Unpredictable Summer Project

So I wasn’t too happy with summer project approaching especially because I had 20 full weeks of teaching during the semester, and a week later I had to teach for another 2 weeks. I’ve never been to Longnan, Chengxian before (it’s only 6 hours away) and the opportunity to see something outside of Lanzhou was my only motivation. Two of the volunteers from our group actually teach exactly where we had the teaching training, and therefore we got to see how their sites were, you know compare and contrast the good and the bad. The first few days were rough because my teaching partner and I had to coordinate classes, find materials, decide what to do for class, etc. We were both in the same boat of teaching for 20 weeks, so we had no time to speak to each other before hand. After a few days, we got the routine and everything seemed to be going great. All of us were looking forward for the weekend (after teaching the morning class) to have some down time. On Saturday we went to a nature reserve spot that was really beautiful. It was a blue sky kinda day with the sun beaming on our backs. What should have been a 2 hour walk up and down the path, turned into a 5 hour hike all around the park. Instead of going back the same way, we decided to go around it where there is all the farm land. Along the way we stumbled upon a massive field of growing cannabis or better known for its other name, marijuana. It’s interesting to see how this is illegal in China, yet they are growing it. It made me feel better that they were using it for other reasons other than getting high though. The next day, two volunteers and I decided to go on a bike ride to see the Du Fu Thatched cottage that honors the Tang Dynasty poet, of the same name. So basically, some pillars of poetry. We started off riding into a dirt pathway that was very rocky, then crossing a bridge and following a narrow path along the river, rocks, waterfalls, and green tall mountains. That right there sounds like a dream, right? Well, IT WAS! We arrived outside of the cottage, and tried to get in for free but the woman would not buy that we were broke volunteers. We continued on our adventure and right before, we reached a tunnel with some pure, cold water coming out of a pipe where all the cars stop to drive under and clean the cars. This was music to our ears because we were on day 4 of no running water in our hotels due to a mudslide earlier that week breaking the main water pipe in town. We blissfully reached our hands to grab some water and splashed it all over us. The pathway was covered in mud and rocks and it started raining heavily but that didn’t stop us. I did have an, “this is a bad idea” moment when my bike was going down-hill and I couldn’t control it due to not having workable breaks and having a dinky bike that was posing as a mountain bikes to relieve my psyche. My two friends were in front of me and I was yelling, “No breaks, no breaks, no breaks” and then I forced myself to fall right onto my left but cheek. Miraculously, I didn’t get one scratch. I picked myself up and just kept going, not having a care in the world. We reached what seemed to be a dead end in front of another bridge. We were standing on that bridge thinking the whole time that we were in China, biking along gorgeous scenery in the middle of nowhere, in the rain. This was our life for 3 hours. It was probably one of the best moments and day I have had (Seeing Mt. Everest wasn’t too shabby either) in my full year in China. We rode back into town, dried ourselves up, went out to dinner and came back to Alice’s apartment to learn some calligraphy from her students. At the end of the day, I thought “Wow, nothing went wrong today, it was perfect.” I slept like a sound baby and woke up about 45 minutes before I had to teach. I got up, and sat next to the desk and was checking my FB when all the sudden I hear the furniture intensely move upstairs. Then, the room starts swaying back and forth, the TV stand starts wobbling away from the wall and the mirror is beating the wall back and forth. It took me a few seconds to register that there was an earthquake happening at that very moment. I ran to stand between the doorway of the bathroom, and within a few seconds it all stopped. I stood there shaking, with that dizzy morning headache feel when you wake up and stand too fast. Alice called me right away and we were both exchanging stories and confirming that indeed there was a freaking earthquake! I immediately got dressed and headed downstairs. As I was approaching the lower levels I saw the cracks on the walls getting bigger and bigger. You would think after having some volunteers experiencing their first real earthquake (like me!) the teaching training would be cancelled for at least that morning. Not in Peace Corps, apparently. We all strolled into class like nothing happened and continued teaching. An hour in the lesson, I was standing in between the doorway while the students were doing an activity, when all of the sudden the students just got up and trampled me over, running outside the building. Luckily we were on the very first floor. This time I didn’t feel it, but the aftershock definitely made our students nervous. After standing outside for about 5 minutes, we went back inside. Every windy swing of the door slamming, a person running down the stairs or a desk moving the students would quiver and jump up. It is amazing to me how inconsiderate the officials were to the students and us to not have cancelled the stupid class and just said, ok take some time to calm down. My heart was speeding so fast after my students ran all over me, that the entire class I was paranoid that something else would happen. The epicenter of the earthquake was in Dingxi, a small district in Gansu Province that killed 75 people, to date. Many of the volunteers’ students are from there and once we were ok, we were concerned about them. Anna and I joked that the day before was such a perfect day, that China simply wouldn’t have it, and so the earthquake happened. Even now, some of us are traumatized and keep waking up in the middle of the night waiting for another one. There are 2 more days left until we end teaching training and it is definitely not one of those times that you say, “Damn, I really wish I stayed a little bit longer.”