Qinghai English Summer Camp

I have finally made it to Huangyuan, Qinghai - the northwestern region of China! I am here to be a teacher for the Qinghai English Summer Camp at a middle school for 200 students aged 10-15. They are from a poor and rural region of China where some travel as far as 15km to school - a 2 hour walk! I am here with 8 foreigner teachers and 8 local Beijing university students as translaters! I arrived from Beijing by train which should have taken 24 hours but due to a landslide took 33 hours. We rode in a hard sleeper, which means there are 6 bunk beds in one cluster with multiple clusters on a train carriage. Before this train ride the only exposure I had to trains was watching them on Harry Potter! Although the ride was long it was wonderful because I was with a great group of people and got to practice my Mandarin with the people around me! We played games, prepared for camp, chatted about our lives, ate TONS of snacks, read, wrote in our journals, and took lots of naps! Everyone is constantly eating on the train - now I know why everyone had a huge sack of snacks at the train station.

We arrived in Xining which is the capital of Qinghai. The town is beautiful and prosperous. The city has a Muslim influence so there are people wearing Muslim clothing. The Chinese people here are also more tanned, tall, and have these wonderful rosy cheeks! No need for blush here :) Everyone is also very friendly and there are children playing everywhere! Meals here include a lot of noodles, mutton (lamb!), fresh mountain vegetables, and grain which can only be grown about 2000 meters. I hear that we will get to try yak when we make our trip to Qinghai Lake next week!

Our school is about 2700 meters and although I was originally worried about altitude sickness it hasn't been a problem! The environment is beautiful here! We're surrounded by mountains, lush grasslands, wild flowers, and rich vegetation where muttons and cows roam the land. It's amazing to see how people live their lives here!!!

More about our school! We are staying in the school dormitories and the only source of water here is a tap in the middle of the grass areas which pumps spring water from the mountains. The washrooms are... well.. let's just say unless you've been to rural countrysides I'll save you from the visuals. There are no showering facilities so we have to travel into town to pay 7RMB to shower in a showering facility located in the back of a hair salon. My first and only shower so far has been glorious!!!

Our first day of camp is tomorrow and I can't wait to meet all of the kids! I've been preparing my introduction in Mandarin and really hope to bond with my students!!!