Nature Education Camp

Really sorry for not writing, I have basically zero free time now, plus the internet here has been broken, but the work here is good fun. I've been doing it for a couple of weeks or so now. Apparently they decided to completely change my placement without telling me anything about it, but luckily it's been for the best. I was originally going to teach English and design websites, and now I'm in a team of volunteers organising a 'Nature Education Camp' for Beijing schoolchildren, many of whom are children of migrant workers. It's good to be out in the countryside and get to meet real rural Chinese people, who stare at me a lot, but then talk friendly-sounding slang and give me enormous spiky cucumbers to eat.

The kids are brilliant, as kids generally are, and the other volunteers are also really cool: mostly from China, two from Hong Kong and two from the US to keep me sane. Most can speak reasonable English which is really lucky in terms of getting things done, though the language barrier makes it hard for us to attend the hugely long meetings, a mixed blessing. As with volunteering in Sri Lanka, it's pretty disorganised at times but the good spirit always holds things together. My camera broke on the day I arrived in Beijing so I unfortunately don't have any photos to post, and can't even post the ones I took before, until get them transferred to CD. Should be able to nab some other peoples' at some point though. They're also making a video of the camp so that will probably be the best way to remember it all.

So the computer is not reliable and I don't have that much time but if I haven't spoken to you in a while please do call me on Skype, (or if you don't have a headset use Jajah http://www.jajah.com/) for about 1p a minute: it's +8613263286675673 , and 9-10:30 is the best time, that's 2-3:30 British time. Hope to hear from you.

P.S. I added three numbers before the last digit so that computers can't get my number by browsing the internet and send me spam texts. Ciao for now!

Currently listening to: Gabriel Teodros and the Blue Scholars. Bookah!