Today we visited an Elementary School in Lanzhou. The bus trip to the school was an adventure in itself. In China, there seem to be very loose driving rules....if any at all. Any available space on the road is used by any car going whichever direction. The drivers are either very skilled or crazy!! We almost flattened a guy on a bicycle, side-swiped another bus and ran into a car that turned in front of us, but we made it to the Elementary School!

The community surrounding the school is very poor. There are housing structures, but they are in very bad repair. However, the school building was three stories and in good repair for the most part. We visited three classrooms. There were about 40 children in each of the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classes we toured. About 2/3 were boys in each class and 1/3 (maybe a few more) were girls. Two students sat at each desk. The desks were wooden and looked like they had been used by several year's worth of previous students. The students sat on a small bench that two of the students shared in front of one desk. The surroundings seemed to have little or no impact on the students. They were eagerly learning their lessons when we interrupted them. They study English, math, science....the usual subjects. They appeared to study with great enthusiasm. They start school at 7:30am and go home for lunch at 11:30am then return to school from 1:30 - 6:00pm - a long school day.

The students practiced their English on us, which was quite impressive. They each had an English soft-sided pamphlet-style book that they learn English from. They also sang a Chinese song for us. Then one of them asked our group to sing a song to them....boy were we caught off guard! Someone suggested "Itsy Bitsy Spider"....hopefully they liked the rhythm of the song and didn't really know we were singing a toddler song to the 4th graders!! They clapped when we finished, anyway!

We handed candy to each of them, which they each said "thank you" for. The students that live too far to go home are served a piece of Chinese bread for lunch at the school.

Mike Handing Out Candy to the Students

The children were happy to be at school and eager to learn. When asked what they wanted to do in their life, several said that they wanted to get a Master's degree and one said she wanted to go to Harvard! I hope our daughters have the same love for learning as these children seemed to have. Their poor economic status did not seem to stand in the way of their absorbing all they could at school.

Tomorrow, we leave Lanzhou and head to Southern China for the final leg of our trip. We are loving our time with Allyson, but are very excited to finish this process and make our way home.

Love,
Angela