Yesterday, as some of you may know, was the international Children's Day. This day is observed in China much more widely than I've seen in any other country. There are lots of activities for kids and fun things like free movie tickets, some children get a day off school (like in some schools in Baoding) but others have to work twice as hard as usually to put together performances at school for their parents.

To celebrate the day, I was invited to join a group of students from our university who were going to a local school for children who are hard of hearing. This school is in the outskirts of the city, in surroundings that could be anywhere in the countryside. The children who go to this school are the lucky ones whose parents can afford to send them to a special school. And true enough, the school, although in no way luxurious, had computers and some special software etc for teaching the children. And best of all, the athmosphere was just great and the teachers seemed really dedicated to what they were doing.

The kids had put together some performances (like a puppet show, some dances, a fashion show and a magic show) for each other, their parents and us. After that, we just hung out with the students at the school, I showed them some pictures from Finland and of course had to pose for a picture for just about every student. Communication wasn't that easy, as I needed one of the Chinese university students always to write down in Chinese what I wanted to say and then translate the written answer from the kids into English. But at least I got good practise of writing my Chinese name (Ai Lina), as many of the children asked me to write it down for them (about the only thing I *can* write). I bet they got a good laugh out of my pathetic attempt to write in Chinese, my handwriting totally looks like a hesitant child's!

All in all it was a great experience to see the school and especially to meet the children. I wish I had known of this university group before, apparently they visit the school regularly. But at least I did get to go there this time. Of course the batteries of my camera died right in the beginning but the leader of our group has a camera so if he mails me some photos, I'll put them up on the web when I get them.