Hi!

I think I might start a blog because these emails are so long and I don't
want people to "feel boring" -- anyway, there are a few exchanges I've had
today and yesterday that I'd like to share:

Yesterday I had lunch with my acupuncture student friend. He told me lots
of really interesting things about Chinese medicine, but probably the most
interesting was talking about SARS. He asked me what kinds of feelings I
had about SARS when it came out and I told him that we were all worried
and alarmed. He said "oh! Actually, that was the happiest time of my
life!" That was because the kids got 15 minutes extra at recess every day
to limit their time cooped up together in class and lower the risk of
infecting each other. He said that every day before he picked up the paper
he'd pray for one of the kids in his school to have come down with SARS,
and then he'd look to see if the school was listed for closure. And his
dad found himself alone in a hotel in a particularly high-risk area in the
south on a business trip, and they told him he showed the right symptoms
and should go to a hospital -- but he was frightened that he really would
become infected were he to do so, so he stayed by himself and got lots
of sun and ate nothing but garlic that week, and according to my friend,
his dad just cured himself like this. Mind and body!

Today we had two very successful classes at Happy Camp. Remember how I
said I'd never touch the rubbish? Well, that's exactly what we had them
doing today, and I'm sure all of you would balk if you saw what happened.
I'll leave that for the next email because I need to go to bed, but for
now --

The kids love answering really simple questions (maybe our kids like that
too and I'm just inexperienced with this age group). Anyway, even the
thirteen year olds don't seem to get bored with teacher student exchanges
like:
"What is this?"
"A banana!"
"Do you like to eat bananas?"
"Yes!"
"Would you ever eat a banana as you stroll along the road?"
"Yes!"
"And what do you do when you finish your banana?"
(after a pause) "Throw the peel in the trash!"
"Is that the right thing to do my friends?"
"Yes!"
"Is that what you always do?"
"Yes!"
"And you'll keep doing that in the future?"
"Yes!"
...

We did quite a bit of that last week, but today we had them sort the trash
after they collected it. They could choose to put it in one of the three
bags we'd prepared, "Recyclable," "Non-recyclable," and "Hazardous".
...
"What's this?"
"A cigarette butt!"
"Can we recycle it?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
(Long pause, everyone thinks very hard, then one girl raises her hand)
"Yes, why not?"
"Because you can't sell it."

Actually, the kids were really good at sorting the rubbish into the right
bags. The ones who knew where to put the trash seemed to have it down pat,
while others had to think a bit about it, but in general they were pretty
accurate. It was fascinating, though -- with the exception of paper, which
as one boy pointed out could be used to make new paper, everything that
went into the recycling bag belonged there because you could sell it.

I'll see if I can find out more about the recycling system here before
delivering a load of rubbish to you (no pun intended, really!) but at
least it's clear that that the economic incentives of recycling here are
very high, and that's effected even the five and six year olds of this
little community. Whenever we held up a piece of trash and they thought
about where to put it, it seemed they were racking their brains trying to
recall whether they might find it on the street or whether it's something
their parents -- or maybe even themselves -- put aside for selling.