Feb 14, '07 Heifer training, temple, DVD
Feb 14, 2007 Heifer training, another temple, Jusco, DVD from China
I went to Heifer this morning to do my training for going out to the school for the Read to Feed program that Heifer Hong Kong has developed. It was extremely interesting to find out how they do this. The basics are that the kids raise money by reading & getting sponsors. The school is given a project that their money will go towards. Since this school participated last year, we tell them about what the money they raise last year did. Then we tell them about the project their money for this year will do.
Last year this school raised over $9,000, which bought 14 cows for 7 families in Tibet. With this money Heifer also goes to the villages to find out what other needs there are & which families are most likely to be successful in the program. It also provided training to the people in how to care for the animals, environmentally friendly farming techniques (since the cows will provide needed fertilizer), gender equity & health education for the 4 villages involved (specifically HIV awareness – I thought that was particularly interesting). Heifer also helped form knitting teams to help reestablish the cultural skill of knitting & give them another income producing product.
The families have to sign a contract promising to “Pass it On”. This means that they are obligated within 2 years of receiving their “gift” to give one offspring from their animal to another needy family or to pay the equivalent of an offspring so that another animal can be purchased for another family. In this way the program keeps on working & expanding long after the initial project is completed. I think this is a really impressive organization & I’m really excited to be helping out.
The new project the school will be contributing to this year is for 6 villages in the mountains of China, north of Hong Kong. Their problem is clean drinking water & very little farmable land. This project will supply pigs to the people & will also provide the materials & training for the people to build water tanks to safely store & distribute drinking water.
My trainer, Jeanie, is native Hong Kong, but speaks English very well. I find that most people in HK speak a stylized English that has it’s own special grammar. In the Chinese language there are no tenses, so everything is in the present. I find that is how they also try to speak English, except those who have spent time in English speaking countries. I looked over Jeanie’s power point & handouts for the presentation & made some basic corrections. She was so glad to have me proofread for her. Here are some examples:
“The Heifer people play attention to what the villagers needs.”
“What Heifer do to help?”
“How’re we gonna use your money this year?”
“How is it like there?”
Since the audience are mostly native English speaking people (international schools), it is important to make sure the English correct. I was glad to be able to do this. She had me proofread several other items that she was working on. I can see that I didn’t need to worry that they wouldn’t be able to use me because I don’t speak Chinese. I guess I was just what she needed. It made me feel very useful.
After the training I went to the office just to say hi. I was told that I was supposed to be getting a New Years good luck plant for the office. I asked the staff if there was one temple that was better than the others for helping people get better or sending up healing wishes? They all said “Of course, you must go to the temple in Wong Tai Sin. That is the best one for having your wishes come true.” It turns out I’ve have this temple on my short list of must see places, so I decided not time like the present to head out there. I had found out that my dad was in the hospital that morning & wanted to light more incense for Sue’s good health. The temple is called Sik Sik Yuen.
I took the ferry over to Kowloon side & then got onto the MTR & had to switch lines a few stops up. I found the temple without any problem as it is just outside of the MTR station. I think since it is New Years, there were lots more people than normal during the middle of the day. I went to the incense vendor & got my big packet. I lit it at the lighting area & headed on up to the main area in front of the main Buddha. The place was really crowded with people with large handfuls of lit incense. It is really a pretty dangerous situation. There are men around who are constantly cleaning the old incense sticks out of the pots so new ones can be put in. This one man was cleaning out a large bunch that was still burning & he dropped in onto a woman’s bag. Luckily it was leather & didn’t catch on fire. I wonder how many people get burned doing this. The smoke is also very thick. My eyes were burning badly by the time I had stuck my incense into all the different pots. But I made my wishes for my father & for Sue, and distributed the incense all around to every Buddha there was.
This temple is well known for it’s fortune telling. I guess since it is good for making wishes come true, you need to know if they really will come true. What you do is get a little barrel of sticks from a booth (they are free). You take your barrel up to the front area near the Buddha & you kneel or stand & you make a wish. Then you shake the barrel until one of the sticks falls out. I guess you can make as many wishes as you want, you just shake out another stick for each wish. Each stick is numbered, so you remember what number went with what wish. Then (after returning the barrel to the booth), you go just outside of the temple & there are 2 floors of fortune telling booths. There must be about 50 booths on each floor. It is pretty interesting. As soon as I walked in, a woman from one booth took my arm & led me down the long hallway to a booth that said “English spoken here.”
I went in & spoke to Priscilla Lam. I told her the number & the wish. It was for good health for my friend. Each number is associated with a story & depending on the wish the story is interpreted for that wish. She said the story was a very good one for my friend’s health. It is about a very poor man who works very hard and he eventually becomes the #1 person in all of China. Each year after many examinations and much learning one person in all of China is the best (and China has a lot of people in it, so to be #1 is a very very good & difficult thing, she explained to me). This one person is employed by the emperor for life and has a very good living. So this was very good for this poor man to end up being the best in all of China & he had a very good life.
