country road take me home...

In an earlier post I had mentioned 2 orphanage volunteering options that seemed promising. However, I thought that it would be cool to volunteer at the orphanage that I was from. This orphanage is called Fu Yang Social Welfare Institution and is located in Zhe Jiang province. I called and emailed a women named Sophie and asked if she could possibly contact the orphanage I was from and see if they would allow us to volunteer there. Sophie has worked with my family a lot in regards to communicating with people in China for us. She's been a huge help. Anyways she contacted them back and told me that it would be fine for us to volunteer at the orphanage but we would need to get the governments approval to be there. As of now we are waiting for the approval.

It would be really awesome to be able to visit the orphanage that I was from and volunteer there. I am praying and hoping that the Chinese government approves.

Volunteering at an orphanage

So besides teaching in China, Amy and I will be volunteering at an orphanage. We will be doing this after we teach. As of right now, I don't quite know which orphanage we'd be volunteering at in China.

I have written a lot of emails to different organizations and people to figure out different possible orphanages that could use our help. This process of emailing and contacting people has been extremely frustrating. I've written to at least 35-40 different organizations and people that could assist me in finding an orphanage to volunteer at. Many have not responded but those who have, have been a huge help getting me closer to an orphanage to volunteer at.

After much research I've come to find 2 organizations that seem promising. One is called Shepherd's Field Children's Village and is located in Tian Jian-next to Beijing. This particular orphanage specializes in special needs children and rejected children that are found nearby. The other organization is called Home of Hope. This orphanage is right next to where we would be teaching at in Henan. Many of the children here are older, around 5-8 years old. Both of these orphanages are foreign-ran. This means that they are set up and ran by foreigners usually Americans. I think it is very rare that foreigners are aloud to volunteer in Chinese ran orphanages and that is why many of these volunteer options are foreign based.

I have to still think about the different choices and figure out budget to see which orphanage would be best to volunteer at.

We will be.....here!

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Actually, no one cares where Caremen is these days. The real question that people care about is where in the world is Amy and Hua? (I did always think that it was cool how Ms. Sadiego went on cool adventures into different countries doing her elusive thieving work until those gumshoes got her)

So as many of you know, Amy and I will be going to the other side of the world to China! We both are going through a program where we teach English at a school in China for 3 weeks. The school is called Minkai. It is located in the rural city in the Henan province. We will be teaching at a boarding school that is the middle of no where, well its somewhere...just there is nothing around it except some fields.

Amy and I will be running the English summer program at this school. Many of these students at MinKai have been "taught" English but their English is still very poor. The reason is that these students are taught English orally by Chinese teachers who were taught English by other Chinese teacher who learned their English by Chinese teachers who were taught by guess who-yep your right, other Chinese teachers. And all these Chinese teachers have horrible English. Have you talked to a Chinese person with a very heavy accent...well now imagine him teaching English to people and those people teaching other people English. Its bad news. A sentence such as "Where the bathroom?" suddenly becomes "the dog took a bath and I need a room." The The English language is butchered up horribly. So these student's English are product of butchered up English. We are going to be teaching these students correct English and stimulating conversations in English.

During our time teaching will be doing many activities with the student such as basic ESL instruction, vocabulary and rhyming games, many ice breakers, drama skits, communicative games, cultural learning, story telling, singing etc. As of now we are in the planning stages and have many ideas!

besides teaching there will be 2 days out of the week where we will be be participating in a program called cultural exchange where the Chinese students will show us an interesting aspect of their culture to Amy and I. We will then share something from our culture with them.

We both are excited for this adventure and want to not only to teach English but more importantly share God's love with these students. We want to develop good relationships with the students and have an impact on their lives. We are praying that God may just use us in great ways while we are in China and gives us many opportunities to share the Love of Christ with others.

1st post

Life goal #47-make a blog. I can finally check that off my life goal.

Hey, this is Hua Yong! So this is Amy and I's 1st blog ever, EVER. Both of us have never made a blog before and are excited to blog our awesome adventures!