Later we tried to build our team flag. We decided to have our mascot as Lidao village's tribe, Bunan. The other group's mascot was Duma, which was the native mountain black bear in Taiwan. We had the word "Bunan" labeled across the banner that we were going to make. The banner turned out quite messy, but nevertheless full of creativity and the spirit of the children.
We had free time left, so we decided to teach them a cheer for our Football Game that is going to take place later. We taught them, "2, 4, 6, 8, Who do we appreciate? Bunan, Bunan, Bunan Bunan Bunan." We filled the room with energy and taught them English at the same time.
Before lunch we tried to teach them "Mary Had a Little Lamb." They haven't completely grasped the song, but they are getting close.
All the volunteers were assigined to take care 3 children. There names were Chu Wei, Tuo Shen, Hao Wei. We had lunch together with the children. We had a short break and then we were gathered together again. I was assigned to take care of the 3 children to draw what they believe to be the world map. In the end only two children, Tuo Shen and Hao Wei, continued to participate within my group. We were given a giant canvas to sketch the World Map. Now that they had given the knowledge of the world geography from Google Earth, we started to draw the Earth.
The kids looked at the sample and they thought the Americas looked like a giant bird, so Hao Wei drew the America like a giant bird. Tuo Shen thought Eurasia looked like an Elephant so he drew an elephant shaped landmass into the canvas. They then drew each continent and shaped it into place. I then guided them into labeling each continent with English and Chinese. It wasn't very simple for them, but they tried hard and got it right. We then labeled countries that were given to us and then we labeled the cities. We showed it off to each other group then we headed down onto the Basketball court, to play Football. We couldn't use the grass due to the giant Typhoon.
They were extremely excited when we took out the first Football. They grabbed it and started it shooting it into Basket as if it were a basketball. We then taught them to throw it and we started to play catch. They were all very enthusiastic and we played catch for an hour. Then Dr. Ryan came down and went over all the rules and throwing techniques. He ran some Football exercise drills. They all had fun playing Football.
At night we had a barbeque with the children of Lidao. They all chanted out songs while waiting the meat to be cooked. It was really fun watching them sing and chant. The food was really good. The most special thing about the meal was the salt-coated fish which was cooked over the grill. The skin was too salty to be edible, but nevertheless the inside meat had great texture and flavor. I guess this was the cooking style of the Bunan tribe. The typhoon was really big and the rain poured. It was very comfortable to eat the delicious food and sit by the warm fire. As Georgina said, "It was like a bonfire in the rain!" We retired later after the meal.
The next day, breakfast was served. We were going to stay a lot longer, but because of the immense rain pour from the Typhoon we had to go down the mountain village of Lidao later in the morning.
However, we stayed long enough to give the children one last lesson. I first went up with Joey to the board to write out the different members of the family in English. I called up random children to write up the words in the language of Bunan. Then Georgina and Jessica taught them "Mary had a Little Lamb". They had a hard time with the last line, "Who's fleece was white as snow", but they successfully learned the song. Jonathan and Thomas went up to the board next to teach the children to teach them the childhood song, "If your happy and you know it." They all knew the melody, but we taught them the English lyrics.
Sadly, it was time for us to depart and we had to say goodbye to our knew found Aboriginal friends, the Bunan Children of Lidao Elementary.
-Elton Chen
Written under the supervision of Jonathan Lin, Jessica Lin, Jenny Hsiao, Thomas Chen, Joey Lee, and Georgina Chen.
Posted August Eighth, Two-Thousand, Nine Anno Domini. GMT +8, 22:37.
No comments:
Post a Comment