Today's workshop was about sex education. This was nothing new for us Germans, as sex education is already taught here in elementary school. But for our Chinese exchange partners, it was all new territory. Not only because Asians hardly ever talk about sex, but also because Asians have a "Face"/Having a disability and someone with a disability having sex is just unimaginable. Even my own mother couldn't believe that I was able to have sex with my partner.
Children are found in the landfill
Anyways, it was really funny to observe the reactions of our partners, when they were shown drawn pictures of a birth scene from today’s speaker. The pictures were just drawn and colored, and yet some students actually started to screech and covered their eyes because of embarrassment. So today was more a lesson for our exchange partners, because in Germany Sex-Ed already starts in 4th grade and we all already knew the facts of life. When asked about, if our exchange partners knew where they came from or how they evolved, they gave us a shocking answer. An answer we would have never expected or thought of. Apparently they get told that they come from the garbage dump. No joke! I googled it, and other sources say the same. Isn’t that shocking?! We felt relieved, that we were able to taught them the truth.
Getting a taste of the countryside
After lunch we got into a bus, which would drove us to the countryside for this weekend. One and a half hour later, the scenery changed from skyscrapers and highways to banana trees and bamboo. Our tour guide Joe, who was a former GETCH-Student and who will join us for this trip, told us the program for the weekend. To get some cultural feel and have a different perspective, we would spend this weekend on the country side in Menghuabu Village of Zhengguo Town. When we arrived at the village, we moved into our rooms. But it wasn’t a hotel or hostel, it was more like we got houses to live in and everyone could enter them. So yeah, it was really a small village and we could enter the rented houses once the doors were open.
It was still early, so our tour guide Joe showed us the olive plantation and a small river. And I can assure you, going through sand with a wheelchair…you will definitely get stuck. After relaxing and enjoying that river, it was already time to get back to the hostel for dinner. Dinner was really good; it was a typical Asian dinner I would say. We had rice, vegetables, scrambled egg, tofu, meat and even fish.
The cardgame 24
And what do you normally do on such kind of a trip? You play cards =) Our partners showed us an interesting card game, where you had to do mental math, it’s called 24. So we sat around a table and in the middle were always 4 cards. The goal is to use all 4 given numbers and basic arithmetics (+ - × and /) to get 24 as fast as you can. We just looked at each other and were like “No wonder they’re good at math, when a game like this exist”. But the game was still fun and so we calculated deep into the night.
Three things I learned from this day:
1) Sex-Education is no common thing yet
2) Chinese children get told that they come from the garbage dump
3) 24 – such an addicting card game
