part 3




Our first stop was an elementary school that was in the neighborhood of the hutong that we were pedaling through. This was the best part of the tour, because we were able to visit a fourth grade classroom. Since Caleb was in fourth grade in China as well, it was nice to see what his education might have been like.

About five children stood and spoke for us in English and it was very cute as they shared simple memorized phrases such as "My name is...., my father works for the post office, my mother works at a store. I am in grade 4, room 6. My teacher is...., I like noodles." Without a fault, virtually every child ended with "I like noodles." Too cute.


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I think we were quite an oddity to them with two older Chinese boys and one Haitian daughter. They asked questions of Caleb and he was able to explain that he was being adopted and going to America in a few days. They were pretty excited about that and then asked him where he was from and asked what his school was like.



They wanted to speak to Ben, so I explained through our guide that he was deaf when he was adopted and never learned to speak Chinese. We had quite the interpretation loop going when Ben explained in sign language a little bit about his life while I voiced it in English and our guide voiced over me into Mandarin. In this photo, he was signing to them that he is deaf.

Next they wanted to know where Micheline was from. I have found that geography is not a strong point in Chinese education. From children to adults, not one has yet shown a flicker of recognition to either of the words Haiti or the Caribbean. If I tell adults it is near Cuba, however, I get at least some hint of understanding in about 50% of the adults. The class surprisingly didn't have any visible maps on the wall for me to show them exactly where Haiti is located, so I again told them near Cuba. No visible understanding, so I told them about 700 miles off the coast of the Southeastern United States and they seemed happy with that.

continued...