Blogs from ChangSha, Hunan, China, Asia - page 2

I've been in China almost five months now, and I've neglected my blog, but I'm going to try to go back in my mind and compress these past 5 months in a few blog posts. This blog is going to be about WorldTeach's Orientation! When Dee and I finally arrived in China after nearly 48 hours of traveling, we were exhausted. We met several of the WorldTeach volunteers on the plane from Beijing to Changsha, and then we met a few others after we arrived at the Changsha airport, along with our Field Director, and the lovely WorldTeach Assistant, Papaya!!! (Note: Papaya is a Changsha native who has been working with WT for a few years. Papaya is her English name!) Once all of the WT volunteers were rounded up, we all boarded a charter bus ... read more

I typically start my blogs by saying a lot has happened and the post will probably be long. This time a lot really has happened. I turned 22. I’ve conducted my first test for my students. I’ve traveled. I’ve had both good and bad experiences. I finally have a Chinese tutor (for free), and America has elected Donald Trump as president. It’s been almost a month and a half since I last updated my blog. Sorry for such the long wait. Sit tight cause there is so much I have to say. Vacation In China, the first week of October is a major holiday. The holiday is called National Week which celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China back in 1949. Usually most people get off. If not a few days, the whole week. ... read more

Mid-Autumn Festival: Mid Autumn Festival or Harvest Moon Festival is a major Chinese holiday that occurs on the 15th day of the the 8th moon on the Lunar calendar. (China along with many other countries such as South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam also celebrate this holiday). America uses the Gregorian calendar but in China I’m operating on Lunar time. If you’d like to know more about this festive holiday here’s a link to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival During this holiday people get together with family and friends. Sort of similar to Thanksgiving. A lot of people travel to see their family members and for anyone who knows how crowded China is, you do not want to be caught up in that traffic. I had three days off for the holiday but decided not to travel to avoid the ... read more

These past couple of weeks have been exhausting. I’ve never gone through such an intense moment in my life. It’s only been a month since I’ve been in China and I already feel as if I have learned so much about myself. It’s been a while since I last updated my blog so I’m going to try and recap the past three weeks covering many different topics. This will be a long post since a lot has happened in three weeks. Brace yourselves. Practicum: Under World Teach Policy, all of its volunteers must undergo one week of real teaching. Usually the way the program works is two weeks of intensive training, and one week of putting everything we learned to use, or Practicum. For whatever reason the DOE (Department of Education) in China had to change ... read more

Hi All, We moved on to Changsha to go and see our final founding father of the Communist Party Liu ShaoQi. Liu was a poiltician through and through. In the 30s he was involved in politics both locally and nationally. On the formation of the People's Republic of China he was Vice-Chairman. Liu spoke in favour of the Great Leap Forward and was thus made President in 1959. Along with Deng XiaoPing he lead the economic reforms which dragged China out of the mire after the great famine. By 1962 it was widely accepted that he was Mao's successor. However he began to disapprove of Mao's policies and as Mao's prestige grew again in the 60s it became inevitable that Liu would be toppled. by 1966 it became clear that there was a need for policies ... read more