in China

I came back from shooting some footage with the documentary crew one day to find that Shi Lifeng, Liu Dan, and Shu Caili, my three best English students, had left a message for me. They had lined up the desks in the classroom and using leaves had spelled out "Teacher Paul, we love you." They also used leaves to draw a heart on the floor. Shu CaiLi wanted a picture of herself sitting in the middle of it. She was a very good student but would get such a nervous laugh when asked a direct question that she could barely catch her breath and hardly speak. I could hardly speak when I saw these leaves.

I've bought a tape player and four sets of English courses that I'm going to send to the village for these three. The tape player is specially designed for language learning (I got one for myself when I was in China and all I can say is I wish I'd had it sooner) This should keep them occupied for a while and make up for my not being there. After that, I don't know.

I plan to send some gifts to some of the kids now that I'm back in the States. The best way to do that is to send it through Teacher Zhang, so I needed to take some pictures to identify all the kids so he would know whose package was whose. It also made for some nice pictures.

A lot of excitement and happiness about new friends on our last night there and a sense of pending departure and some sadness about that. And some last bits of fun. Some of the kids with gifts we had given them. One of the kids, Shu Xia, very sad that we'd be leaving the next day.




You can't really tell from these photos but there was a lot going on around us while these pictures were being taken. A lot of running around and ungrouping and regrouping for different photos. I think I was carrying around the pen that you see in my hand because I was still hustling to get those last minute pictures of my kids holding up the sheets of paper that they'd signed their names on. Also a lot of preliminary goodbyes and plans being made by the older boarding school kids to stop by early the next morning for a final goodbye before they started the long walk to their own school. And much of it being captured on camera by Wang Wei for the documentary as he hustled around trying to Capture the Moment. The funny thing is that now as I reconstruct the memory of this night and indeed of my entire time there, I'm hardly aware of any cameras being there. The kids we were teaching and the people we were with and the time and place overwhelmed everything else.

Last day of class. Moments before we left the village for the last time. I've already told some of you that tears were shed when we left. Although I think the boy on the right is just sneezing. Not sure. Although the girl rubbing her eyes couldn't stop crying. They were happy kids but sad we were leaving. I was, too.