10/31 Tuesday

I was able to get to Kai Fa Qu today in around 25 minutes, without encountering much traffic.

When I got to the Cummins Kai Fa Qu office, I was told that I would be going out to do some community service for the company. I was literally handed an English text book, told what the last lesson taught was, and sent to the classroom. I had no idea what level these people were at, whether they were used to doing just oral practice, or what things I needed to focus on with them The students were a bunch of around 30 of Beijing’s senior citizens. I had fun teaching them, and also realized just how complicated English can be. For example, I tried to explain the use of the word ‘like’, but was pretty lost for words. I also further realized how ridiculous some English words sound through attempting to teach their pronunciation, especially, "U-m-b-r-e-l-l-a-". I taught for almost 2 hours.

After returning from the classroom, I ate lunch in the company canteen. The food there was extremely healthy and good, including vegetables, fish, tofu, and rice. Even before I saw the sign on the door that said 'canteen' as I was leaving, I thought of the place as a canteen. It just had a 'canteen’ aura...a very cheap and efficient setup but substantial healthy food for hard workers.

I went with a couple of the workers after finishing lunch, to the workshop floor where they had a ping pong table. They played doubles, and I paired up with the man who had driven me to teach English. I was rusty, and he wasn’t very consistent, so we ended up losing pretty badly every time.

After ping pong, I learned how to assemble, clean, and calibrate a fuel injector for a 6-cylinder Cummins 1600 Horse Power engine. A fuel injector pretty much looks like an enormous bullet, and delivers a squirt of fuel into the cylinder of the engine, where the fuel is ignited, and the explosion pushes the piston down. I was given a special pair of clothes and shoes to enter the fuel injector workshop. I had to bathe the injector in an enormous tub of pure gasoline at one point while cleaning it, and was nearly up to my elbows in the black stuff. I helped the young guy teaching me how to work with the injector with his English, focusing on some of the technical terms for the parts.

I returned home by taxi. Unfortunately the traffic was terrible, and it took over an hour to return home. I slept in the car.

At night, Colm and I went to the Cummins office building to help the interns complete the 200 'candy bombs' we bought the candy for on Sunday. We placed them on all the Cummins employees’ desks for them to find the next morning.