Elders' Day

Earlier in the week our roommates informed us about a Chinese holiday where the young adolescents reach out and help the elderly. So it was only right that us as cadets are able to reach out to the community and experience more of the Chinese culture. My roommate who is the monitor for the whole exchange program was able to set up an opportunity for all the International Maritime Business cadets as well as the three Germans in our program to visit a retirement home to try and help out. I have never been to a retirement home since most of my family at least that I know of is back in Mexico. The ride to the retirement home was not bad it took about fifteen minutes on bus and we were there. All of us were pretty excited especially our roommates from Shanghai Maritime University since this is a huge deal for them. Although they all have plans for the weekend they made sure that they came since it is a tradition that has been going on for many years during this time of the year.

Although it was hard to communicate with the elders our roommates helped translating for us which was nice. Even though there was a language barrier the smiles on the faces of the people we went to visit let us know that they were very happy to see us. We visited people in their rooms that could not physically get up and took pictures with them and they even gave us a thumbs up. We then went into a movie room where at least fifteen elders came to greet us and we put on a show for them. We all sang americans songs, we even sang the Barney sone "I Love You" because that was one of the songs everyone could remember the words to. The three German students (Marc, Jullian, and Sandra) also sang a German song. Everyone in the room sang the Chinese national anthem together or we at least tried to not mess it up as much. The elders also sang at least three songs to us which we did not expect which was a nice gesture.

Overall the experience was wonderful, everyone came out very happy and were very pleased about coming. I heard a saying when I was little and it was "always remember to do one good deed a day, because it can bring a smile to someones face". Hopefully us being there and showing up allowed the elderly to be happy for the moment, we plan on going back in the following weeks so we can perform a full song and maybe a dance to go with it.

-Eduardo Ramos