The Life Changer

I am having trouble even beginning this blog post, because I know that the things that I have experienced and learned in the past week are more than my words can ever describe. 

Our field trip ended, with a few days in Shangri-la.  I'm basically in Tibet. Shangrli-la's population is almost all Tibetan, and if I didn't already love the Tibetan people and culture enough, this week has made me fall for them even harder.  The city is beautiful, with people walking around in their traditional Tibetan clothes, and the snowy mountains in the distance.  Tibetans love to sing and dance.  Everywhere you go, Tibetan music is playing, people are dancing, and often times prayer flags out number people. 

I had already been here for about a day, just passing through, during my spring break mountain trip.  During our class time here, we went to an orphanage, to the largest monastery in Yunnan, and visited a non profit school for rural Tibetans. After the close of the field trip, I planned to take a few day backpacking hike with a few of my friends.  However, after seeing the school and the orphanage, I had a really strong gut feeling that I should stay here. It was a feeling that I couldn't ignore.  So with the spontaneous air that I've adopted as the theme of my China trip, I changed all my plans. I bailed on my friends, and inquired about volunteer opportunities at the school and orphanage we visited.  

Before I begin describing my outstanding, life changing week, I'll talk a little bit about the things I did with my class. 

I sow lotsssss of YAK again. I danced around the presents they left, and got as close as I could. Okay I probably could have gotten closer but I was kind of scared haha. 

 On the side of a mountain there is some Tibetan writing, I'm not sure what it means... but it reminded me of the Hollywood sign. But in Tibet....haha 

The monastery was cool, there were lots of monks (duh Christina), and really beautiful architecture and art. 

 This painting represents life, and how everything is codependent. I see it all over this city

Okay now to the good stuff.  Something that I've considered doing as a future profession, is working with international adoption.  When we got to the orphanage, the kids danced and sang for us! Afterwards, we taught them duck duck goose (attempting to translate it directly as YA, YA, E- pronounced uhhh).

These children are actually not up for adoption, they just live in this home together.  The director described it as a big family, where they are raised not only by the people who work there, but each other, as a big family.  She herself was a Tibetan orphan, who lived in foster families, and much preferred this atmosphere for the children. It was an interesting concept, but they seemed so happy, so how do you question that? 

Okay, now to the school.  The school is called ETTI (Eastern Tibet Training Institute), and it's not a normal school. It was created for rural Tibetans with few opportunities, looking to make the move from their rural lifestyle to an urban one, with more jobs and different opportunities.  It teaches them English, formal Chinese, simple computer skills like setting up an email, basic accounting, and many other skills to help them make their transition to urban life.  All their tuition and room and board are paid for, and at the end of the term, they have a two week internship to help them start their careers. 

Most of the students are about my age, and they all come from poor rural families. Almost all of them are nomads. NOMADS. As in they don't have a permanent home, they most depending on the season, making a living off herding their animals.  One boy told me his family had 160 yak, and 400 sheep! Stop and imagine this for a second.  They leave their families, countless animals, and everything they're familiar with in their rural home, to go to school.  They are probably going to be the first ones in their family with a job in a city.  Many of them think Shangri-la is a big city, because to them, it is. Compared to the rest of China, it's a one horse town. 

I grew very close to these students.  They were absolutely incredible. Every day working at the school with them, I was in awe and inspired by their dedication to education and dedication to changing their life.  To put their view of life in perspective, one day in class while working on forming sentences about going places by bus train etc., one of the students made the sentence "to take a yak to America". HA! He didn't realize A) how far the US is from China (with a small body of water in between) and B) that no one really rides yak outside of rural life. It was SO charming, and made me love him even more. 

I played frisbee with them one day during their free time! It was very funny, they were uhhh not very good at it. Frisbee is definitely an American game, we called it feipan (flying plate). 

On Saturday morning, I went with them to a Temple outside of the city.  We took this tiny bus, and the whole way they sang Tibetan songs.  That's something I love about this culture, how seriously they take their music.  Music and dancing are central to the Tibetan lifestyle.  The temple had more prayer flags than I've ever seen! I couldn't walk straight, I had to continually duck around and walk through the flags. It was really cool.

Saturday afternoon, I went back to the orphanage.  This time I brought them a big bin of candy, and we went to the river nearby and sat in the grass while they ate the candy.  They weren't very talkative, so most of our conversation consisted of me blabbering in Chinese while they inhaled the sweets I brought.  It was so much fun spending time with them, and I hope that my short visit showed them that they are really loved. 

ETTI's English classes were split up into two parts, one part followed their book, and the other part was focused on speaking.  This week in the speaking class, they were talking about their dream job and goals.  Some of them dreamed of being English tour guides, some dreamed of going to college, and others dreamed of singing Tibetan songs on the grassland of their homeland.  When you think about it, we're actually not that different. We all have dreams.  One of my dreams now is to return to this area, and some of their dreams are to go to the US. 

Saying goodbye to the students at ETTI was really difficult for me.  I grew unimaginably close to them over the course of less than a week.  I think despite our severely different backgrounds, we were are similar points in our life, and actually had a lot in common.  This allowed us to actually form relationships.  Each of us had goals for our future, some likely, and some unlikely.  We were both struggling to learn a new language, where we helped each other.  All of us were also away from home, and the things we are familiar and comfortable with.  They've been away from home at ETTI for about 2 months, I've been in China for 2 and a half months. We were all a little homesick, but also realized the positive things we were doing for our future and ourselves. 

 Even if they didn't learn that much, I did. 

One of the girls told me she believes it was through "yuanfen" that we were brought together.  Yuanfen can be translated as two people being destined to meet, or fate. This is is the best feeling a town/city/village has given me during my time in China.  I can't deny the feeling that teaching and forming relationships with these outstanding students gives me. This is the first place in China that I could see myself living as a post college option. I fully intend on returning to this place. I can't imagine not returning, and I will NEVER forget the things I learned or the people I met during this past week.

I realize this blog post is a little less humorous than the past few, but I can't help but to speak passionately about my experience. It was THAT incredible.  It has helped me realize the things I really care about, as well as maybe narrow a little bit of what I want to do with the rest of my life. If you want to read or learn more about the two organizations I was involved with during my life changing week, this is the website to the school www.etti.org.cn and the website to the orphanage is www.tendol-gyalzur-tibet.ch

Even though I had these life changing experiences, and feel like I've conquered the world, as well as many of my fears in China. I'm still the same awkward, overdramatic, spaz Christina...

www.etti.org.cn

www.tendol-gyalzur-tibet.ch