Today we went to a local school in Beijing. All of the kids were very welcoming and kind.
We started off the day by visiting different classrooms for different electives such as mechanics and cooking class. At their school instead of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) they have added Arts into the acronym (STEAM). This was very different from our school because students learn how to build cars and cook, when we do not have courses like that.
Then we were paired with different Chinese students and went to a class with them. I went to a Chinese poetry class, where we learned the meanings of the poems that were being taught. The students and teachers helped us comprehend the poetry and to understand how the Chinese pronunciation flows better than the English pronunciation. Then we went to the schoolyard and played basketball with the students. The cheerleaders at the school stared off the basketball game with a cheer. Unfortunately, our MFS students lost the basketball game to the kids at the 171 Beijing School. After that, our MFS students talked with the students at the Beijing school.
— Bella
After a crowd pleasing basketball game, our class made our way to the arts hallway where we participated in a special lesson of canvas dying. As the teacher spoke to us in Mandarin, we attempted to understand what she was saying, but had to have some of her words translated. Similar to tie-dying, we folded and scrunched our cloths to our desired patterns and placed them in the dye.
While the cloths were soaking, we met with our partners in a designated room and had a gift exchange. My partner graciously gave me a porcelain bookmark, while I felt a little bit guilty handing her an Eagles tee-shirt. She did not know where Philadelphia was or what football was, but she thankfully accepted the shirt and we said our final goodbyes. Leaving the school was sad, but it lifted our spirits when we received WeChat texts from our partners and new friends.
Next, we stopped in a Times Square-like shopping area with name-brand stores such as Gucci and Rolex. As we continued to walk, we struck gold and found a highly populated, narrow road that turned out to be a food market. The street contained small stores and food booths, some of which were selling live scorpion on a stick, large soup dumplings, candy coated fruit, and many other exciting new delicacies. Then we had dinner, and afterwards we went to a second market similar to the first. This market, called the Night Market, was a strip of small stores and boutiques with everything from tee-shirts to “Coach” bags. Located along a river, the market also contained many karaoke bars where we could hear the talents of people off the streets. After an exhausting day, almost all of us fell asleep on the way back to the hotel.
— Priya