Trip to Shaoguan

The last week I was in Guangdong province, I travelled to the Shaoguan region in the north of the province.  Helping out two med students and a doctor, we visited the schools in nearby rural towns where children had previously been given a visual acuity test and received a voucher for free glasses (to oversimplify the project).  The return trip was to see how many children still weren't wearing glasses and administer a survey to determine why not.

School playground;
First flag I've seen so far, compare this to the omnipresence of American flags in the U.S.

We would set up our eye chart in each classroom we visited

I was like the Pied Piper at these schools where children had only ever seen white people on the television.  We could barely keep them out of the classrooms in which we were working.  If I stood still for too long outside a crowd of amazed children would have formed around me.  I agreed to write my English name for one girl and then ended having to sign autographs for all of them.  Starting in the third grade Chinese schoolchildren all have English courses.  Still, the teachers are all nonnative speakers, and the kids' speaking skills come really slowly.

In Shaoguan proper

My two med student friends picking out Chinese fruits for me to try.
The spiky ones in front are durian.  They smell like rotting fruit and the taste is just a fainter version of the smell.