China Post 5

Thursday 4th January
Our most eventful day in China so far. After early devotions at 7:30am we headed off on a 40 minute drive to the home village of the foreign affairs official who gave us to go ahead to work in the KaiLi school. Forty minutes turned into 5 hours as we encountered roadworks and traffic jams the whole way. The worst jam had us at a complete standstill for over 40 minutes. The drivers here are absolute lunatics, road rules are not observed and with the frustration of roadworks and traffic jams people did crazy things. Over half of the traffic was coal trucks hauling coal from the mine to the power station closer to town. The remainder of the traffic was buses and taxis with the occasional private car. Overnight rain had turned the contruction areas (over 50% of the whole route) to mud which made it all the more treacherous. Our bus driver was amazing, he got us places I didn't think possible. The coal trucks would pass us with only inches to spare - one actually scrapred the back corner of the bus. This did not please our driver because he owns the bus - this also ensured that he drove more conservatively than the local buses. We reached the mountain village at around 3pm and did some dramas and puppets for the primary school children - they loved it. We noticed how short the children were the ten year olds were shorter than Matthew. It is partly due to poor nutrition - the children only eat 2 meals a day ad man y have to walk up to two hours to school and back eachday. It was very cold there - the pine trees were iced and it looked like they were covered in snow. The trip home was a bit quicker - only 2 hours. Our three children did remarkably well under the circumstances - hardly a complaint. Thomas slept for two hours which helped - however he is still awake now at 9:45pm. We wash our underclothes and lighter clothing in the wash basin most evenings and hang it on a line over the bath (thanks Mum Mc for those extra clothes lines). It takes about 2 days to dry. We take our larger clothing items to a nearby laundry to have them washed, dried, ironed and folded for 2 yuan (35 cents Australian) a piece. Tomorrow we visit two more villages - a school in the morning and medical clinic in the afternoon - they're only meant to be 30 minutes away but we'll wait and see.

Friday 5th January
The 30 minute estimate for our travel to today's village proved accurate the roads were very good. However the bus ride was followed by a 30 minute walk up a steep road to the village. We spent the morning teaching primary school children aged between 7 and 11. There were only about 20 students in this village primary and they didn't know any english expect hello. We played games like Duck, Duck, Goose and Simon Says.
When we finished teaching at noon we asked the children to take us back to their homes to see where they live. Annette, Kate, Tom, Lailin and I went to Shin Fei's (Boy) house. His mother was there with his 2 year old brother. The house had an outdoor cooking area and four rooms downstairs and a loft. The father works as a handyman in the closest town and is home only 6 months of the year.
In the afternoon the medicos (3 doctors, 2 medical students, a nurse, a pharmacist (Annette)) went to another village nearby to run a clinic while the rest of us stayed at the village school and did more teaching. We arrived back at the hotel at 5:30pm and walked down to the main shopping centre to have Suntray chicken - which is like KFC. Afterwards we went shopping and bought woolen gloves for Matt, Tom and I and thick woollen socks for all the kids. We also bought shoes for the three kids for a total of $20- Australian.
Again it was very cold - only 1 degree. This seems to be the norm now so I'll only mention if it is different from this.