Dear Mr. Chan,

This is the third time we send money for the charity work of Dragon’s Heart Foundation. In our last letter we introduced our association (association for the support of highly gifted children) and in the meantime, we - Ingrid and Anouk - went to China and had a wonderful time there. We visited lots of interesting places, for example a school of calligraphy. A great idea came to our minds: We planned a Day of Calligraphy for the children of our association to collect money for the ‘Build a School for a Dollar’-project, and therefore we bought paper, paintbrushes and Chinese ink in China.

Back in Germany, Ingrid attended adult evening classes to learn Chinese calligraphy. Every day she practised calligraphy and in the background of the pictures you can see the outcome of all her work. On 22 July we organised our Day of Calligraphy for all the children (and their parents) in our association who learn Chinese or want to begin it in the near future. Everybody who wanted to come should donate 10 € for ‘Build a School for a Dollar’.

We were very happy, that our Chinese teacher Soh Lan was motivated to help us, even though we couldn’t pay her, as all the money of this day should go into charity. Her husband -a British - came too, as he wanted to learn calligraphy. Soh Lan was a large help for us this day. Another important person for this day was Dorothea, who sent the invitations and helped us with her family to decorate the room, so that it would look like a real school of calligraphy.

We also displayed photos of the calligraphy school we visited and of our journey through China.

We began at 10 o’clock with learning the basic strokes and the first Chinese characters. Everyone was highly concentrated, even our youngest student who was 6 years old. From 12 o’clock until 1 o’clock we had a break to eat lunch, but some children already started to go on after half an hour. We also made green tee, listened to Chinese flute music, to songs of Teresa Teng and of course to your music. During the afternoon lessons we painted on stones, on cloth or with chopsticks in sand. The participants could also draw the characters on Chinese paper and on cards.

At the end we made a photo of our group and everyone wrote their names on a piece of paper. It was a great day and the children could learn interesting things about a different culture. With the donations, we can give China something back, so that poor children can go to school. We don’t think that this was our last Day of Calligraphy.

Lots of greetings,

Anouk and Ingrid Ehreiser
on behalf of Initiative zur Foerderung hochbegabter Kinder e. V.

PHOTOS:

 

The organizing team: Dorothea, Soh Lan, Ingrid, and Anouk