They couldn’t be stopped.
There was the patter of bare feet and some piercing screams, and before we knew it the alley was a war zone. The children swarmed from every direction and soon we were batting away spindly arms and grasping fingers that had been you-don’t-want-to-know where. Within two minutes the potato chips were gone. The obvious foreigner (Hi Mr. White) was the main target, since these boys and girls had never seen a waiguoren before. Actually it was pretty confusing… they inexplicably concluded that he was from Japan, which resulted in some pretty relentless slapping. I escaped relatively unscathed, although one little guy went after me with a sharpened tree branch and I had to draw on nonexistent mixed martial arts training (what can I say, SoS teaches us a lot about improvisation). Another girl ran after us with arms outstretched Dawn of the Dead style. Anyway, we made the kids’ day and they ran off with all of the food we had bought for our host, the wonderful and idiosyncratic Bingo. Thanks Bingo!
Homestay weekend? Pretty successful.
I was able to briefly revisit the village of Mayang and even more briefly reunite with a 2011 student, Veria, who had hosted my teaching trio last year. This summer she’s babysitting her nephew and biding her time before September, when she steps in front of a classroom (of >70 students?) to begin her career as a teacher at the local middle school.

It’s strange… after a few weeks in the classroom and sharing nearly every waking hour with the students, it’s easy to begin to think that you know them.
Then, somebody makes the jump and invites you to their home. They seem to offer everything. You meet their family (grandparents caring for devious children while the parents are off working in distant cities), you sleep in their beds (or on their bedroom floors, whatever), you sit at their table and accept the food they cook for you. You smile when you have no idea what’s going on.
(We saw Bingo’s school. We met her teachers. We met her students.)
But what you really learn is that you don’t know your students. You catch these glimpses, and then you realize that these are people who can’t be simplified by something you can find in a book or the news or on the web. They’ve opened up so much to us, and maybe we reciprocate, but in the end this is just a hint of the complexity and richness of each person’s life. Each of our students has already done and seen so much, and after this summer they will continue on their way (Affected by the experiences we’ve shared? Maybe. Hopefully.)
For me, that insight is enough to be very, very thankful for.