It's been one week since I've been back to Beijing. The biggest difference is that my brother is not here this time with me. I've come to realize how much his presence made a difference while helping transitioning the first 6 months here. The beijing weather is warmer than I expected but nevertheless very cold (ranges -2 to 0 degrees celsius). I was expecting snow like the past few winters I've been here.
Our Transparent Fish Non-Profit Laboratory has moved to a new location at the Maples International Center. After much office hunting, we've found the perfect place. My first week of work involved furnishing the entire office and settle the staff back into the more important items. The most tiring part of buying furniture and appliances is bargaining and finding the cheapest prices for everything to make sure we are using our resources wisely. Our foundation is also preparing the Little Red Scarf donation package and for potential donors.
Our interns have started their vacation before I came back and have returned to their hometowns. The train and airplanes are completely full for the next few days because everyone is returning home for Chinese New Years. My friend said that a train that usually fits 150 now has over 300 people on it. Imagine everyone without beds or seats and standing for 24 hours next to each other, rushing to come home and celebrate the biggest holiday in China.
My friends have been wonderful in helping transition back in. We made noodles from scratch the other day and I made the tomato/egg sauce. We had a really good and deep catch up time after not seeing some for 5 months. They're also helping me look for a suitable roommate.
I'm going to Hong Kong for Chinese New Years! I hope to see the amazing fireworks everyone has been talking about. I miss my family dearly and hope they will enjoy Vietnamese New Years.
Mr. Chao and Amy kindly drove me to the airport. All flights were on time. I spent most of my time on the plane resting. Traveling buddies are always nice but I am getting used to traveling alone. Through cheap plane ticket finds, I've found out that Delta Airlines is very stellar. Their flight crew was very in tune with the passengers, one glance and they knew what you needed. I wrote some good reviews for them. I usually go with Air China but I forgot what I'm missing out on (in-flight entertainment). I rotated my experience with times of rest, food, reading, work preparation, boredom (which was replaced with movies, classical music, pop songs, and Glee songs!). Who would have known that you would find movies on the plane you really wanted to see in theaters when none of your friends were interested in seeing them with you? I was pleasantly surprised to find a wide selection - the two that mostly stood out was Paranormal Activity and Precious. I didn't want to movie binge and just feel tired as I've done on past trips when I had this option to stack 6 movies to kill time on the plane a few years ago. Delta had UP! Glee (the entire soundtrack)! Beethoven & Yoyoma! I saw two intense movies - Precious and Paranormal Activity. Precious reminded me of the reality of life, the harshness, dreams, and core of a human's soul which keeps fighting (beautiful). Paranormal Activity - interspersed with me one hand holding tightly onto the remote control to bring the volume up and down on specific scary scenes and the other hand holding my hoodie to cover my face to only show the non-scary regions of the already small screen.
I always love airplane trips because they are always full of anticipation before a huge adventure and yet ironically I'm usually stuck in one place for a few hours doing hardly anything. Thoughts linger from one plan to the next. The experience on the plane is hard to forget. They are filled with times of self-reflection: where am I going? for what purpose am I going? how are the people that I've left behind at home? remaining items to finished before the long journey? what good can come out of this trip? what are my goals and what do I want to learn from the trip? leveling my head...the long wait was over...I walked up to customs, waited anxiously hoping my luggage had not been misplaced on some other trip, and finally, I walked outside. I saw Xiao Fan! I was very happy to see someone come meet me. She took me down one floor to the airplane express! Excited as ever to ride fast train. I've always wanted to take the airport express but I've never had a chance. It's so cheap and convenient. We then came to the hotel, discussed briefly our schedule, and we discussed our thoughts on the upcoming training trip in Gansu. We then talked more about life and it was wonderful hearing Xiao Fan's story. I'm quite happy to partner with her on this trip and she's been such a great company and friend and it's only been day 2.
We are presenting the Ping & Amy Chao Foundation Introduction Video. We hope this video will give you the big picture of our vision and passion for Children's Health, Promoting Volunteerism, Applying the Best Web 2.0 Technology, and Driving a New Movement for Nonprofits in East Asia. Please let us know your thoughts.
Day 14-16, July 17-19, Friday - Sunday: MMK Last Day, Debriefing and Beijing EV Training
Week 3
Day 17-19, July 20-22, Monday - Wednesday: Trip to Suzhou
Day 20, July 23, Thursday: Class
Day 21-23, July 24-26, Friday-Sunday: Free Time to Work on Presentation and Journaling for Class
Friday (7/24) - Lunch was good today as we all talked about faith and economics and what it means to us. People became very vulnerable with each other and I was able to share some of my life experiences as well.
