In the afternoon on Tuesday we went to visit a local kindergarten in Zibo. Our new companions, Bo Ru, a high school student, and Lila, a university student, tagged along and helped to translate.

When we first entered the kindergarten, it was obvious this was a little different from the average kindergarten in the United States. It was a colorful, three-story building with a jungle-gym and embellished photographs of the children covered the walls.

Bo Ru commented that this looked like a very luxurious kindergarten for Chinese standards. In my opinion, the same can be said for U.S. standards.

The supervisor of the school gave us an introduction of the school’s background in Chinese as Bo Ru translated the information into English. The school was like a day care, pre-school, and kindergarten all together because they worked with children from ages 0-3 and 3-6.

I was fascinated by this particular school’s drive to teach Chinese children to speak English at such an early age. To them, learning English seemed just as fun and easy as playing any game.

The children were especially fascinated by us when we came in, but when they took pictures with us they were very shy. So, as much as I wanted to just give them a hug and play games with them, I didn’t.

It was still fun just watching them though!

— Deanna Barnes, junior art history major