Today, was our 2nd day of teaching the students of Business English class 11-1; eleven stands for the year they started college and 1 is the number of their class. I had created a quick outline for today's lesson as we are still getting to know the students and going over the basics. Quick Lesson for Today: Explain the Importance of an English Name Students type in their English and Pinyin Name (ie.Wang Peng) into Excel Take students pictures with their name card Review Class Rules Students tell us what they want to learn this semester Listening & Speaking activity called What Would you do If..... I had no idea the simple task of steps 1-3 would take over 45 minutes but that was ok as we have 90 minutes in a period. You may wonder ... read more

China always keeps me on my feet. I knew that we would get our schedules 4-5 days before the new term; I had requested them about 10 days before the new term and Ms. Gao, Head of Business English Dept, told me we would have plenty of time to prepare with 4 or 5 days before the term started. I was looking forward to last Thursday as I thought maybe today would be the day we got our new teaching schedules (5 days before the term). Then I received an email after 10:30pm from Ms. Gao stating Peter and I could pick up our teaching schedules on Friday. Pete could get his from the 6th floor office and I could get mine from the Business Adminstration Dept (my newly assigned dept). I quickly responded to the ... read more

Dali (dah lee) Dali is one of Yunnan's most popular tourist destinations; both for its historic sites and the Foreigners' Street that features western-style food, music, and English-speaking business owners, making it popular among both western and Chinese tourists. It is situated on flat farm land between a high mountain rage and Lake Er hai (R Hi). On the opposite side of Er Hai are more mountains yet these lack any trees. I was not able to determine if this was a natural phenomena or a result of man-created deforestation. It is home to a group of ethnic minority Chinese called Bai and Yi (Bye and Yee) Our bus ride to Dali was 4 -1/2 hours on a very comfortable bus, yet the drive could have been faster. After 90 minutes of driving we stopped for ... read more

Pete has always thought we should make a packing list but I have never gotten around to doing it and neither has he. This trip I really wanted to take the least amount of clothes with me to last our 5 weeks in cooler weather. Reason 1: to have more room to purchase items in India Reason 2: we would be on the move so I would be hauling my backpack around Reason 3: to see if I could really do it No matter how hard I try to underpack I ALWAYS have clothes that I never wear on a vacation. When I started packing, Laura was here in Hangzhou with us and she had just spent almost 3 weeks on the road traveling around Cambodia, Vietnam and China. I was shocked at how Laura was ... read more

Our last stop in India was the once British capital of India. Pete instantly liked this city better than any other city in India but he couldn’t pinpoint why. We finally decided it was due to the tree lined streets, wider boulevards, no cows wandering the city meaning no cow pies to avoid stepping in and all the yellow cabs instead of tuk tuks. When we arrived it was Republic Day, the day India no longer was under British Rule. We walked to the parade route but due to the amount of people we only saw one float and decided it wasn’t worth standing there too watch. During our time in India Pete had developed an infection of some sort in his nose and it was really bothering him. He decided it would be better to ... read more