Belize

I've been learning a bit of Portugese from my two brazilian colleagues. They now have me conditioned to say, "Belize" back to them with the smile and head nod. It's a term loaded with a lot of connotation and means everything is beautiful. And it has a been a beautiful week, unfortunately the internet as been down most of the time, so I’ll see if I jam a whole week in this post and somehow get it online.

During our first week we were having a What-do-you-want-to-do-What-do-YOU-want-to-do conversation.  We finally came up with a recommended schedule of two presentations a week mostly focused on career and communications advice for the students.  This past week we presented to two sessions, one to ~70 faculty and one to ~90 undergraduate students, at the Shijiazhuang Tiedao University (STDU).   After the faculty presentation, one of the International Business professors invited us to her class on Monday so we could meet your students and apparently they’re going to teach us some Chinese.   So it will be an interesting day tomorrow.

The students were really energetic and quite out going.  Mukul did a great job encouraging students to speak at the beginning of the presentation.   The students did a great job standing up and asking questions in English and came up afterward to talk to us in English.  It’s really amazing how good their language skills are.  This presentation focused career planning - understanding what you want and where you want to be, as well as encouraging them to build interpersonal soft skills through club activities, internships, and group work.   I heard later that this is a very different way of thinking from the Chinese. They receive much input from parents and professors, so students do not think as much about what they want.  It's more what they're allowed to do.  Also studies are so intense there is little time for extracurricular activities.  We had a lot of questions from our students about gaining international experience and building skills.   So I suggested to our professor that perhaps that the students could get involved with translations of our presentations to help build their skills and they could have something to talk about on their CV.    So for the first time on Monday we’ll have a student translator.  

As for non-project items, we had a huge birthday presentation for Sue yesterday.  We went to a large dance club where we were able to reserve a karoke private room.   It was a ton of fun, our whole group got a ton of attention as we had the only non-east Asians in the room.   Actually a lot of Chinese guys wanted to hang out and dance with the guys in our group.   I think they just looked intimidated by the girls in our group. I also got a free stuffed dog from the staff. At first, they told me it wasn't for sale, but then I asked why they would have a display case of stuffed animals.   Then the manager jokingly said 100 yuan.  I then countered with 20 yuan. He was like "what?"   Lucy, our fearless leader, then explained to him I was a foreigner and asked if he would be willing to give sell it me.   He was like "really?"  he finally gave an exasperated smile had his staff open the display case, and he said "I'll just give it to you."   I was like woohoo!

 Yesterday we also when to a local temple and had lunch there.  It was really peaceful, and the food was very simple, porridge and vegetable buns, but really great.  Some of us had our fortunes told.  Mine was pretty accurate, except they told me I'm supposed to have a lot of kids, more boys than girls, and I would start when I was young.  After some thought, I decided he must be talking about my dogs.  I've already had three, my first when I was 14 years old, and if one day I inherent my parents' dogs that means I'll have four: 3 boys and 1 girl.

Afterward we went to a wholesale market.  We walked around but ended up spending a lot of time tasting and buying tea.   Lucy helped me negotiate some Pu-er tea in a small tea shop.  And then as Lucy went to go find others to bring them to our location, I was left in the teashop with the young sales girl.  We actually had a decent conversation.  I told her my father likes Tie GaunYin, and she gave me couple small bags for free for my father!  So in return I bought some chrysanthemum tea, which is what I like.  She invited a group of us to taste a more expensive Tie Guan Yin, and you could really taste it, but I was about $80 USD for 1 lb, so out of my price range.

OK logging off to go hiking on a mountain, I'll try to post photos later.

-Andrea