Ms. Lam asked some questions about my friend & said that she would be OK. She might go through some hard times, like the man having to study so hard and work so hard, but in the end, in the autumn everything would be good, because that is when the man took the test & became #1, in the autumn. She was sure that my friend would be fine. This made me feel better.
I had shaken out another number and said it was for myself for good luck in the coming year. She said that this story wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good. She said that I would have medium luck this year. The story was about a man who talks to his bird, it is a parrot, so they can communicate well with each other. The man sees a tiger take a sheep into a cave near his home, so the next day he goes to the cave to get some of the sheep meat because the man is poor & hungry. The town’s people see the man with the meat & believe that he stole the sheep & they put him in jail. The bird watches the cave & when he sees the tiger bring another sheep into the cave, the bird tells the town’s people to look in the cave. They find the tiger with the sheep & realize the man didn’t steal the sheep & they let him go.
Ms. Lam said that this story means that I have to be careful with communication & making sure people understand my message. The man went to jail, but then he was let out, so his luck was bad & then good. It is important to communicate. John got a good laugh out of this when I told him. He said he guessed that Ms. Lam didn’t realize that she was talking to one of the major communicators around. The fortune telling was only about $4, so it was worth it. They will also do hand & face readings, but I figured I’d save that for next time.
I went to Heifer this morning to do my training for going out to the school for the Read to Feed program that Heifer Hong Kong has developed. It was extremely interesting to find out how they do this. The basics are that the kids raise money by reading & getting sponsors. The school is given a project that their money will go towards. Since this school participated last year, we tell them about what the money they raise last year did. Then we tell them about the project their money for this year will do.
Last year this school raised over $9,000, which bought 14 cows for 7 families in Tibet. With this money Heifer also goes to the villages to find out what other needs there are & which families are most likely to be successful in the program. It also provided training to the people in how to care for the animals, environmentally friendly farming techniques (since the cows will provide needed fertilizer), gender equity & health education for the 4 villages involved (specifically HIV awareness – I thought that was particularly interesting). Heifer also helped form knitting teams to help reestablish the cultural skill of knitting & give them another income producing product.
The families have to sign a contract promising to “Pass it On”. This means that they are obligated within 2 years of receiving their “gift” to give one offspring from their animal to another needy family or to pay the equivalent of an offspring so that another animal can be purchased for another family. In this way the program keeps on working & expanding long after the initial project is completed. I think this is a really impressive organization & I’m really excited to be helping out.
The new project the school will be contributing to this year is for 6 villages in the mountains of China, north of Hong Kong. Their problem is clean drinking water & very little farmable land. This project will supply pigs to the people & will also provide the materials & training for the people to build water tanks to safely store & distribute drinking water.
My trainer, Jeanie, is native Hong Kong, but speaks English very well. I find that most people in HK speak a stylized English that has it’s own special grammar. In the Chinese language there are no tenses, so everything is in the present. I find that is how they also try to speak English, except those who have spent time in English speaking countries. I looked over Jeanie’s power point & handouts for the presentation & made some basic corrections. She was so glad to have me proofread for her. Here are some examples:
“The Heifer people play attention to what the villagers needs.”
“What Heifer do to help?”
“How’re we gonna use your money this year?”
“How is it like there?”
Since the audience are mostly native English speaking people (international schools), it is important to make sure the English correct. I was glad to be able to do this. She had me proofread several other items that she was working on. I can see that I didn’t need to worry that they wouldn’t be able to use me because I don’t speak Chinese. I guess I was just what she needed. It made me feel very useful.
After the training I went to the office just to say hi. I was told that I was supposed to be getting a New Years good luck plant for the office. I asked the staff if there was one temple that was better than the others for helping people get better or sending up healing wishes? They all said “Of course, you must go to the temple in Wong Tai Sin. That is the best one for having your wishes come true.” It turns out I’ve have this temple on my short list of must see places, so I decided not time like the present to head out there. I had found out that my dad was in the hospital that morning & wanted to light more incense for Sue’s good health. The temple is called Sik Sik Yuen.
I took the ferry over to Kowloon side & then got onto the MTR & had to switch lines a few stops up. I found the temple without any problem as it is just outside of the MTR station. I think since it is New Years, there were lots more people than normal during the middle of the day. I went to the incense vendor & got my big packet. I lit it at the lighting area & headed on up to the main area in front of the main Buddha. The place was really crowded with people with large handfuls of lit incense. It is really a pretty dangerous situation. There are men around who are constantly cleaning the old incense sticks out of the pots so new ones can be put in. This one man was cleaning out a large bunch that was still burning & he dropped in onto a woman’s bag. Luckily it was leather & didn’t catch on fire. I wonder how many people get burned doing this. The smoke is also very thick. My eyes were burning badly by the time I had stuck my incense into all the different pots. But I made my wishes for my father & for Sue, and distributed the incense all around to every Buddha there was.
