St. Mary's students and staff travel to China

By Wayne Pelzel

8,000 miles and 22 hours of travel time later, representatives from St. Mary's School in Sleepy Eye arrived in Shanghai, China, on Saturday, November 23. These representatives were on a ten day ambassador's mission to Chinese schools. Their goal was both to build relationships with school in China and to provide assistance to the schools, particularly in their English education program. The trip was financed by a Chinese businessman, David Lu.

The group was made up of four St. Mary's High School students - Nick Braun, Abby Helget, Kailey Helget, and Nola Helget, three high school teachers - Julie Neubauer, Katherine Walker and Rachel Schreiber, and St. Mary's elementary principal Wayne Pelzel. Wayne's wife, Pattie, also accompanied the group.

The group spent considerable time in a premier middle school in Shanghai and a high level high school in Wenling. Shanghai is a city of 20 million people and one million live in Wenling. Children in the Wenling High School (3,800 students) the group saw represent the top 20% of students in that area and are all university bound. They are tested at the end of their elementary years and are placed in schools based on their test scores. Apparently, Chinese children's futures are somewhat determined by the age of 12.

Two words that sum up China stood out in the group's minds - people & pollution. China, which is almost equal in size to the U.S., is the most populated country in the world. They experienced that. People in very crowded conditions and seemingly never ending lines of people moving in every direction were what was found in the cities visited. In the country, although people are not as concentrated, there were no open spaces and there are 2 and 3 story multi-family homes everywhere. Half acre to one acre farm plots where rice, vegetables and tea are raised were the norm (there wasn't an acre of land they drove by not in production.) Even hill sides are terraced from top to bottom.

With the huge, overwhelming concentrations of people, pollution abounds. The air was clouded and visibility greatly restricted. Although the sun was out, it could not be seen. The air burned their eyes and throats. The water, too, was greatly affected.

The group found the Chinese people extremely welcoming and curious. It was not unusual to walk into a bus depot or restaurant and have EVERY head turn and look at them. They felt they had tremendous success in building relationships with the schools visited. St. Mary's will be sister schools and hope to exchange teachers in the future.

The Chinese liked the Americans and were very anxious to build relationships. The trip was a tremendous experience for all involved.