Village School

Right now, we have a group visiting Mengzi and Honghe University from Clearwater College in Florida. There are about 15 college students and 4 adult sponsers. On Thursday last week, Brian organized a trip for the group to a small village about an hour outside of Mengzi. This village is very poor and extremely remote (our drivers had no idea where it was and were not too please about having to drive down a narry, bumpy dirt path to get to the village.) The village has about 25 families in it, I was told. In the village is a small primary school that one of Brian's former students attended. The school is literally a one-room-schoolhouse that is about as primitive as you can get. There are about 25 - 30 students of all different ages who study in this little school. Most of the students belong to the Miao minority. These students had never seen this many Westerners before. Their faces and the conditions of their school just melt your heart. I think it was a one-of-a-kind, memorable experience--for both the Americans and the village students.

The Clearwater team helped buy notebooks, pens, soccer balls, and blackboards to give to the students and for the school to use. Here some of the boys on the team are carrying the blackboards up the path to the school.

The students stand outside their school, singing and clapping to welcome us.


Our group could barely fit into their little classroom. Brian gave a little introduction and then we all sang a few songs for the kids and did an impromptu English lesson.


This girl, who I named Lucy since it sounded like her Chinese name, opened up to me a little bit although she was still pretty shy. I would have guessed her to be about 7 or 8 years old, but she told me she was 12. When I asked her how old I was she guess I was 16, so I guess we were both having trouble gauging each other's ages! :)


The girls wore their traditional Miao dresses which are brightly colored with many layers and lots of elaborate beading.


One good thing about kids is that even if you don't speak the same language, throwing and kicking balls are universally fun and doesn't require much communication.

Me with some of the boys

The kids wave goodbye to us as we leave.