final touch ups for dorm and Ah gong started designing for the walls of the canteen.


We had interactive classes with the pre-school children again, and here we were teaching them Yooooo Hokey Pokey. This is Yang Yang, the one small kid that had garnered everyone's affections

Lunch was very scrumptious (spot that cameraman behind us? They followed us from school.)


This is how we entertained ourselves on the journey to everywhere. Jump shots!


We had an early day because the children (including the dormitory children) had to return home and some of them could be a 2 hour bus ride up in the mountains.

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