This past Saturday I, along with a handful of other TBC students had the greatest pleasure of spending time with children at the BoAi Hospital here in Beijing. The ages of the children ranged from just over a year old all the way to seven years of age. Many of the children at the hospital are being treated with physical rehabilitation. Our job was to spend some time with them and put smiles on their faces. This was my very first time volunteering at a hospital so I had no idea what to expect. Right away the kids melted our hearts, even the tough guys could not help but grin from ear to ear playing with these bundles of joy. We assumed the children would be a bit older so we were only prepared to play games and color with the kids. As it turned out, we ended up learning how to assist with exercises that stretched and relaxed muscles for the young toddlers. This was such an exciting experience for me especially since I have never done anything like this before. I am proud to say that I made sure I got to hold every single on the the children in the room and show them so much deserved love and attention.
I am grateful for TBC in organizing and giving us the amazing opportunity to so something for the community that we currently live in. The kids are so amazing and happy given their current situations and I am happy to know that a few hours of my time playing with them can change both of our days. I plan on going back to volunteer again.
The past few weekends have been some of the most exciting of the entire semester, full of trips to the zoo, mountain hikes, ancient parks, and more! Our first trip out of many was a visit to the Beijing Zoo. I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I wanted to see some pandas, since I was in China after all, and our TBC friend Andy made it happen.
Spending a whole semester in Beijing, I knew I had to make the trip down south and check out Shanghai, and the city certainly lived up to the expectations. Everyone describes Shanghai as this super futuristic metropolis, and after spending a weekend there I understand why it has this reputation.