Interviews

The opportunities that I have here never cease to amaze me. Our one-on-one final research paper is due in a few weeks, so everybody is scrambling to get in interviews etc... My paper has to do with education of female ethnic minorities. (It sounds better in Chinese, I promise). Anyway, I interviewed a guy on Friday who is the first person of the Nu (怒) ethnic group to ever go to graduate school. There are only about 20,000 Nu people in the world, and the population is clustered in 3 small villages in Yunnan. They are very very poor.

This guy I interviewed can speak three different ethnic minority languages as well as Mandarin and a tiny bit of English. His sister is in middle school and will be dropping out before high school to find work somewhere. The role of women in Nu education is solely to teach their children their old traditions/religious rites. For example, if you sleep on the ground outside of your house, you have to go back and check that your soul is not stuck where you slept.

Tomorrow, I am going to a school full of various ethnic minorities to interview both teachers and students. I'm a little nervous, but I'm also really excited.

Richard came to visit this weekend. It was a blast!