Adventure Time with KC

Now that you are nearing completion of your internship, what words of advice would you give to the next intern? Would you do it all over again? How did this experience challenge your assumptions and stereotypes? How can you be more compassionate/informed/involved regarding the community you served?

Hi blogging world, I know it's been a while. I finished up my internship in Shanghai and traveled to Beijing and Sydney before going home to NY. I have been busy not blogging, I guess. Sorry about that! I will soon post more photos from my trip and talk more about what's next for me and for this blog. Until then, I'm going to watch some Adventure Time ;) and go back to sleep. Here's a sneak peek!

Why does this post's title include parenting? I'm not a parent! But in truth, I love reading what intelligent parents have to say. I've been following this blogger parent on Facebook, and here's his post recently: Jef Withonef Against my better judgment I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the purity movement. It’s just bloody horrifying, this idea of “guarding your daughter’s heart” by keeping it yourself, not to mention this notion of making her define herself only how she is viewed either by her husband or her dad. Lynda likes to joke I’m going to be “that dad,” the one who cleans a gun when Katy brings a boyfriend or girlfriend over. Truth is I’m not. I’m very prepared for what I want to instill in her when she begins to reach physical maturity. 1. That sex is beautiful and fun as hell. So is driving a car and a bunch of other things, and they come with responsibilities. You need to ask yourself if you can handle those. I knew I could be trusted with a car ...

Have you battled burn-out, disappointed expectations, exhaustion, or had trouble balancing your internship and personal life? If yes, do you find that these struggles influence any viewpoints? If you've not met any trouble in the internship, what are the positive and affirming changes you see occurring within yourself? Have you achieved any progress in the goals you set at the beginning of your internship? Why or why not? Have any of your goals changed? How or why? How has this internship challenged your beliefs about poverty, justice, and human capabilities?

On Thursday, I visited another children's rehabilitation center that my supervisor told me about. She said she called to let them know I am visiting, but when I got there the president strangely had no idea what I was talking about. She then had her 13 year old daughter show me around the place. It was a hot and humid summer day not unlike those in Houston, and the place smelled faintly horrible. I got there a little later than I had wanted to, so it was afternoon nap time from 12 - 2pm. I visited a couple of rooms with 20+ cribs for children from ages 2 - probably 8 or 10. I try to get to know the president's daughter better and we play with some of the toddlers. I wave and say hello to the youngest bunch of kids sleeping and half awake in their cribs. They had air conditioning and clean beds, a couple of older women as nannies, taking care of them and cleaning and washing. There are cuts, bites, and minor skin rashes on most of the children. One little girl saw that I was...

In  Behind the Beautiful Forevers , Katherine Boo tells the stories of residents of a Mumbai slum and the hardships they endure. What is the infrastructure of opportunity in this society? Whose capabilities are given wing by the market and a government's economic and social policy? Whose capabilities are squandered, and how does this affect their well-being and agency? Use specific examples. What capabilities are supported or neglected in the community you are currently serving?

What do I actually do when I go volunteer? Well it's hard to say because it changes from day to day. On Friday this is what I typed: Right now I'm playing a game with one of the little kids from group yellow. He's sick today so he's upstairs and has to eat and sleep separately. He wanted me to play with him. I found him tin tin adventure books in Chinese but he didn't like them. He's only 9 I guess. Now we're listening to music and we're playing a typing game. he's letting me type alllll on my own right now. What a cutie.  Friday 7/12/13 - 3pm Here is a picture from paint after we've done layers of damage and art to it. I must warn you, though, it is quite beautiful. Master piece, right?

On Monday, I got to work and found a surprise next to my desk. A boy named Carl (王小磊) was sick and so he is practicing typing pin yin on the computer next to me, away from the other children. Carl did not speak a lot but he could learn just as well as any other child. He pointed to all the letters and words on his screen to me. He is a little confused sometimes about the capital letters on the keyboard and the lower case letters that he is shown on the screen. I taught Carl how to close windows and turn off the computer. It was quite a struggle because with his motor difficulties, moving the mouse to the correct place and then clicking it without screwing up can be hard. But I encouraged Carl to keep trying, and he laughed a lot at his struggles. I told him it’s okay, just try again. He was resilient and was back at it in 10 seconds, after he finally finished laughing. Carl wrote his name for me, in English and in Chinese, and I showed him mine. Carl was ready to step things up, so we’...

