Latest from China

Ni men Hao,

I spent another day with the radicals. After class, Ana and I went with her classmate Nathan to lunch and to run some errands before we went to his house for about 2 hours. It was great. We got to be in a warm home. His wife made us coffee and trail mix. We sat at the dinner table and "did our hw". Afterwards, we went with Nathan and his secretary to a migrant school and picked up a girl who will be getting scholarship money from Nathans non-profit organization. After we picked her up, we drove to her home in another part of town where Nathan and his secretary interviewed the father and the daughter. They asked them things like "What are your dreams? What are your dreams for your daughter?" Things like that...

It was a great afternoon though because Ana and I learned so much about the underworkings of Suzhou, about the MASSIVE gentrification of land owned by low-income families. They are building new sky rise apartment buildings everywhere, hoping that Chinese will see it as a good investment and purchase them. This displaces the migrant workers to the north and to the south, making their commute longer. Nathan says its the migrant workers who make this city run. They do all the jobs no one else wants to do.... Remind you of some other minority group? Anyways, I'm still taking all of the afternoon in. It was very filled. I only just got back to my dorm room and its 8 30 pm.

Hope you and Pau Pau are doing well. I talk about you guys all the time.

Love You MUCHO!

Sarah