This morning we saw a play group preschool for the children of migrant workers. The government considers the migrant workers a problem and so doesn't put any resources into their children since they believe the families should stay in their home province. This group of volunteers wants to serve the children's needs. They are working to teach the parents that you don't need to buy stuff, but you can make teaching materials out of recyclable materials. For example, they made matching cards out of an old box to teach the children the Chinese characters/words to match the pictures.
The volunteer teachers all have college degrees and will visit the families at home and offer a Friday evening group where the parents learn about parenting practices. The volunteer teacher said they see improvements in the parent-child relationships within 2-3 months with the parents attend the Friday evening reading group.
The building they use is very run down. The walls need to be painted. There is no air conditioning and there is very little air movement in the courtyard. The courtyard is all paved and that is the only outdoor area the children have to use. What pre-made materials they have are frequently missing pieces.
Yet the place was filled with smiles and happy voices learning and interacting. The parents rotate through volunteering time to help lead the preschool. The older children are back in their home provinces attending primary school with their grandparents to supervise them. This preschool was very different than the model preschools we visited earlier in our trip. It was nice to see the reality of the socio-economic differences in the classes in the People's Republic of China. There isn't much of a middle class here. The poor are very poor and the rich are well off even if the size of their homes are smaller compared to ours.
This afternoon we visited BNU to exchange ideas with the students. I stopped a student and asked where I could mail my postcards. They told me they could take me there. The girl was also an education major and we had a great conversation. I should have taken another UNL student with me, but I didn't think of it and I felt very safe. China is much safer than the U.S. There is significantly less crime here. So any way, the student offered to walk me back to my group, but I told her that I could find my way and that I'd walk back by myself. I got what I now know to be within a block of where I needed to be but I wasn't sure where to go next. I ended up walking back to the tennis courts since I knew they were a large landmark. I thought this was a good time to use my international calling plan at $3.50 per minute to call Jon, our leader, and tell him to come find me. I ended up calling him twice before we found each other. I was calm through the whole thing. I had all the needed information in the case that I did get lost so I was able to call Jon and if that didn't work I had the address for a cab to take me back to the hotel. Jon found me and I joined up with my group and took a lot of good-natured teasing for getting lost. Alls well that ends well.
The conversation with the students was very fundamental. I could tell that quite a few of the students were freshman and it was a necessary conversation for them. The second presentation they gave was more interesting as they/we talked about how "stylish" toys are replacing traditional games that teach cooperation and social skills.
Tonight we went to Tienanmen Square to watch the lowering of the flag. It was so much bigger of a square than it looked like on tv or when I was standing across the street. I could see why tanks could drive into the square so easily during the 1989 massacre. In China it is referred to as the June Fourth Incident. Jon told us that the square holds more people than live in the state of Nebraska. That is nuts! It's one of the largest squares in the world.
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