January 20, 2009: Obama Day!! Woohoo!!!!

You may have noticed I was out of touch for a few days -- actually almost two weeks I guess! The Amity Foundation Teachers Winter Conference was held in Gansu Province, far to the North and the West, and I was typing on a Finnish keyboard there. I discovered that I could type efficiently on that board...so I am back now until Friday when I will be off to Japan and the Philippines. I don't know how much internet access I will have there but I am planning (at least as of this very moment in time) to tote my laptop with me.

Today was a highly unusual day in Nanjing. I saw two foreigners! One was a man and then a while later I saw a woman. This almost never happens. I also found a McDonalds within walking distance -- I think it must be brand new. I went in to check out the breakfast menu and I am quite excited -- I can get an American breakfast of pancakes (hotcakes) and coffee --and can probably figure out how to get the hash browns as well. Woohoo!

I do not know how to put pictures on this blog yet, something on my to-do list. In the meantime, I have posted albums of the Gansu journey on Facebook. I am very thankful that we had our conference there as I was able to see another part of this vast and diverse country that is geographically very different from where I am in Nanjing on the East Coast. We were also priviledged to see a small, rural village. I must say that the small villages reminded me of small villages in the West Bank in Palestine. I am suspicious that perhaps small villages in all parts of the world bear a striking resemblance to one another.

I have had students tell me that they are in college because they had no choice. The young people who do not go to college end up with the back breaking work. They came to college so that they could have more options. No choice but to go to college so there would be choices.

I don't have a clue in a hundred million years how people in the villages that we saw would pay for college for the children in the villages. It wasn't so much the grinding poverty that we saw as the bare minimum for life to be sustained. The villagers live out of the land, literally, they are one with the land.

In the first village we were blessed with a traditional performance by wonderful villagers who have honed their craft of acting to a fine art. They were amazing! They performed "Planting Potatoes" for us...well of course, what they know best. They had an orchestra, the actors themselves, and an appreciative audience consisting of the foreigners and the locals.

In the second village we saw the work that Amity is doing with the village in terms of working with solar heating. We also were taken to small compounds that consisted of houses and farm buildings surrounded by earthen containers -- kind of like fences. These people work so hard.

Back in the most developed city in Gansu Province, Lanzhou, we did a church visit. The church has about 5,000 members and at least 200 baptisms a year. They work with projects that care for the elderly, the poor and The Left Behind Children. These children are the children of migrant workers -- both of their parents must leave them to find work elsewhere and they are left in the care of their grandparents. They see their parents perhaps once a year. The church helps to educate them, provides psychological counseling and tries to fill in the gaps of love that the children so desperately need.

This trip to Gansu Province helped to fill in more of the blanks I have in my knowledge of China. I look forward to Japan and the Philippines over the next two weeks or so to help me with the bigger picture of Asia.