First week in Xichang

Alright, so Xichang is amazing. I got in on Sunday the 9th, and took a cab from the second smallest airport I have ever been in to my hotel, which was unfortunately quite a ways away totaling 70 RMB ($11.50, I'm such a whiner). Before I came, I was looking into the area, and all I could find about it was that it is in the middle of the mountains, it was very poor, and it's far enough away from everything that it's the city where satellites are launched from. I thought I was coming to the middle of nowhere! But as it turns out, because of the amount of ethnic minorities in the area, it is a huge tourism town. For Chinese people at least. There's even a Walmart here! KFC and Pizza hut too. I was worried for no reason! If I can get pizza, I'll be just fine.

On Monday, I came to the office and met some of the people working there. I'm doing my internship at the Liangshan Yi Empowerment Center, which organizes schools for kids and women of the Yi ethnic minority here that can't afford it. The Yi people are very backward, from what I understand. It's the kind of culture that teaches children not to go to school because it's a waste of time. Ugh, it makes me shudder. They also apparently let children DRINK and SMOKE. WHAT??? As soon as they're big enough to walk and talk basically. I do not understand how you can not know that that is bad for a child. I was in the office one day, and a 17 year old kid gave me some chocolate, and when I bit into it, it had alcohol in it. I was taken aback, and asked: is that alcohol inside candy? And he was like, ya. And I was like, sorry I should tell you I don't drink. And he was like, oh no it's just rice alcohol, you can drink that. *facepalm* There's also a huge drug and AIDS problem in the rural area here, and people are pretty much all around unsanitary. I live in the city so I don't see a lot of that here, but in the rural areas it's bad apparently.

The office set me up to live in an apartment where there are currently six kids that got pulled out of school for either psychological or family problems or both. And five of the six of them were born with AIDS because of uninformed HIV positive parents. When I first met them, I would never have guessed that they had any problems at all. They seemed like happy, normal, bratty, cute kids. But after being with them for a week, I get it. They range from ages 7 to 13, and I've been teaching them how to read. None of them have gotten a good education because of their family situation. I had never seen them really sad before today, but this afternoon, after class, one girl just started crying for no apparent reason, and wouldn't stop or move on her own for an hour. The other two girls got in a fight over some toy or something, and when I was trying to settle them down, one started crying worse and said "I just thought of my parents". "What about them?" I asked. "I don't know where they are", she said. What do you say to comfort a child whose family is just gone? And she either has no idea where they are or is blocking out what happened to them. That caused the oldest girl to start thinking about her family, and the afternoon turned into a big crying fest.

The lady taking care of them is a forty-something Spanish woman named Monica. She is LEGIT. Seriously, she's got these kids well-trained. She said when they got here, they didn't know what toilet paper was for. And now, they brush their teeth after every meal, wash their own clothes, and have a cleaning schedule that they follow every day. I don't know how she does it. After my first day here, I was like waaahh I want to go hooooome. I was exhausted and just wanted to be ALONE for two seconds. But she just goes non-stop all day every day, paying attention to each child separately and managing to cook and shop for all of them. She also apparently has a knee problem that is bad enough that it needs surgery, but it doesn't even phase her. She must be exhausted, but it doesn't show even a little bit. I don't think I've met a more selfless person in my entire life.

I still feel a little out of place here. I had no idea this was going to be my living situation before I got here, I thought I was going to be living in the office. I feel like I'm being more of a burden than a help at this point, because I'm not paying rent, and Monica refuses to let me pay for my share of food. I am literally taking food out of children's mouths! I've only been here a week, so I'm still figuring out how I can best help out, but for now I just try to keep the kids happy and not break anything.

My internet sucks here so I can't post pictures, but I will as soon as I can! Because it's gorgeous here.

bye bye for now!