Life has been great. Volunteering at the elementary school has been really fun. I have been learning a lot about elementary schoolers in China. All the kids at the school all want my signature they think it is the coolest thing ever ( but not as cool as my hair).
Something very interesting happened today which kind of gave me a better insight into want my classmates are think and feel.
At my school we kind of have psychology class. In this class we do activities that have to do with emotions and thoughts. Today we did an activity. The teacher asked us to write our five most things in our lives and then rank those five things by importance. Then the teacher called on some people to share. The first person got up and said ranked love and her own personal goals first ( respectively) and then put family at the bottom of the five. The next person the teacher called on said he didn't know. The third and final person also ranked family last and other things first. I feel when they say family they mean the stress put on them by family i.e. Parents . A huge problem is that parents and society put a huge amount of pressure on the children to study, so there is not a lot of time for individual hobbies. I know three students do not represent all of China nor my class but I think it is interesting how they ranked their own aspirations before studies and parents, which breaks from the wide-spread stereotype that all Chinese students care about are studies and they feel studies are most important thing. Today was incredibly interesting. This year has been the best year of my life.
