Everyone slept for record sleeps! Didn’t see hide nor hair of them til about 10:30 am. Big success!

Funny how we tend to measure ‘good hospitality’ but sleep is so obvious. Last night at dinner I asked the kids how much sleep they usually got; Eddy – 4-5 hours (“so much to do!”), Erica and Tracy, 5-6 hours. Hazel ‘slept well’ at 6 to 7 hours and Eric did a usual 9 straight hours! Everyone was shocked. “Eric! How you do it? How you sleep so much?”

“I only take courses that start later than ten in the morning. I choose professors who also like to sleep in!”

Another way to gauge success is by dog-closeness. Most Chinese kids from overseas are afraid of or at least very cautious of dogs. The bigger the dog, the more cautious. Meg weighs 60 pounds, Fid weighs 70. One of our last students weighed 80. Nobody here is over 100 pounds except Eddy, tipping the scales at a lumbering 115. The dogs look large to them and so introductions are done carefully.

Within the day, the kids are petting the dogs and the dogs are sometimes sitting on their laps. They all walk around in a group. It is always fun to see. For the kids, it is a real eye-opener.

Yesterday we pulled up a couple of logs and had the kids do some of the work. Pretty funny. What Sal could do with one arm, took two of them to do and much of the time, they still couldn’t. They explained that they have no muscles. “No one does exercise. We just study. I have no muscles. Very weak!”

Still, when they manage to do something like chop a piece of wood, they positively glow. A little physical activity that ends with success seems very confidence inspiring for them and they take to it readily. We don’t do much for the kids but I have to admit, getting them to chop wood and swing axes is about as good as it needs to be. They seem to love the challenge.

They gathered oysters and, as usual, marveled at the cleanliness and abundance of ‘free dinner!’. And they cooked dinner, did the dishes and then went out to look at the stars – something they never see in Hong Kong due to ambient light and polluted skies. One of the kids last night said, “This is not real. Hong Kong is real. I don’t like Hong Kong reality. I like here!”

Only took a day.

For those wondering why we have Chinese students here, you may wish to read The China Monologues at: http://hongkongeslvolunteer.blogspot.com/