2nd Place Alumni Video/Blog Contest Winner: The Real Treasures in China
Congratulations to Tim Lu for placing 2nd in the CET Alumni Video/Blog Contest - to view the other winning entries click here.
Today, I am in Tangier, Morocco, about to begin Day 2 of our mission’s surgical operations. While I am utterly exhausted from its physical demands so far, and the mental toughness needed to endure countless requests and questions in the hospital, I find my source of strength in one rejuvenating thought. Yesterday, we were able to give 34 children a brand new smile, and we get to look forward to 4 more days of life-altering surgeries. Let me step back a second to explain why Operation Smile is here in Morocco. We are a medical charity organization that provides reconstructive surgeries to children born with facial deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate. Every three minutes a child is a born with a cleft, and in the countries we operate, often times their parents can’t afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a normal life. As an international charity that provides surgical services, we mobilize medical professionals from around the world to heal these children’s smiles at no cost to the patients. But don’t be misled—I am not a doctor, nor should I be anywhere near the top of your list of medical advisory. I am only the guy who handles logistics. I am a Program Coordinator. Despite my lack of medical knowledge and real world experience, I have been entrusted to procure supplies and equipment needed for surgery; recruit medical volunteers, arranging their flights, lodging, and food; interface and build effective relationships with in-country partners, from both the public and private sectors; and most importantly, facilitate team meetings to ensure the highest standard of medical care for our patients. My friends have told me that this is a lot to ask of a 23-year old who happens to be fresh out of college. But the reality of it is that my job demands no special requisites to work—a science background, non-profit work experience, nor lofty goals for a related post-graduate degree were in my arsenal. As the day progresses, I knock off items one by one from my to-do list but I sense this sort of internal questioning surface to the top. It stirs the following words in my mind: “How did I end up here?”
Explaining the schedule and logistics of the day to a volunteer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This was my first medical mission. (Photo taken by Clare Bourke)
Within the last defining years of my life, I try to narrow down what might have been significant enough to encourage my pursuit of such non-traditional work. Almost immediately, my mind catches glimpse of one particular memory from the fall of 2009. I am standing in a room with two classmates from my study abroad program. We are on a group excursion to a children’s orphanage, located maybe an hour from the center of Beijing, where we were part of an intensive Chinese language program. And I’m not just standing there anymore, but we have started delivering a presentation to these kids—they are in the 6th grade, and full of energy. One look in to their eyes, and I envision the future of China’s visionary leaders growing from such humble beginnings. With my Macbook, I display a slideshow of images and videos that I compiled the night before, to share with them just a glimpse of what life looks like across different cultures. I thought it would be a magnificent opportunity for me to share my American upbringing with those unfamiliar with our culture. But as I think back now, I see that it was really for the kids, a chance to inspire new avenues for creative thinking. In one literal sense of the day, we were revising essays they had composed in English, but symbolically, we were helping children learn how to express their own ideas and showing them the value of looking at the world from different perspectives.
The orphanage we visited while I studied at CET in 2009, located in the outskirts of Beijing. These are a few of my 6th grade friends I made that day. They continue to inspire me even now as I work at Operation Smile.
It was only two hours, but those were two hours that made a profound impact on what I began to value as a young adult. I smile at how that experience so closely parallels my work today at Operation Smile, serving the needs of children in the world’s most impoverished areas. As a junior in college, I was adventuring the world for the first time, and along the way, I was able to uncover a few things about myself and about my role in the world. I’d like to share just three of those personal discoveries:
Find a cause you believe in, and know why it’s important for you to improve it. Perseverance and discipline are supreme, and they are two secret ingredients to success. Finally, always choose optimism in the face of challenge, because your positive attitude will empower you to achieve anything.
Having a short break in the King Mohammed VI Hospital of Tangier, Morocco. It's a fast-paced job working as a Program Coordinator, but worth every drop of sweat! (Photo taken by Margherita Mirabella)
These maxims were the underscore of my time abroad in Beijing and Harbin—learned through countless hours of memorization, establishing a “can do” attitude despite so many failed assignments, and participating in eye-opening activities like our orphanage visit. They are the real treasures of this country, the intangibles that you glean from sticking it out. I have grasped these lessons thanks to the unwavering encouragement of my classmates, teachers, and everyone at CET. They gave me the opportunity to not only be part of two amazing programs and reach a higher Chinese speaking level, but more importantly, they provided me the tools to be effective in the international environment that I am a part of now. Every time I step foot in a new country or walk into a new hospital, I rely on these experiences to carry me through the day’s challenges, and to remind myself the importance of giving 110% in everything I set out to do.
3rd Place Alumni Blog/Video Contest Winner: The Road Less Traveled
I am always proud to tell people I studied abroad in Harbin, because I know how unique my experience there was. Some people may know Harbin for its famous ice-sculpture festival, or its Siberian tiger park, but I was far more than just a tourist there.
The Saint Sophia Russian Orthodox Cathedral was built by the Russians in the early 20th century when they ruled over the northeastern part of China. They say that at the time it was built, the cathedral was the last man-made structure standing between China and the Arctic Circle.
Dongbei, China’s northeast where Harbin is situated, evokes images of Siberia, an old industrial heartland, and factories belching out smoke on the vast northern Chinese plain. The wild, horse-mounted Manchus conquered China from here, and did not allow Han Chinese to migrate to the region until the turn of the 20th century. It is a wild place unknown to most Western observers, a city clinging to the Songhua River in the middle of the steppe, the last frontier town between China and the Arctic tundra. How many college students can say they have lived here, and taken a program trip to climb the last steps of the Great Wall as it ends against the North Korean border? How many could travel with Chinese roommates to the Five Great Lakes, staying in a People’s Liberation Army barracks on a volcanic plain, amidst brilliant autumn colors set against the black of the molten rock?