Things got real today! Ms. Ho is a teacher from Hong Kong who comes every year to do professional training and observations with CereCare in Shanghai. She observed group blue (my class) today. I bumped into Ms Lieu, the founder of CereCare, this morning and we observed the class together. Every kid had an adult working with them and Daisy was teaching this class. She was modeling directives like stretching arms from left to right and top-left to bottom-right, and the kids followed along as best as they could. Ms. Ho takes notes, sometimes briefly interrupting to help correct the class as she saw fits. At one point, she talked to Ms. Gao, the director in charge of the teachers, who then proceeded to ask one of the trainers to exit the classroom with her. Why, you ask? Well, he started dozing off, again. He does this every day, so I’m not surprised he got in trouble. I wonder why he’s always so tired, and how everyone has put up with him dozing off all the time. I was asked to fill ...

What do you know about the history of the agency you are serving? What do you believe is the long-term future of the agency and its work? Is it self-sustaining and if not, what might be changed to make it so? What have you learned about the strategies and internal operations of your host organization? Are there aspects of the organization that work very well or that seem problematic? I am helping CereCare revise the English translation of their chinese website (separately so I can still spend time with the children), so I have read and heard a lot about the history and goals of this organization. CereCare was started 10 years ago by an elderly chinese woman with cerebral palsy who developed her own acupressure/massage therapy method and wanted to open a rehabilitation center for children with cerebral palsy. They’ve always struggled financially, and the founder’s sister (Iris) travels quite often to countries such as the U.S. and Canada to fundraise and apply for grants to keep the cen...

Working with the kids at CereCare has been such a unique experience. I was sitting at KFC waiting to meet up with Joyce for our trip to Huangshan, which was amazing and will hopefully show up in the next post. A mom and her two young sons settle in to a table near me. The two boys are wild, running, playing, shouting. The mom is frantically running after them, spanking them and asking them to stop running/playing carelessly. I think about how lucky they are that they have functional limbs to play and run at such speeds and ease. They get the luxury to move so much they sweat a ton. I also think about the irony behind all of this. When babies are born, we can’t wait for them to utter their first words. We can’t wait for them to start crawling and walking, feeling our hearts ripped a little every time they fall and cry. Then after a while, we can’t wait for them to shut up, stop running, and go to sleep. For a split second, I think about how nice it is to see the kids running. One of the...

On Friday, I ventured to Changfeng Park for a day of activities with the kids from the center. Upon arriving, I realized that the day's function was organized and sponsored by L'Oreal. That's right, the world's biggest cosmetics and beauty company had its social responsibility initiative in a day that they called "Citizen Day." On second thought, maybe I shouldn't have named the company? It's not particularly relevant to the post, it could have been any company. But oh well, I'm a student with no penny to my name, what do I care. Every child from the center had a staff person attending to him/her, as well as two people from L'Oreal, throughout the day. It's really hot out, and the staff fussed over me not having a parasol or a hat or sunscreen lotion, roughing it in my dress and sunglasses. I repeatedly told them not to worry about me. They also dressed some of the kids in one or two (TWO!) layers of long sleeve clothes - because they did...

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn use storytelling to bear witness to indignities and oppression of gender discrimination. This week describe an experience during your internship that has increased your understanding of broader issues regarding gender discrimination or poverty. Discuss the way these issues compare to those presented in  Half the Sky . In general, almost everywhere in Shanghai I go, women of all ages are mostly dressed up. Most of them are wearing chiffon dresses, tights, flashy high heels/wedges, accompanied by a nice purse, as well as armed with the latest cell phone/tablet. It was very surprising to me to see how they seemed to dress up everywhere they go, particularly seeing the short dresses/skirts on women of all ages, and even work attire was rather short in length. Apparently Shanghai are held as some of the most fashionable people in China. I wonder why the women feel the need to dress this way. Is it to appeal to others? To find a job? Because it'...

Pun intended. First, I have to confess that while doing my translation work I went on iwastesomuchtime.com to procrastinate and add humor to my life, and it has proved worthy. Here's why. One recent post is that of an unknown pair of human legs supposedly wearing a pair of "anti-pervert" hairy leggings. Here it is, be warned (even though there should be no cause for alarm, but I know some of you will find hair disgusting, so whatever) Various sources of sensational journalism has titled it the latest trend in China. This annoys me because it's not a trend, because if it was, the ever so fashionable people of Shanghai would be all up in it, and they're not. The real story is that one Chinese microblogger (on the Chinese version of Twitter) posted this picture and captioned it, "Super sexy, summertime anti-pervert full-leg-of-hair stockings, essential for all young girls going out." As a joke. But of course, everyone freaks out because of course!...

