We were received warmly wherever we stopped. People’s first question was always “Where are you from?” “I’m American,” I told them “but my friends are from other countries.” Traveling in our relief trucks that day was an Australian, a Swede, an Irish expatriate, a German, and a number of Chinese. This diversity impressed people greatly.

Two girls ask to have their picture taken.

This woman was shelling beans when I found her. She thanked us for coming in thick Sichuanese.
I came across a survivor whose arm was broken in the earthquake. His arm rested in half a cast, held up by a sling. He said a doctor had set the arm a week after the earthquake and that it was healing fast. He lifted it a few inches out of the cast to show me.

Man with an arm broken in the earthquake
Outside the ruined temple, we can across a group of women and children writing out hundreds of slips of yellow paper. These papers were filled out in the name of those who died, wishing them peace and luck. The papers were being prepared for use at a ceremony that evening.

Writing out prayers for the dead

A girl wishes us well.
Little children and babies were generally fascinated and a little suspicious by the odd looking strangers who were attracting so much attention.

“Aiye,” she said, pointing me out to her two year old, ‘Auntie.’
There is an unusually intense and public intimacy between family members, between parents and children. I think people still feel lucky their loved ones survived.

Mother and her baby