Interesting...

I saw this on the subway the other day. Apparently the Chinese version of NASA is being sponsored by Yanjing Beer. Anyone else think that might create a little problem later on? Should American government agencies have sponsorship? What would that look like? Would we have the iShuttle? What about corporations taking over troubled states? Would we have something like Pepsi Presents New California (now 35% less debt!)

"Hate Asia yet?"

Everyday brings a new storm. It rains all night and then rains most of the day, when it doesn't rain, the humidity soars. The overabundance of rain is putting a strain on the city's antiquated sewage system that clearly can't handle tens of millions of people let alone flooding and tens of millions of people so there is a very peculiar smell wafting about. The rain isn't like a soft summer rain, but more of a hard angry downpour that can last for hours on end. With this brings problems, each time the lightning gets closer and closer another part of our vaunted technological armory goes down, leaving us teaching with only a chalkboard and oftentimes, no lights, or air conditioning. Put 150 people into a room designed for 100 for 2 hours with no air conditioning and you get another curious aroma to mix in with all the others. With all of this, people have been getting sick. We're heavily short-staffed and overburdened as is, with about 20 people (including hastily "trained" summer staff) trying to handle 1,000 students, so when one person goes down it's an extra burden on everyone else. Right now, we have three down so that's bordering on crisis. I'd say the sky is falling, but it already has been for about a week now. All of this just adds to the overwhelming feeling felt by the newest short term people we have who just got to China two days ago....As one of them came in soaked and drenched after walking back from a class she just got thrown into with a lesson plan, a few tips and good luck, one of the admin team said to her "Hey good job this morning, ya hate Asia yet?"

Storm of the Decade

The past few days we have had unusually heavy storms culminating in one last night that China Daily is calling the Storm of the Decade. I have lived through my share of thunderstorms in my life, even a few tornado warnings in Missouri, but none of them were in any way close to what we went through last night. It started late last night, around 11 and got harder and harder in intensity until about 4am this morning. Some students who got caught out in it were showing off bruises that they got from the rain. Yes, it can actually rain so hard that you can get bruised. The thunder and lightning were the worst. It was nearly fully light in my room from the constant lightning and the vibrations from the deafeningly loud thunder were so bad that it caused a lot of the alignments on our projectors to go askew. (As a result, the students were floored when I told them that Hansel had a sister after watching literally half of the fairy tale.)

I was told by one student that 30 minutes after the rain started to really pound down, it was past their ankles. Given their penchant for exaggerating, I believe the depth but I think it probably took at least an hour to give 3-4 inches of rain. According to a Chinese news service, the city officially received 35 millimeters of water. According to Google, that's 1.37 inches. So either someone's exaggerating, or someone's covering up. Whatever, I'm used to both by now. However, it has also been raining and storming the past few days. Here are a few pictures.

photos

This session, besides being crazy and the most frustrating and intense out of all of them so far, has left me with little free time. Last night however, I was going through a flash drive and found some pictures from when Dad was here.

Us in front of the Temple of Heaven with the Merchandiser.

A giant cat statue at the Beijing Zoo. Look at the people next to it for scale.

In front of the Bird's Nest, where some of the Olympic Games were held.

Dad, Michelle and I at Tienanmen Square

large group fun

So this session is going to be mayhem. We are breaking our record for most students by a few hundred: 980 students. Normally we have 2 to 300, so this should be fun. For this session, I am in charge of large group. The students have classes of about 40-50 where their facilitator has lesson plans and what not and then three times a day, all the students get together for large group. This session, because of the massive number of them, the students will be broken into 5 groups which we label with colors. Each color will have around 200 students, broken into about 5 classes of 50. Three times a day every student in that color will get together for large group. I will be leading all the large group activities of two colors and some of a third, and another facilitator will do the other two colors and some of the third. So basically, we are responsible for 2.5 colors. Confused? Good. Now try being a part of our staff planning meetings.

Anyway, since I am technically in charge of all the large groups for all the colors, I am giving the large group curriculum a long overdue overhaul. This isn't without it's troubles. What we do in large group is practice diction, read inspirational Chicken Soup-esque stories that we call Morning Motivationals to keep morale high and listen to famous speeches and fairy tales. That's where it gets fun. The second week is a doozy for both facilitators and students as we listen to Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech for two days and then Robert F. Kennedy's "Remarks on the Assassination of MLK" speech. This entails a great deal of civil rights coverage which the students could quite frankly, care less about. Think about it, what do you know and/or care about 1960's China? King's speech is also especially difficult for a non native speaker, filled with fiery Southern vernacular to put it simply. I have tried to bring this point up again and again and it's been shot down for political reasons by teammates who share the hue (not to mention the view) of King. This summer, being in charge of overhauling this, I have decided to ignore the torpedoes and full speed ahead. I replaced the two days of civil rights and "I Have a Dream" with Joshua Chamberlain's "Why We Fight" speech from the movie Gettysburg and then follow it up the next day with Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." Later in the week, RFK kept his slot and the civil rights has been cut down and merged in there. I think this works out because it creates an overarching theme for the students to put together, rather than a bunch of random speeches. We have Chamberlain urging men to fight to make others free, Lincoln urging their sacrifice to not be in vain and then RFK carries it into the 20th century. Besides at least this way, I don't have to listen to 200 Chinese students trying to imitate the Southern drawl of MLK. I think it's a good plan and so far, the planets have aligned, because admin team is agreeing to it. For now.

...but I'm sure I'm still an evil racist.

new summer staff

The short term volunteers have come and we have the usual amount of high school students, teachers, retirees, etc. The same as we have any year, except this year we have Marcus. Marcus is in his late twenties and retired from the Army. Yes, you read that right. This guy's "been there, done that" list reads like a comic book hero. He's an Army Ranger who has a confirmed kill count, several shrapnel and small arms fire injuries. After a piece of shrapnel from an IED (roadside bomb) gave him his second Purple Heart, the Army forced him out and through his friend (and my former roommate) Geoff, he found his way here. This guy is fun to talk to and really adds to the session.