Beijing

We visited a fairly modern school before we went out into the country. Perhaps this was to give us a false sense of security. Beijing Dongfang Vocational School was nothing like the school we were going to see. It is a school that specializes in tourism, public transportation and horticulture. It is highly prescriptive but students also study other core subjects. The school was on two campuses. The horticulture studies was the most interesting. The students handled everything from the cellular growth of the plants, to lab work, to the end distribution and sale of the plants. There were rows of greenhouses with cacti, orchids and various other tropical kind of plants. The students at that school made the floral bouquets for the Olympics medalists. We do nothing even remotely similar to that at any high school I have ever been in. The tourism classroom had a wall sized 3D virtual reality training screen. W also had a tea ceremony and a lovely lunch at a restaurant beside the school. The meal was good but in hind sight, the meals that we had in the country were actually more delicious. We were really nervous at the first lunch because we didn't know what they might serve and I always feel like my chopstick skills will fail me and I will drop things in the middle of the table. You know in these situations that everyone is watching to see if you can use them or not. The horrible man that we went with insisted on being a fork at every meal. He spoke to Chinese people like they were deaf or stupid and it was highly embarrassing. After that first day, we didn't know how we would bare being around him for the rest of the week. The worst part was that the towns we were going to in the coming days had never met foreign people before and we would represent England and Canada for all those people. He would loudly announce that he was "foreigner" and "need fork". I could write a 25 point list about the upsetting things he said or did each day.

While we were waiting to go over the restaurant a man came to sell crisps and sweets to the kids. I was surprised by how many fat kids there were. I thought it would be nothing but thin short kids but they were pretty tall and fat! I think it is the 1 child only factor. It would be easy to spoil a nation of only children. Apparently though, people in the country can have more than one child to help out. At the end of that day, we really had no idea what was coming. We were so impressed with the standard of equipment that was available at a vocational school. The problem is that it is such a specific education that it limits future career prospects for those students to those few professions. It is a highly sought-after school though.

A photographer followed us around the whole day and wasn't subtle about it. The only time he look remotely shy was when we photographed him photographing us. It was could to make him feel conspicuous instead of us for a while. It was very interesting to see the place and speak with everyone, we didn't really get a chance to speak with any students though. I imagine the tourism students probably spoke English very well. One more post to come on the tourist stuff we did. Hopefully it will come sometime before Christmas. We are supposed to get a bunch of snow this weekend. I hope it comes late Sunday night so we can have our first snow day of the year!