This temple is well known for it’s fortune telling. I guess since it is good for making wishes come true, you need to know if they really will come true. What you do is get a little barrel of sticks from a booth (they are free). You take your barrel up to the front area near the Buddha & you kneel or stand & you make a wish. Then you shake the barrel until one of the sticks falls out. I guess you can make as many wishes as you want, you just shake out another stick for each wish. Each stick is numbered, so you remember what number went with what wish. Then (after returning the barrel to the booth), you go just outside of the temple & there are 2 floors of fortune telling booths. There must be about 50 booths on each floor. It is pretty interesting. As soon as I walked in, a woman from one booth took my arm & led me down the long hallway to a booth that said “English spoken here.”
I went in & spoke to Priscilla Lam. I told her the number & the wish. It was for good health for my friend. Each number is associated with a story & depending on the wish the story is interpreted for that wish. She said the story was a very good one for my friend’s health. It is about a very poor man who works very hard and he eventually becomes the #1 person in all of China. Each year after many examinations and much learning one person in all of China is the best (and China has a lot of people in it, so to be #1 is a very very good & difficult thing, she explained to me). This one person is employed by the emperor for life and has a very good living. So this was very good for this poor man to end up being the best in all of China & he had a very good life.
Ms. Lam asked some questions about my friend & said that she would be OK. She might go through some hard times, like the man having to study so hard and work so hard, but in the end, in the autumn everything would be good, because that is when the man took the test & became #1, in the autumn. She was sure that my friend would be fine. This made me feel better.
I had shaken out another number and said it was for myself for good luck in the coming year. She said that this story wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good. She said that I would have medium luck this year. The story was about a man who talks to his bird, it is a parrot, so they can communicate well with each other. The man sees a tiger take a sheep into a cave near his home, so the next day he goes to the cave to get some of the sheep meat because the man is poor & hungry. The town’s people see the man with the meat & believe that he stole the sheep & they put him in jail. The bird watches the cave & when he sees the tiger bring another sheep into the cave, the bird tells the town’s people to look in the cave. They find the tiger with the sheep & realize the man didn’t steal the sheep & they let him go.
Ms. Lam said that this story means that I have to be careful with communication & making sure people understand my message. The man went to jail, but then he was let out, so his luck was bad & then good. It is important to communicate. John got a good laugh out of this when I told him. He said he guessed that Ms. Lam didn’t realize that she was talking to one of the major communicators around. The fortune telling was only about $4, so it was worth it. They will also do hand & face readings, but I figured I’d save that for next time.
It was pretty interesting to see what people had brought as offerings to Buddha. One man had an entire plucked chicken; head, beak & all. See photo. He also had the usual incense & fruit. You can see in the photo the colored paper is to represent money. You burn this & it is supposed to bring you good fortune. This man was shaking out bamboo sticks & then checking in a book. Then he would throw these 2 wooden cresent shaped discs on the ground, look at them & then check his book. He did this over & over. He must have had lots of wishes.
Side note: I was listening to the news the day after New Years & they said the leader of Hong Kong had been at the temple (same one I was at) on New Years day to have his annual fortune read & the stick he pulled said that HK would have another good year. This was considered very important be the locals. I guess one year the fortune was not good on New Years & that is the year that SARS hit HK, so they put a lot of credibility in this.
Side note: I was listening to the news the day after New Years & they said the leader of Hong Kong had been at the temple (same one I was at) on New Years day to have his annual fortune read & the stick he pulled said that HK would have another good year. This was considered very important be the locals. I guess one year the fortune was not good on New Years & that is the year that SARS hit HK, so they put a lot of credibility in this.
On the way home I stopped at the Jusco store (large department store) to see if they had any New Years decorations & plants. They had both. I was told to get a few more things to decorate the office & a plant. I found it all. It was a bit tough carrying the plant on the MTR, but I managed & they office staff was very proud of me, for getting my fortune told & getting the plant back in good shape.
John was very sweet & offered to take me out for Valentine’s Day. They really make a huge deal about it here. All of the restaurants have special dinners & they are very expensive. Most places required reservations & it was late by the time he got home, so we just stayed in. John had gone to China to visit a printer. The printer took him to the mall that is just over the boarder & were you are supposed to be able to get all the copy products. He said there were tons of watch places & the prices were about ½ what we pay in HK for copy watches (I wonder if they work any longer – the ones we get here only seem to work for about a month). He did get a copy DVD of Casino Royale. So we decided to watch that. The previews were fine & the picture was good, but we couldn’t understand what language they were speaking once the actual movie began. I think it might have been Portuguese. We went to the menu to try to change the language, but it wouldn’t work. After about 20 minutes I finally figured it out & don’t ask me how, but I got it going in English, but you could hardly hear it. Even turned up full volume you couldn’t hear them. I guess that’s why it was only $1. I looked at the cover & it said Roger Moore as 007 (I think they are a little dated on that one). Guess they didn’t know the new guy’s name or something. We got a good laugh out of that.
posted by Becky Hubbell @ 7:16 AM
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