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Merrybelle Guo just finished her junior year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She received a grant to travel to China and create storybooks with students and teachers at RCEF’s Guan Ai Elementary School. This is the first of a series of posts about her experience. The children love her and she’s been a bright addition to the school. In the picture, she’s the one in the green shirt.

The first surprise of my adventure with a small rural school in the southwestern most corner of Shanxi province happened on the train ride over. What I thought was going to be a 5, 6 hour train ride max, turned out to be a 9+ hour experience where I ended up being my seat mates pillow. Despite the prolonged anticipation and fear of having missed my stop and even leaving the province, the arrival was definitely worth the wait. My first evening could hardly have been deemed normal as just after the sun set for its nightly rest, pop music began blaring from loud speakers placed on the village’s main road, also just in front of the school. A projection screen was set up and I ended up watching a movie about SARS with many of the elementary school’s and the village’s denizens in a movie theatre open to the stars.

I’ve come to GuanAi school in Houjiazhuang village to work on a storybook project with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade classes here. Originally, I had hoped to encourage the students to go about in their own communities, especially the immediate village, talk to their elders, family members and other community members in an attempt to gather stories, experiences, history, lore of the people and places that are alive and they interact with daily. This would serve as an exercise in academic, as well as life skills, but it would also be a way of preserving the unique culture of this tiny community. Furthermore, it would be a means of empowering the community through the children. Of course, this all worked out in my head, at least in theory. Hopefully, it will also work out in the reality of a bunch of wildy animated children in rural Shanxi province.

Merrybelle的故事书课程：第一篇

Merrybelle Guo刚刚在北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校读完大三，她受资助来到中国，将与RCEF关爱学校的师生们共同完成一次故事书教学项目。本文是她一系列经历中的第一篇。照片上穿绿色衬衫的女孩就是Merrybelle，她的到来为学校增添了一抹亮丽的色彩，孩子们都很喜欢她。

关爱学校是位于山西省西南部的一所乡村小学。旅行的一开始我就遇到了一个小小的意外。本来以为只是5，6个小时的火车车程，结果却用去了9个多小时，和我同座的旅客甚至靠在我身上睡着了。虽然时间比预期的漫长了一点，并且担心着可能已经坐过了车站，但是当列车最终到达时，兴奋和开心立刻取代了一切。我的第一个晚上也过得很不寻常。当夜幕落下，学校前面，村中大路旁的广播开始播放流行音乐，接着一面银幕被张起，我和学校的工作人员还有许多村民一起，在点点星光下看了一场关于SARS的电影。

我来到侯家庄关爱小学的任务，是同这里二、三、四年级的学生完成一次故事书教学项目。我的计划是鼓励学生们在社区里活动，特别是在村子内，同长辈，家人和其他成员交谈，收集身边的故事，经历，历史，了解村庄，以及这些每天接触的人们。这既是对知识和生活技能的训练，也是保存小村庄独特文化风俗的手段，同时还可以让孩子们认识社会。当然，这些还都只是我的理论设想。希望这些设想能够在山西农村，在一群天真活泼的孩子身上变为现实。