An update on the boy who is being arranged to be available for adoption: I talked with one of the teachers in our class and she revealed that he really wants to be adopted. Why, I ask? Apparently he used to be really good friends with another boy here, who was "cuter, more functional, and ended up being adopted by some Americans." So now he really wants to be adopted, too. What do you guys make of this? 

I finished my second week of volunteering. For full disclosure, the program at school calls it an internship and according to my mom, apparently my dad has been bragging about me doing an "internship" as well. But I always tell people I'm volunteering, because essentially that is what I'm doing. I'm very thankful to Rice for providing me the means to be on this trip, and I'm proud of the opportunity to spend time with the children and helping the center, so I don't feel the need to call it something it really isn't. In many ways this post will be almost a response, an echo, to my friend Laurel's struggles over the week. She is teaching children music at Bolivia this summer, please check out her blog here . Laurel struggled with her purpose and contribution to the children she is working with in Bolivia. Her Spanish is good, but not as good as she had hoped, and the inconsistency at which students show up is disheartening. I really admire that at ...

My roommate Alexia and I often burst into song, particular older songs from our past, anything from Ciara, Kelly Clarkson, to JoJo. A few nights ago, we started singing songs from Motion City Soundtrack, particularly songs from their album Even If It Kills Me. So many songs from this album are great, with catchy melodies and poignant lyrics. It reminded me of middle school, when I loved this album and its rockin' lyrics. I know I haven't blogged in a while, and I promise many posts are coming soon, but before I forget I wanted to remember this trip down memory lane. One of the songs that I like is Antonia. The song basically describes the many little details and quirks about this girl, and how much she means to the singer. It's a simple and beautiful song. It makes me wonder when I heard the last song sung by a female describing all the little quirks about a male/lover of any gender in general and saying how much he/whoever means to her. Obviously there's a lo...

静安寺 literally means the temple of peace and tranquility (thanks Wikipedia!). I was especially excited to visit Buddhist temples because in my childhood in Hong Kong, I remember a lot of holidays that included visits to temples, and the smell of incense filled the air on various days of the year that required showing respect to either the dead, the ancestors, or religious statues. This past school year, I was a guest student (informally auditing, I guess) in a student-taught course titled Experiential Religions. One of the class trips was to a local Tibetan Buddhist Temple (well, center) in Houston. I was disappointed because it was just Houstonians practicing their faith in a normal building, not at what one would architecturally call "temple" though. After paying 30 RMB (Yuan/Chinese dollar) to get in, I picked up a pack of incense and lit it up, eagerly inhaling the familiar smell. Incense is very soothing to me, especially in the context of temples, where the pace felt sl...

Today's my first day settling in the flat I will stay at for the next 8 weeks. Athena, a woman from the third party service provider Xubo, picked me up at the hotel and we made our way here. I shared a lot about myself with her and I'm happy that my mandarin is getting me by quite well. For now. A few observations about Shanghai today There are no pigeons in the streets. I saw a few small birds and they are very small. The people here are smaller, I knew that. I feel pretty average height. There's very little personal space, I found pedestrians and strangers walking dangerously close to me for no reason and it scared me As soon as I speak, if not before that, people can probably tell I'm not exactly from here Sunglasses is not as popular as I hoped it would be, most people use umbrellas/parasols I got a haircut today, it is very long overdue, so another observation No matter where I go, whenever I get a haircut they always make me feel awful about my hair b...

Success! Agent KC here, reporting from her Pudong International Airport hotel room. I'm really hungry already, what a shame. The flight from Toronto to Shanghai took a long 14 hours, but it was worth it. The aerial view showed that Shanghai and its surrounding areas were very gridded and organized, all structures and land were in perfect geometric shapes. Talk about development. Someone I had contacted via email who works at a law firm in Shanghai and used to work in Houston had told me that Shanghai is humid like Houston, except people use less AC here. Well he is right so far, the airport was so warm, and it smelled faintly of cigarettes. The line to go through customs for foreigners was very long, but they had two sections and many diligent and efficient officers working. I noticed that the foreign travelers were mostly men. I wondered why. They included probably businessmen, other Asian nationals, and I even saw the Kuwait Fencing Team representing themselves. I had never d...