Loveprint in Gansu - Dream Corps

让阅读放飞梦想

Let reading inspire~

February. It’s been over 7 months since I last promised a blog about Dream Corps and my time in Gansu. But every time I sit down to write this blog, I could not put it all in to words. But in an effort to help promote Dream Corps as the amazing experience that it is, here goes: (this song helps, to my kids in Gansu, thanks Clara C)

First, to get it out of the way, I was in a small village in rural China for a month. Yes, there were inconveniences, but those were small nuisances.

Dream Corps collaborates closely with rural schools, educators and parents in China to set up libraries which provide quality books in an effort to inspire enthusiasm for learning. So, to sum up my volunteer experience, my teammates and I helped to create a library and a reading room for the elementary school in Gansu, led a reading class every day complete with games and activities and played with the kids whenever we had the extra time.

When thinking about my time in Gansu, I compare it to watching a really good movie because of the rush of emotions that I experience: 

I laugh because of all the wonderful happy memories of time spent with my amazing team members: singing as we de-labeled books, running around with the kids during recess playing 老鹰抓小鸡,  laughing over ridiculous things until our jaws were sore. 

I tear up because I miss all 168 kids from the school, especially my 28 first graders, and no matter how much I want to, I can’t go back to that time. 

I smile because the kids brought so much joy into my days, how each child would stop as they ran by me and say “姐姐好”every time, even if it was the 5^th time that day. 

I get frustrated because I am reminded of the thousands of kids in China who are all in similar situations as my kids are; many of them considered “left-behind children” and there is so little that I can do to help them.

This place gave me the greatest sense of accomplishment, very simply because… I put my heart into this project. In just two weeks, my teammates and I cleaned and cataloged 6000 books in the midst of setting up a library, decorating it, updating the checkout system, making close to 200 library cards, and creating a reading room. 

For four weeks, I woke up every day amazingly happy that I was where I was, when I was. I just hope that I was able to bring them as much joy and happiness as they had brought to me.  

I cannot begin to describe how miserable we all were leaving Gansu that Wednesday morning or even how long it took to stop crying long after we departed. Every single student, every single teacher stood at attention, teary, to send us off. Gansu was where I learned so much about their world that was so amazingly different and more about myself, my shortcomings and strengths.

Not only is there so much to tell you, but there is also a matter of conveying everything to help you cross the understanding gap. But while I can go on and on about this experience, describing each moment with minute detail, I feel that nothing will ever do it justice. Because even I don’t know nor understand how deeply these kids or this experience have affected me.  But I can tell you, you won’t be able to understand completely unless you experience it first-hand. And if your experience is/was vastly different from mine, we can at least agree that it was an amazing one, and that it is definitely a different China experience. 

For more details and pictures about my month in Gansu, see my fb album that was posted about 6 months ago.

For more information about Dream Corps, or to become a volunteer (now accepting applications!), visit the new website.