Saturday (7/25) - I'm sitting in Shangdao Cafe with my roommate Irene journaling about our experiences in Shanghai. It is part of our PESI CISP course to journal, reflect, and process our learnings in China. I finished my blog entries about my EV training experience, but I still have a long way to go for the journaling as I've been really busy with training, volunteering for mmk, and going to suzhou. Please forgive me for my delay in blogging and keeping you updated.
Sunday (7/26) -
Week 4
Day 24, July 27, Monday
Day 25, July 28, Tuesday
Day 26, July 29, Wednesday
Day 27, July 30, Thursday
Day 28, July 31, Friday
Day 29, Aug 1, Saturday
Return to the US! =) Home Sweet Home!! =D Bye Shanghai!
I am in Shanghai right now on the China Intercultural Studies Program from July 3rd to August 1st, 2009. While I'm here I will try to engage the chinese students to use East Villagers. I will try my best to update this blog entry with snapshots of my day here. At the end of the program, I will write another entry with a summary of my overall experience. Enjoy!
Day 1, July 4, Saturday
I arrived safely after a 14 hour flight. I had allergies right before I departed LAX and had my temperature checked before entering Shanghai. It was a good thing I did not get quarantined. I met Joanna and Kortney at LAX and we all went to Shanghai together. We all arrived at the hotel near Fudan around 10pm and were very exhausted. We were the last ones to arrive due to our flight being delayed. The weather in Shanghai at around 10pm was slightly humid but not too bad. My roommates' name is Irene and we get along really well. We both had a good night's sleep and woke up early in the morning around 6am.
Day 2, July 5, Sunday
Today was a long day full of very meaningful events. From the morning, we had orientation to go over logistics, goals, and program schedule. We met with PESI alumni and they shared about their work in Shanghai. We got to eat dinner with the professionals and had a chance to ask them questions. Then we went sightseeing at Jin Mao Tower, and I got to take pictures of all the skyscrapers at night. The buildings and city lights overwhelmed me and I wonder how the people in Shanghai feel about the rapid change. Dan, our director, told us that 15 years ago the area was rural farmland. All in all, today was very tiring but good to have an overview of the program and get to know my teammates more. I'm going to sign off to sleep now - 10pm Shanghai time - we need to wake up at 6am tomorrow and class starts at 8:30am.
Day 3, July 6, Monday
The humid weather is still gripping onto my clothes and skin but I am getting used to it. I am still not over jetlag and wake up everyday around 5am. Right now it is 8:20pm and I feel like I want to go to sleep. Hopefully, I'll be over it soon. We had our course orientation today at Fudan University. We saw a few movies to become more acquainted with Chinese history and background before diving into the course topic of china international relations and economics. I have never taken a class on this topic before so I'm interested in learning more about this area. After class, around 3:30pm, we heard thunderstorms and rained. I had a good conversation with my roommate today about reasons why we are in China. I think I'm going to rest now. Until the next entry...
Day 4, July 7, Tuesday
Today's weather was so much nicer than any other day I've been in Shanghai. I woke up eating two red bean buns and a little cup of yogurt for breakfast. We watched a movie about China and Shanghai today and I learned so much. After a wonderful lunch with the girls in my group, we returned to class to listen to Professor Ni's lecture. It was very interesting to hear a Chinese professor's perspective on the topic "China and the World." His talk was very interesting and english was very clear. After class, I met up with an old friend from Stanford and we explored the city of Shanghai. It was so good to finally catch up after two years. I really enjoyed today because of everything I learned, having the opportunity to catch up with my friend, and the wonderful weather (no rain).
Day 5&6, July 8-9, Wednesday and Thursday
I want to combine my blog for these two dates because on Wednesday I was taking care of logistics all morning and during the afternoon, I was holding a training session until night time. Today (Thursday) was great because I got to come to lecture again and I really enjoy learning about China from a Chinese professor's viewpoint. I've taken similar courses taught by American professors, and this opportunity gives me a more well-rounded perspective on China. In the afternoon, a guest speaker talked about her company which involves yak milk and fur and how she's able to carry out her idea into a company. Afterwards, I met up with a few TECC and PESI leaders to discuss the schedule for July 11 (Saturday) training session for the More for Migrant Kids Summer Camp. It seems to be falling together and I'm happy to see that. During the evening we had group debriefing where we're able to share about our experience thus far for the first week and Dan, our director, shared some very insightful material about cross-cultural relationships and how acceptance is so important which involves patience, humility, respect, and much more in our actions with not only people in China but people in general to show that we love and value them as a human. He went through a few articles and pointed out some insightful observations about American culture which involves impatience and a high value for efficiency and directness whereas Chinese culture may be different. My days have been pretty eventful and I'm glad to be sharing that I'm learning a lot. I'm grateful to finally get over my cold so soon.
Day 7-9, July 10-12, Friday Saturday Sunday
These few days were devoted to East Villagers Training and presenting about East Villagers for around 100 Chinese and American students. Check out my blog about EV Training in Shanghai Week 1 for more details.
