| Thursday, August 23, 2001 |
From: Meg Thomsen meginchina@yahoo.com
Subject: Like a Rolling Stone
Hello Friends and Family!
How time flies. Before I realized what was happening, the summer, and Peace Corps training, have flown by, and now it is nearly over. Tomorrow, I pack up all of my possessions and go back to Chengdu for a week. Then we will have swearing-in to become "official" Peace Corps volunteers. Our training group will be performing a traditional dragon dance, completely with giant, two-person dragon that we're hand sewing ourselves! It should be interesting.
Next Saturday, I will head off to my assignment, which is in (insert drum roll here) Dengguan Light Chemical Institute in Dengguan! Don't look for it in your Lonely Planets, folks because it won't be there. Dengguan is a very small town in southern Sichuan a few hours south of Chengdu, with the closest major town being Zigong. I'm not sure how much of a town Zigong is either- all I've been able to find out is that there's a salt mine and a dinosaur museum there.
Once I get to site, I'll be teaching basic environmental science classes, helping to design an environment degree program, and establishing a resource center. That's where my knowledge gained at the BC Law Library comes in- it turns out that my library skills will come in handy after all! I'm going to site with Molli, who I don't know very well (she's been at a different training site all summer). She seems pretty festive, and most importantly, she's got a really good science background, which I don't have. When I met her, we were talking about our environmental backgrounds.
Mine: "I canvassed for the Sierra Club and I like to play outside in the woods."I'm in for a learning experience, that's for sure. I think that it will be good for me. And I think that we will work well together, and that she'll be a good resource for my many questions. I already have a few. For example, no one knows why this is a "Light Chemical Institute". Is it light like "Dengguan-Lite" for dieters? Light like light bulbs? Light as opposed to heavy chemicals? No one knows for sure, and so far the only answer that I've gotten is "because it's a Light Chemical Institute". Even Molli doesn't know!
Hers: "After doing research of lake biology, I spent the last two years cataloging diotins".
Although I am excited to go to site, it will be a little sad to leave Deyang. We've been wrapping things up here. Last night, we took all of our host families out to the local hot pot joint where we toasted them in Chinese and sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane" to them, much to the amusement of the locals.
We also had our big Environmental Education fair this week. We took photos of Deyang-ians doing environmentally friendly things (riding in a rickshaw instead of a taxi, making thumbs down at excessive packaging, washing chopsticks instead of buying disposables, etc.) and made a big photo display. We also had a quiz, a session on dripping faucets (one of China's main sources of water loss- none of the faucets work!), and an environmental pledge which all of the people signed. We even performed two skits in Chinese about pollution!
Hope all is well with you. I miss you all very much. There's days where I wake up and forget that I'm in China for a moment, and it seems almost possible that I could see you that day! But if two years fly by as quickly as these two months, then I'll see you again before I know it.
I'll probably be incommunicado for the next couple of weeks as I wander through Sichuan and hunt down a wangba (internet bar) in Dengguan. Let's hope that there is one! Smile, summer is great and fleeting. I hope that you are enjoying yours.
Love, Meg
Cheers to being Peace Corps volunteers! This is my training group- Heidi, Sarah, Brian, me, Julie, Amy, Mary (our trainer!)