The Real China

After many months of civilized life in Shanghai, it is time for me to see something more Chinese... more real... and even more interesting...

Next week I will go to Guangxi province, south China to visit children in rural mountain areas together with a Maitian organization. They are helping really poor children to go to school and who knows... hopefully for some to change their lives... They go to most remote villages and look for kids that are not able to get any education. There are three main reasons for why they do not go to school:
1. The closest school is 2-3 hours hiking away from their homes.
2. Their parents need them at home to work in the fields or simply doing daily chores.
3. They do not have money.
And do you know how much one year at school cost there? Less that 25 EUR per kid...
And do you know how much it cost to build one school there? Less than 6.000 EUR...

Me and a friend will accompany big group of Chinese volunteers. We will visit two schools that earlier  received school materials, toys, clothes etc We will also visit number of families to either check if the kids are going to school (got money and actually are willing to hike hours to get to school) or to convince parents that education is important and they should let their kids go and learn...

It will be a rough time. Rough accommodation, cold and a lot of hiking. The last part I so do not mind :)
I get butterflies in my stomach just from thinking about what's ahead of me...

When does IKEA become less Swedish?

Living so far away from Europe, you start treating places like IKEA like piece of a home land. The same way as embassy legally is treated as its country, entering IKEA you feel like you travel between places. Usually when I go to IKEA, directly from the entrance I feel like I am in Sweden (kind of).

But last time it was very different. When I came the first thing I saw was a lot of products related to Chinese New Year, read kitchen towels with yellow dragons, hot pot pads and many other things. And the music... Very Chinese... The charming part was people singing and swinging to the rhythm. Both adults and kinds where singing "Happy New Year" when looking at the couches or kitchen furnitures.

It is only one week left to the celebration of the Chinese New Year and we are still struggling with ourselves if we should stay here and try to see how Chinese people celebrate or should we get away from here... Why do we consider leaving China during this time? One reason never ending fireworks... 24h around the clock.

According to the very old tradition New Year has been perceived as a man-eating beast that was afraid of red colour and loud sound. When people realized that they started placing red paper decorations in their windows and put bamboo wod to the fire (old time fireworks). So, the louder it gets the safest it will be in the coming year... And believe me, Chinese simply love fireworks. They do them for any occasion they have; birthday, opening a new shop, buying a new car and so on... And with these "small" occasions they go wild. So with a new year... God help us all... :) They call New Year celebration "Spring Festival". According to lunar calendar the spring starts then.

And strangely enough you can feel in the air spring coming and the birds are sing in the garden from early morning :)

Hello World!

Long time, no read... And there was so much to write about... Truly eventful time. Vincent turn 5 and had a great birthday party with all his classmates and some siblings. That was what I call FULL HOUSE. He was very happy and all the kids as well. Pure success :) Especially that grandma was with us then. Kisses grandma!

Vincent played his first Bingo (so did I). His patience lasted for two games and then he played with his friends. He won a little something in lucky draw. He was so happy :)

Lucia tåg - a Swedish tradition that he got to go with during Winter Concert. Of course dressed as a ginger bread man. Same concert and a great performance by Vincent's class singing 'catch a falling star'. Just lovely.

One day later yet another performance on the school stage. It is amazing that Vincent who was so shy if front of others, now he simply goes on a stage and perform as it was the most natural thing. And the most important thing, he enjoys it so much.

Vincent is training at the swimming pool and the bath tap to break his fear of being under water. He accomplished a lot last year, from being in panic when in the water, to fully enjoying playing and swimming with help of foam pipe. I hope he will start swimming by himself soon. Next lesson already next week :)

Yesterday we came back from Poland. Long trip, but sooo worth it. We enjoyed every minute of our stay there. It felt like we never left :)

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you all best in 2012!