Mobbed again

The field station is right next to a middle school, and I was "attacked" with enthusiasm last time I was here while out for a run one day. Well, it happened again.  Friday evening after school, the kids were all out on the road sweeping and burning piles of trash along the sidewalks (yes, children here do actually have to do chores at school). The first time we walked past I just got a lot of nervous stares, but by the time we walked back around some of the boys were poking and making fun of each other (as boys do) while the girls were giggling and clearly trying to build up the courage to speak. There were a few meek "hello"s and then the path in front of me was blocked by a gaggle of giggling girls. One particularly bold young lady walked right up to me and said "hello, how are you? What is your name?" in eager but stuttering English. I replied and then she nervously asked "Can I hug you?" Of course, so I gave her a hug while all of the other girls squealed, and another stepped up for her hug as well.  The boys were all hanging out around the perimeter looking bored and uninterested and saying "we need to go". I stuck around and chatted with the girls for a little while, mainly the one very outspoken one, and they wanted to know where I stay.  As last year, I told them but also said I spend a lot of time walking around the town and they are welcome to come say hello anytime they see me. I'm hesitant to encourage a bunch of kids to descend upon the field station to disturb my and everyone else's work.

Also, yesterday Sarah arrived. Sarah is an American working at the Chinese Academy, and she and I have hit it off well.  We decided it would be fun for her to spend some time out here seeing what some of the scientists at her institute do for their research and also learning some grant writing skills with me so she can better help edit some of the science she sees come her way. The group of us went for another walk yesterday, and just as we were about to set off to explore a temple-like new construction at the end of a bare stretch of dirt nothingness, two little girls on a bicycle teetered by and quickly turned around when they saw me - the huggy girl from the day before. She was so excited to see me again and said she had a gift for me. She was off to her piano lessons and wanted me to come so she could play a song for me. Of course! So we postponed one adventure and traded for another to go listen to her play a few tunes in a room full of keyboards. She had also drawn a picture for me. I think it's actually a picture *of* me. It's a very Asian-style cartoon girl with a white face (the rest of the body is colored in skin toned) round eyes, and red hair. She said she'd drawn it for me the night before hoping to see me again. So sweet. Her teacher ushered the kids to their keyboards, which was our cue to leave, but we arranged to meet her and her friends again later in a nearby park.

Meanwhile, we went back over to the mysterious temple-looking building, but all entrances were bricked up so it wasn't too exciting. But right behind it was a talk bank of dirt with a front end loader perched on top, and I made some comment about how it looked like it could be the perimeter wall of a landfill. Just a passing comment. Sarah said "Now I'm curious!" and bounded off to scramble up the steep slope and shouted "It's a cemetery!" So we all scrambled over the bank and down to a road on the other side to wander through the cemetery.  I love cemeteries in different places, because they're all so different depending on the local customs and culture.  Apparently most people in China now are cremated. But this was a regular cemetery with mounds of dirt at least 3 feet high or concrete tombs over graves of people whose family was clearly a little more well off.  A lot of the sites had a second marker immediately in front of the family marker and oddly completely blocking its view. The front marker was placed by the government in cases where the person died while at work. There were a lot of those markers which makes you wonder what goes/went on around here. And since it was recently the Tomb Sweeping festival, several of the gravesites had rotting fruit, remnants of small fires and fireworks, and fake flowers strewn about. We heard faint music from a small radio or cell phone and looked up to see an old man who we first thought was perhaps visiting someone...until we saw the grain sack in his hand. He seemed to be wandering about sort of aimlessly yet pointedly avoiding us, so I think he was going about picking over the gravesites for items that might still be edible or useful.

At this point we were running late for our play date so headed back to the park to meet the young girl and her friends.  They all had notebooks they wanted us to sign, so we each wrote a nice message and left our email addresses. I felt like I was signing a yearbook ;) The very confident and outspoken girl stumbled over asking me what animals I like, and when it wasn't clear I understood she asked "kangaroos?" I chuckled and said "Yes, kangaroos are very cool." We chatted a bit more about her school, and I worked with her and her friends on pronounciation - Thursday, Birthday, Thirteen, Thirty. Words that are really hard to say for Asian students learning English. All of this is on video, so that ought to be entertaining where I'm trying to encourage her to get her tongue out from behind her teeth. At one point she got all excited and said to my friends in Chinese that it was the first time she met someone from Australia. They corrected her and said, "No, American". She suddenly got all embarrassed and excited at the same time. Such a confusing little bundle of emotions. Apparently she'd misunderstood me the day before, thought I was Australian, and then went home that night to read everything she could find about Australia so she could talk to me and not embarrass herself. Explains the question about kangaroos. Oops. She also keeps calling me "big sister" (a common greeting of respect in more rural areas of China), and I keep thinking she's going to hyperventilate from enthusiasm for trying to find the right words to communicate with me. She's fun to talk to, super cute, and who knows...someday in 10 years when she's finished college and her English improves, I may get a random fluent email from my new little friend.