If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

On Wednesday night I got a phone call that went something like this:

Chinese person: "What are you doing tomorrow."
Me: "I have my first day of class."
Chinese person: "We need you to go somewhere. You can cancel your class for the day."
Me: "What will I be doing?" Chinese person: "You will go to a school and introduce yourself to some students there."

Cool beans. I get to cancel a class where I have yet to meet any students to go to a city I don't know, to talk to some mystery students at an unknown school. Aside from obvious communication problems I have here with the Chinese language, I think problems are exacerbated by the fact that sometimes people don't actually want me to know what is going on. At any rate, my class got cancelled and I met at my school at the time and place designated with another American teacher so we could do this mystery task. At this point the only thing we knew we were doing is going to another school and saying hi to students. We took an hour bus ride to the south east of Zhengzhou to a school in the country side. The drive was pleasant enough and it was nice to get out of Zhengzhou for the first time.

It was fun to be in the country and see an area that was not quite so busy.

The Elementary School

As soon as the bus stopped I looked out the door and could see in the distance some kids playing with yo-yos. Naturally, I decided to talk to the kids to see how good their yo-yos are. They were in a little courtyard area that house the outdoor bathrooms. It is also the area where all the garbage is kept. The kids with the yo-yos were shoveling garbage into a corner and seeming to have a pretty fun time when I arrived.

Here is where the bathrooms are. I didn't look inside, but judging from the outside, I am glad that I didn't have to use them.

It was fun to talk to the kids and play with a yo-yo for a bit. For the record, Chinese yo-yos are much better and much cheaper than American yo-yos. And for the most part, Chinese kids have more yo-yo skills than any kid in America. One of these days I am going to hire a kid to teach me some cool yo-yo tricks.

I started to walk around the school yard some more. People were setting up for an assembly or something of the like and they told me they didn't need me for a while. The school grounds were fun to explore. I think anything outside the city has a little more character and history to it. It is a bit more relaxing. The school grounds were overcome with weeds but the weeds added a sense of peace and realism to the whole area.

Most schools I have seen here have quite a few ping pong tables outside. Usually they are not that great, but a ping pong table does not take much to be functional. These ping pong tables look like they have not been played on for a while. Sadly, it seems that basketball might slowly overtake ping pong as the most popular sport in China for the younger generation (though it is not quite there yet).

After I had done some exploring, I went back to the main area because the assembly was about ready to start. All the children walked out with their chairs and started filing to their places. It was fun to see so many kids.

Some lady gave announcements about a program for the kids then gave a pretty long (and presumably boring) speech to the kids to tell them to be good or something like that; I didn't really understand all of what she said. After that, they began the performances. The first group to perform was a group of boys who did a robot dance.

Dancing robots!

The robot dance was really quite cool and the kids seemed to enjoy it a lot. After that, there was a girl who played the traditional bamboo flute. A lady who sang a traditional song, then a couple who did magic tricks. So after seeing a bunch of impressive acts that obviously had been prepared well in advance, naturally the next act would be to have a couple white guys stand in front of everyone to make fools of themselves.

We really had no idea what we were expected to do. Fortunately, since I speak a bit of Chinese, I was able to talk to the kids. I asked them all how they were doing. "HAAAAAO!" (good). Then I asked them if they like to sing. "XIHUAAAAN!!" (like). With that established. We decided we might as well sing "If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands." It went so well that we even made up a verse on the spot at the end. "If you are happy and you know it, turn around." I guess the kids were not too happy, because only me and Jon were the ones that turned around.

Apparently some of the kids enjoyed the performance more than others.

I think the performance went about as well as expected. It was certainly a fun experience. Here is a video of some of what happened:

After the kids went back into the school to study for the rest of the day, the administrators of the school decided to have us go out to eat with them about a block down the road.

The easiest way to get people to wave to you, is just to point your camera at them.

The country side in China.

Walking the short block to the restaurant was enjoyable. It was nice being on a dirt road and seeing a bit of life like how you would expect to see in a movie portraying China. I thought it was quite lovely.

Tricycle truck?

The fancy restaurant.

Going out to eat is always fun. Sadly, in this part of China they rarely serve rice with the food. When will the Chinese learn that Chinese food is always supposed to have rice?!