Wednesday, March 3, 2010

We woke up and quickly moved to the hotel closer to BNU.  Around 10am, we had breakfast at the hotel and then took the "black" little car (黑车) over to BNU Social Development and Public Policy Department.  We finally meet Lifu again and Zhao Xiao Ping.  Lifu discussed more his excitement for the 赵修平公益大楼 building plans.  Zhao Xiao Ping took us to the area they are planning to tear down to build the building on campus.  He then took us to our temporary office for the Web 2.0 Laboratory.  They have purchased the projector screen and copy machine.  The temporary office belongs to a professor who has gone overseas for one year.  After the tour, we returned to the meeting room and had a 3 hour meeting listening to the hopes and dreams of the students of the BNU Social Development and Public Policy Department.  They are all very excited for this opportunity.  After the meeting, we had dinner with Lifu and Tao Laoshi along with two of their star students.

Xiao Fan and I quickly took the bus and train to the place to order banners for the Lanzhou office.  It came out $14 (USD) for 3 banners. How cheap!

We then met my friend Steve who's working on Daybreak:Asia and it's great seeing him after 3 years.  Quick time of catching up and I met his friend who's working for the US Embassy and Congress.

Time quickly caught up with me and I was as tired as ever so I saved my blog for this morning to catch you up with the adventures.

Today will be a full day of training preparation at the hotel. We hope to have it completed today and sent to Bai Liehu, Cao Rui, and Mr. Chao.  I'm very excited for the opportunity to raise points/funds with our new team of volunteers in a few days! 

PhotoStory

The clean and best hotel (in my opinion) - Home Inn!

Location they plan to have the Chao Philanthropy building

This is the small hill that they plane to turn into a garden surrounding the philanthropy building.  Zhao Xiao Ping told us that couples usually visit this hill during the summer.

Zhao Xiao Ping explaining the current building (teacher's offices) and location.

My attempt to capture an aerial view of the location wishing I was higher up. =)  They plan to have the Web 2.0 Laboratory on the Underground floor and office on the 4th floor.

Old man doing Tai Chi outside the location. 

This is our temporary Web 2.0 Laboratory Office.

Here is the location we will have our temporary office which we will need to reorganize to fit four tables and computers in here for work.

Tao Laoshi begins the strategic planning meeting with BNU philanthropy center students.

It's good to meet similar faces from last trip and hear their hopes and dreams for themselves and the center's future.

More friendly faces sharing past experiences and their goals for the future.

These ladies hope to focus on the scholar aspect of philanthropy while the rest of the team would like to build more practical experience and not just theory.

Meet 胖胖 (Fat Fat).  Ever seen a beagle this fat? Until the next photostory! Thanks for following our Gansu adventure to share these life-changing stories of children with congenital heart disease.

 Tuesday, March 2, 2010

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.