Eric's Beijing Diary

Whew! I made it back before the elevator lady went home! I know, the exercise is good for me, but I'm tired tonight--just wasn't in the mood for climbing 14 stories. Tonight (Friday) I took Bulu to the English corner with me. Bulu just kinda moved from group to group. He can do that. He's Chinese. Somebody asked me why I came to China so I shared my dream of trying to start an NGO to deal with the problem of education in the countryside. I really believe that a volunteer organization could do a lot to help alleviate that problem, because I have talked to a lot of folks who are interested in doing some volunteer work, but they don't have vast sums of money, and they cannot afford to quit their jobs. But an organization which could facilitate short term volunteer projects could, I think, accomplish quite a bit.

After we left the English corner, Bulu and I went to Milo's for a coffee milkshake. Bulu was talking about Kilimanjaro. No idea why that particular corner of the world stuck in his mind, but he is really fascinated with Africa. But at the same time, he was talking about something that Cherry said last Sunday. Cherry is a young high school girl I met in a coffee shop who called me and asked if she could go to church with me. Bulu and I took her to church, and then we went to lunch. She said that she didn't have a childhood. This comment caught me off guard, because she showed all the signs of having had a very privileged childhood. Her English was excellent, and next year she is going to Germany for a one year exchange program. But she said that she was always so busy studying or taking piano lessons, that she had no time to play. To Bulu, this was the ultimate tragedy. Bulu talks often of hiking in the mountains, and using a vine to rappel down the side of a steep ravine. In Bulu's mind, this young girl led a very tragic existence.