Home Visit - Update from Arianna and Maddy

Yesterday evening, all 8 of us from Winchester along with 5 or so teachers from the Dandelion School voyaged off the school campus to go and visit the home of one of the students in Class Six. Her name is Maria and she turned 15 yesterday. Getting to her home was quite the adventure. We were able to pick up about 4 cars which drove us to the street on which her family lives. The street in and of itself was a powerful image to behold. There were trucks and horse-drawn carts selling fresh fruit and vegetables. The dirt street was uneven and teeming with cyclists and cars driven by very fearless drivers, to put it lightly. There were also vendors up and down the sides of the road and people everywhere. People with babies, pregnant women, older men eating off of small rickety tables, each one staring at the "foreigners" with questioning eyes. To get to her home, Maria led us on a roundabout route down the street, through incredibly narrow alley ways and crowded courtyards and up the stairs of her apartment building. All passageways doubled as storage spaces, with items ranging from bricks to drying clothes to bicycles placed wherever room could be found. When we finally reached her third story apartment, we had attracted a parade of curious followers who trailed behind us recording the experience with cameras and camcorders. We finally followed her to a tiny balcony hallway on the outside of the building and into a tiny room. This tiny, probably 10X10, room was her family's entire living space. There were two bamboo beds along the side walls, which took up the majority of the space. There were also four or so tiny stools for supplemental sitting space. There were also large cardboard boxes stacked with clothes sitting against the wall on top of the beds. Along the wall next to the door was a small counter housing a tiny television and a few meager cooking supplies. We all struggled to fit in the space, as they sought tirelessly to make us comfortable. Herding us in with wide smiles and welcoming hands, we sat on the bed next to the one fan cooling the stagnant and oppressive air. We gave them a watermelon in gratitude and then proceeded to struggle greatly in the effort to prevent them from cutting it and serving it to us right then and there. While we were settling in, Maria's mother left and purchased a drink for each of us. Each one cost about 3 Yuan, thus the cost of supplying all of us with drinks was probably about 50 Yuan. With a monthly rent rate of 280 Yuan, this was quite an expenditure for them. We were all literally speechless by this act of hospitality, and though we felt incredibly guilty doing so, we all accepted the drinks in fear of offending our kind hosts. We then all piled into the room and took pictures. Though it seemed natural after so much touring to want to capture this experience with our cameras, we both felt a sense of embarrassment in turning their home into a tourist attraction. Then, with Maria at the lead, we left for the walk back to the school with a new found appreciation for the weight of the money in our pockets.