fire truck fire truck

Julianna and Lydia's classes organized an afternoon field trip to a fire station.  We arranged for Isaac and John Paul to get "little brother passes" and join in the fun. 

[I actually had another errand to run in town so I missed a lot of the event but heard plenty of stories!]

Isaac's absolute favorite jacket is this fire truck hoodie and he intentionally wore it for the fire station trip.

The size and sophistication of the equipment was impressive.  Very impressive.  Unfortunately, emergency support (fire, police, medical) really lags behind standards for most developed countries.  There are very few fire stations, I almost never see emergency vehicles, cars do not yield to sirens, police do not garner even a fraction of the respect that they do in America.  I've only had a few occasions where I directly interacted with a policeman here.  Once I was very impressed.  Once I was very,  ummmmm, under-impressed. 

Anyways, there might be only one of these trucks in the entire province, but it's still amazing - this truck can rescue people from a 30 story building with a 101 meter tall "cherry-picker".  (They raised it to full height to show the kids!)

[Lydia's class in front of the biggest fanciest rescue truck.  There were at least 20 trucks at this station.]

Fire-fighting is a branch of the military and Isaac loved all the fatigues.  

Getting in the trucks was pretty fun too :)

The boys (and Matt) stuck close to Lydia's class - together they toured trucks and the dorm rooms.  {Matt told the kids he expects them to start making their beds to military standard like what they saw in the fireman bunks.} 

Julianna was in a separate tour group, always arms-distance from her best buddy, Zheng ZiYi.  Zheng ZiYi and her mom rode to the fire station with us and it was 100% chatter and giggles from the back row where Julianna and her buddy were double-buckled next to John Paul. 

Definitely a great way to spend an afternoon!