The camp.

The camp

The lodge

The store.

The inside of a yurt.

The outdoor classrooms.

The animals.

The spectacular sunsets.

The scenery and nature.

It's a very special place.

Where are we?

We are at Camp Shamineau East.  We are here to teach English and share our lives. Shamineau East is in Inner Mongolia.    Inner Mongolia is a part of China, not the country Mongolia.  However, there are Mongolian's and Han Chinese as well as Russian's doing business and other Chinese minorities.  This part of Inner Mongolia is sparsely populated grassland and it is truly beautiful.  The sunsets are spectacular every night.   Since we are so far North, the sun rises around 3:30 AM and goes down after 9:00.  Last night, I went outside around 10:30 and saw a clear black sky with sharp white stars.  The Milky Way was spectacular and the Big Dipper clearly defined.  I saw two shooting stars.  It was spectacular.
There isn't a lot of money in this part of Inner Mongolia and few parents can afford to send their children to camp here.  The camp is supported by the generosity of others who want to help these children progress and grow.
The children here are a mix of Han Chinese and Mongolian.  There is separation and some tension.  The kids are an odd mix of very mature and astoundingly immature.  Many are only children and quite pampered.  Few know how to pick up after themselves. Most have nicer cell phones than I do (cell phones and cell phone service is cheap here).  There is a lot of training to do.
The kids are here to learn and practice English.  We have a basic curriculum but have worked on expanded it.

We brought two more-or-less willing workers with us to help make games and other curriculum.

We have a fairly heavy schedule.  The teacher's actually start at 6:45 AM with a meeting.

There are many spontaneous teaching opportunities.

Playing a "Getting to Know You" game.

English learning can happen over carpet ball.

We are here for 12 day and half way through the course.  We are tired but enjoying ourselves.  We came here three years ago and I am glad we came back.

The trip to camp.

We left on the 1:38 hard sleeper from Shenyang to Hailaer to make it to the camp.  Shenyang is in NorthEast China near North Korea and Hailaer in is farther inland and up, near the Mongolian and Russian border.  A hard sleeper has six berths per compartment and the compartments are open to the hallway.  They are actually pretty comfortable and wonderfully cheap!

Shenyang Train Station

Our train was very old and not air conditioned.  That was a surprise but not too bad.

Elisabeth in the middle bunk.

View of village along the way.

Church in village along the way.

The station in Hailaer.  It took 19 hours to get there but it really was pretty fun.  We had books and friends to make the time pass.  No one slept well but we all survived.

In Hailaer, we met the camp director and had wonton soup for breakfast.  Then we got on the long distance bus to camp.  Almost everything in the area of China is in multiple languages.

Train station instructions in Mongolian, Chinese and English.

Yurts off in the distance.

We arrived in the small town of Labu Dalin, where signs are also in Russian, Chinese, English and Mongolian.

We took a small mini-bus the rest of the way to camp.

View at the camp.

The first night, we were taken out to dinner with the camp staff.  Elisabeth and her friend proved their dissecting skills.

On the way back to the camp- amazing full double rainbow.  Incredible!

For the next two weeks....

we'll be here.  http://www.shamineaueast.com/  We are leaving on a 17 hour overnight hard sleeper at 1:30 today.  Be thinking of us and I'll be back in a few weeks with pictures and stories!

A funeral

Last Sunday night, we saw the people in the apartment complex across from us set up a big blue tent.  This area between the two buildings is quite active- we've seen old people exercising, young children playing, gardening, many men "watering" the grass and even a wedding.
So when the tent went up , we didn't think much of it.  I actually assumed that it was a wide screen TV for people to watch the World Cup.  That is not uncommon here.
Until we woke up on Monday morning and heard the music.

We heard traditional Chinese instruments being played.  We saw people in white sashes milling around- a symbol of the family of a dead person.

The band played for quite a while and then took a lunch break.  The music was actually pretty good-kind of like a jazz jam session.

Yellow flowers were set out (again, a symbol of death) and people came and sat around.

The music went on all day.

A woman came in a white cloak and wailed and prostrated herself in front of the tent. She was probably a professional wailer. We don't know what was in the tent but we assume that is was a picture of the dead person.  The body wouldn't have been there because cremation is mandatory in the city.

At one point, people walked around with lit candles and incense was lit.  The family also came out and mourned, including a sobbing widow.  I didn't take any pictures of that.

The music went on all day and into the night.  Paul's tutor told him that in the countryside, this ritual goes on for three days.  It's actually illegal to do in the city because of the noise, but no one wants to reinforce it.  So they let it go for a day.  Another Chinese friend came over that night and said she had never seen a ritual like that.  She's a city girl.

It never ceases to amaze me what we see on an ordinary day.

One day, one city, four faiths.

While the official religious position in China is atheism,  religious belief and practice is alive and well here.  Christianity, Islam, Taoism  and Buddhism are practiced here.  So is the secular religion of worshipping success and materialism.

We have a strong desire to know and try to understand China and its people.  Our time at the Confucian Temple in Beijing was very enlightening (sorry, bad joke).  Today, we learned more as we rode our bikes around our city in 93 degree weather.  Our original goal was to go to house of Chang Xue Liang, who was the marshall in NE China that stood up against the Japanese.  But we took another path as our first stop was at what we thought was a Buddhist Temple.
Our city has four pagodas.  All are active  Buddhist worship sites.  The one we went to today is the Nanta or South Tower.  It is next to the temple where we looked around.

Door to the temple with Yin and Yang symbols.

The temple is located in the middle of a residential neighborhood.  It was very quiet and full of color and burning incense.

Woman offering incense and bowing.

We met this extremely lively Taoist nun.  She is 83 years old and has lived there for over 40 years.  She told us that this convent was Taoist and not Buddhist. She took us into a side room, gave us water, explained to us about Taoism and told us about the convent. There is also a monastery across town.  She gave us a copy of the sacred book of Taoism- the doctrine of the Mean. She was delightful.

Nan Ta next to the convent.

http://chineseculture.about.com/od/religioninchina/a/Daoism.htm

After that we rode up to our original historical destination.  We decided to save it for another day, and instead rode over to the oldest church in Shenyang - Dong Guan.

Dong Guan is an active church of over 5,000 attendees.  It was founded by Presbyterian missionary John Ross.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ross_(missionary)

Again, we met a lovely woman there who showed us around.  The pastor (an elderly woman) was there and was sitting in the museum having her lunch.  She was quite elderly and has apparently passed on her responsibilities to her daughter.  We toured the church and the small bookstore and pretty gardens.  People were praying and working and it was generally quite lovely and peaceful.

Inside of one part of the church.  They were getting ready for a wedding.

Pretty gardens.

After this, we decided to go to the Liaoning Provincial Museum.  We had been there before but not finished all the rooms.  Plus it was free and air conditioned.  Also, it is next to a Hui (Muslim) neighborhood and we wanted to get some Hui bread.

First we stopped for lunch and then went to the museum.

When we finished at the museum, we went searching for a baker.  Instead, we found the mosque.

Beautiful entrance.  I love these round doors.

We stayed on the outside and looked in.

We probably rode our bikes 20 miles today in the 93 degree heat.  We came home exhausted but feeling like it was a day well spent.