Final days in Jilin, China

In this picture, there are about 160 students, 9 of us seminarians in the front (7 of which are from the NAC), and Fr. Brian Barrons, the Maryknoll Superior in  China and director of the Summer program on the right side, one away from me.  While the vast majority of the students are not Christian and have very little knowledge about religion, many often convert due to the example of charity and generosity of Fr. Brian.  In fact, last year he baptized about 60 of his students, even though as a foreigner he is not allowed to preach in China.

After 3 weeks of teaching in groups of about 20 students per class, which rotated every three days or so (resulting in each of us teaching 4 classes, so about 80 students), we ended on Friday with a sort of graduation ceremony and a final banquet, and of course about 5 million photos.  Even just having had each class for three days was more than enough time to get to know them well and to be able to joke around with them and go out with them to different restaurants and activities in the city, like the night market and the music fountain down at the river.

I somehow got the reputation of being tough, though that may be due to the fact that I made them speak only English while in class.  However, I gave them ice cream just about everyday, which, at less than 1 yuan per bar, cost less than 3 dollars for 20 students, and I also taught some of my kids how to play Frisbee, which they had never even seen before, so they quickly started to warm up to me and realize that I actually was not that strict and just wanted them to have a good time while learning English.  If anything, they seemed to take it too seriously, typically wanting to start class early or work during the break times.  The kicker was when they heard that they would not be having a full class day on one of the friday's because of our trip to Beijing, and they let out a deep sigh.  Part of it, though, was clearly that they genuinely enjoyed the loose, spontaneous style of us Americans besides revering us as celebrities from a sort of faraway promised land.

One of the interesting and unique opportunities of teaching in a very loose structure was that we could basically ask them to write about whatever we found interesting, such as their thoughts on the education system and what they would really desire to become, since many chose medicine simply because either their parents chose it or because they scored at a certain level on the college entrance exam.  I realized later that their more critical opinions became more transparent in their essays because the students knew that some of their classmates were members of the communist party and could report them for any critique of the current system.  The fact that these students were all nice, joyful kids is just another instance of how the crippling effect of government control can easily slip under the radar.

At the final banquet, two of the other seminarians and myself sang "Will ye go, lassie, go?" to a group of adoring fans.  Each class did some type of performance, and my final class had me sing "Hey Jude" with them, and we ended with a Dutch ra-ra-ra song that I learned at SJV called "Lanz a la leben" despite perhaps having some accent issues.