There is sun in Beijing

August 4, 2011

Took 13 migrant children to 圆明园 park last Saturday with four other Roots & Shoots staff and volunteers from Compassion for Migrant Children (www.cmc-china.org). The park encompasses a large lake adorned with multitudes of lotus flowers and is home to many types of water fowl. In addition to giving the children a tour of the park and introducing them to the sundry of birds and plants present (throwing in some GRE vocab for practice ), we also organized activities for them, like giving each child a magnifying glass and insect container to go bug scouting. It was a sweet aberration (vocab #2) to my usual Saturday activities. The day was in thrall (#3) to a refulgent (#4) sun that could almost be commensurate (#5) to the radiance in the children’s lit up faces. I must say, I was surprised to see the children filled with such guileless (#6) interest and excitement. I don’t think a trip to a park would have got me that excited as a child. The most rewarding moment of the event was when a child came up to me and said, “Teacher, I’m so grateful that you organized this trip for us!” No joke. I am slightly suspicious of these too-good-to-be-true children…as if God was trying to scam me (“See, the world really is beautiful! Look at these children, just look at them! Click here )…Or maybe the world is kind of beautiful…?