During the middle of the fall semester, CET took us to stay for two nights on Daludao (Stag Island), a small island in the middle of a tributary feeding the Yalu River, which forms much of the border between China and North Korea. Our first day there, we strolled across the beeches at low tide where we came across many Chinese fishing junks like this one run aground on the sand.
Before I had learned how unique the setting was, I had decided to come to Harbin to make my Chinese the best it could be. In this, CET was also an incredible success. The classes were challenging and specially tailored to our interests and abilities, but the Chinese roommates we lived with for four months were by far and away CET’s greatest gift to us. We woke up speaking Chinese, learned all the colloquialisms of Chinese college social life, and experimented with the local dongbei dialect, laden with warmth, charm and an irrepressible humor. Through connecting with our Chinese roommates we were ushered, if we were lucky, into the sheltered confidence of the Chinese group almost always forbidden to foreigners. I have been back to China multiple times since study abroad, but I have rarely felt as connected to the true pulse of a people as I did in Harbin.
Chinese and American roommates knee-deep in the sand at Daludao. The mid-semester trip with the Chinese roommates was a fantastic way for us to bond while exploring the untamed wilds of the North Korean border area.
I will also never forget the connection I developed with the city and the adventures that I had there. In Harbin, to keep warm during the Siberian winter we often clung to roasted sweet potatoes as we strolled on the outskirts of campus. Spending an autumn evening kicked back outside eating Xinjiang roasted meats was our favorite way to unwind after a long day of classes; we ate dog hot pot, because you can do these things in Harbin; we sampled the warming borscht at each of the Russian restaurants lining the cobblestoned promenade of the old Russian-built Harbin city center. After classes, we ran laps and did high kicks in the basement of a Soviet-era gym as our Shaolin Long Fist teacher sat back and laughed at us, crooning to his little white dog. We went out to the night clubs and bars peculiar only to a city like Harbin, where in scenes reminiscent of the Cantina band in Star Wars we mingled with what seemed like an intergalactic assembly of people – electronica-loving Russians, cognac-sipping Frenchmen, as well as Koreans, Kenyans and Poles – all brought together in the warm interior of a frozen Siberian town. Yet we were the only Americans in Harbin. That was another of CET’s greatest accomplishments: creating a special bond between a disparate group of American students that became the sole representatives of their country in a city of 10 million people.
A view of North Korea through the battlements of the Hushan (Tiger Mountain) section of the Great Wall, the final stretch before China runs up against the North Korean border. The fields and mountains of North Korea turned out to be startlingly beautiful, completely untouched by the industry of the modern era.
The people, the city of Harbin, and the program that wove those into an amazing study abroad experience – in my time in China, those have made all the difference.
The outskirts of Harbin Institute of Technology campus during the wintertime. Temperatures dropped to well below freezing, and few of us did not find ourselves suiting up in Russian fur hats and thick long underwear.
Ligers, Tigers, and Midterms – Oh my!
Since this is an academic program there’s understandably a fair amount of academics that go on up here in Harbin. With academics comes midterms and with midterms comes crying (before, during, and after). Let’s just say I know a lot of different ways to describe tears falling down my face in Chinese (none of which came up on any of the tests…all that studying for naught).
Due to (or perhaps, in spite of) the academic rigor, I have learned through in depth study that American study techniques and Chinese study techniques are wildly different. Most Chinese students (engineering students in particular) will go to the library, work for hours on end and have most, if not all of the material memorized, ready to ace the test. American students (sample size: me) will buy a lot of snack food, spend too much time trying to decide if Ritz crackers filled with yogurt are the best things or the worst things (they’re the best), and then take a four hour nap in the middle of the day.
This is not to say, of course, that I failed. Nay! I… think I did ok. Well enough, given the circumstances: second language and a recent, overwhelming desire to do literally anything else other than memorize Chinese vocabulary pairs. I had four tests: literature (words and made up analysis of words – these are my most essential personality traits), composition (not a lot of opportunity to make stuff up – this was my hardest test), computer application essay/speech (speaking about computers? I got this.), and then pronunciation. Pronunciation is a whole ‘nother ball game. As soon as I sit in that chair to read the passages I apparently lose all motor control of my mouth and all I can spew out are syllables that sound more like someone speaking underwater than “Chinese.”
Actually, I just have horrible pronunciation all the time. Examples:
- Asking the neighbor girls if they have sperm as opposed to a mirror (Jing1zi vs. Jing4zi)
- Say I just kissed a guy as opposed to having just asked him (Wen1 vs. Wen4)
But enough about school and Chinese. You’re probably here for the titular pictures of the ligers and/or tigers. Unfortunately, there aren’t any good pictures of the ligers (the bus driver wouldn’t let us get out, go figure).
The Land of Opportunity
Every semester CET plans a rip-roaring adventure to some city other than Harbin, most likely in order to convince students that not all of China is cold. The way they go about accomplishing this goal is actually quite clever: by going south. 12 hours south via train, to be precise. Now you may be thinking “the title says land of opportunity, I was unaware NAME-OF-YOUR-COUNTRY (to appeal to a wider audience) was south of China.” And you would be right, unless you’re from North Korea. But you’re not. (If you are, please comment otherwise).
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