It has been a wild few weeks here in Kunming. I am sure that many of you have heard about the train station attack. Be assured that we are all fine and good.
The weekend of the attack many students and teachers from KIA, including Eric, were taking part in and leading a huge youth conference (Permeate) about 15 min. away from where we live. Eric didn't stay overnight at the resort like the rest of them so I was grateful that when I received the phone call on Sunday morning from Michelle informing us of the Saturday night attack that I knew Eric's exact location (at home, with me). Michelle gave us the information that she knew and said that we needed to stay home from Fellowship because our building is only two blocks or so from the train station. She also said the wedding that we were all planning on attending that afternoon (a KIA colleague was getting married) was probably going to be cancelled because it was being held at a Muslim restaurant. Later that day we received an email from our school Director, who has the privilege of being our Field Director, that all OASIS staff (us) were not allowed to attend the wedding, but it would still take place without us. An email a little later on told us that school was cancelled on Monday so our weekend was unexpectedly extended a little longer so they could better assess the needs of the community and our safety. That evening (Sunday) some of the kids attending Permeate actually had to go to the station to take trains back to their homes around Yunnan. A friend of ours who dropped them off said that they seemed okay about it and the station was pretty cleared out by the time they arrived.
We laid low on Monday and on Tuesday returned to school to find three policemen guarding our school gate and a new set of rules regarding going off campus during the school day. The students seem to be handling it fine. Besides a few changes at school and the increased police presence around the city, the attacks didn't affect any of them personally. The fear was that some of our students have lived in countries where terrorist attacks are quite the norm and I know of at least one student who was actually caught in the middle of an attack. We were somewhat apprehensive as a school that the student's experiences elsewhere would be brought to the surface with the attack here. I haven't seen this to be the case, they are a resilient bunch, but I am also no expert.
Another result of the attacks was the cancelling of our yearly service trip to an orphanage about 5 hours south of the city. It is located in a largely Muslim area and they asked that we not come. We willingly agreed because we didn't want to position ourselves as a nice big target. Additionally, we were going to have a group of students from our sister school in Kabul visit, but we asked them not to come because we couldn't guarantee their safety. We were a little bummed about both cancellations, but we understand there is sound reasoning behind them.
