As many of you know Julie and I are working in the province of Qinghai, which is directly above Tibet. A large percentage of the population in Qinghai is Tibetan. We have been informed of the riots in Lhasa and the surrounding provinces, which include Qinghai. The latest news on the riots can be found in this AP article: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h5Z6bJwtN_roGSIUQiQnfbf2NkhgD8VF3DBO0
Nothing has really occurred here in Xining. Some small riots have broken out in areas approximately 3 hours away from us. We have been staying safe though by always being accompanied by CDC officials. We usually travel to the countryside during the day and return to the capital city of Xining by nightfall. On one of our trips out to the countryside we saw lines of army trucks being transported to Lhasa. It was pretty intense. Julie and I asked the locals about how they felt about the Tibetan riots. Most of them felt that it was wrong for the Tibetans to cause such violence. When asked about why China won’t let Tibet be independent, they said, “Tibet is one of China’s children, would you let your children run off on its own? If one of your American states wanted to be its own county, would the US let it?” I am personally shocked that the Tibetan would protest in such a violent manner. I thought the whole idea behind Buddhism was peace. I mean I agree you should protest for change, but violence really isn’t the right tool to use. Due to the conditions, Julie and I are planning on wrapping everything up in the next two weeks. We have been really focused on getting everything done in the last two weeks. As of right now we have already finished personally teaching at 12 schools, each school 2 times. We assessed the kids HBV knowledge before and after the education classes and the results show 90%HBV comprehension rate. This is really great because it proves that the education program that we have developed is effective! Now we are going to survey some other schools where we did not personally teach at. At those schools the teachers utilized out materials and curriculum to teach their own kids. We are hoping that they have at least an 80% HBV comprehension rate. �
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