Day 7 - Home Alone style...
Today we started back up our classes and our daily field trips. The day started off with breakfast as usual and before getting on the bus I decided to go back to the room and grab my backpack. Upon returning to the lobby about 5-10 minutes later I had found that the group had left without me. I was left alone “Home Alone” style in China because there was a miscalculation during the head count on the bus. Luckily upon reaching the Tianjin McDonalds, roughly 3 blocks down the road my classmates realized I was not there. They turned around and came back and got me which I was happy about because we were on our way to a Winery where we got to taste wine and brandy. A few days ago I had a conversation with one of the Chinese students about China’s one child law. The student I spoke to was one of two siblings, she had a younger brother. She explained that her parents had to pay a onetime fee or tax on her brother. I believe the tax was roughly $1500. I explained that I only had one sibling myself but have friends with families consisting of up to four children. I also talked about how there a craze in America going on is families with multiple children. I told the student about some families that have 8-12 kids. They were really surprised on how people in America could care for and take care of so many children. I tried to explain how there are special services for families under those types of conditions, but the more technical my English got I could tell I was losing them in the conversation. My Chinese student friend said that many of her friends are only children and that even in China you can easily tell the difference between a child who has a sibling and one who is a single child. This aspect is common in America as well, I can often pick out an only child without asking if they have siblings or not.