Hello everyone. Day 4 here in Lagos, and it was a big task before us—to present to 60 principals and teachers employed in the public schools in Lagos Sate, this region in the far southwest corner of Nigeria, which contains the city of Lagos. On our way there we saw a bunch of people looking in at one of the many high barred gates that line the roads here. We asked the driver what was going on, as we passed by. He said that someone had tried to rob the store during the night, and that they had tied him up, [View Full Entry]

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Back to the IECCA building complex for day 2 of the APEN conference. Today, they did have muzak playing instead the Christian inspirational. I realized that Michael Bolton Songs don’t sound any better with saxophone in place of Mr. Bolton’s voice. Day also began with a prayer and the Nigerian National anthem--something you would not see at a US conference. I noticed there were considerably less people in the hall at 9am, but many of them turned by my presentation at 11am. John Lobban from the South African Association did a great presentation on school governance. It may [View Full Entry]

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Woke up today for the APEN conference, and like many things in Africa, it was a exercise in waiting. We were picked up at 7:30 for a conference that was about 15 minutes away, and supposed to start at 9:00 am but actually started about 9:30. I also met my co-presenter, John Lobban from ISASA—Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa. He is a wonderful long-time schools person—he has seen lots from many angles, both inside of schools and for his association. Some differences between this conference and th [View Full Entry]

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From the air above Lagos, one is struck by the lush green everywhere. Cities are smaller in Africa, so even though this is the biggest city in Nigeria, you don’t see any buildings until you are almost on top of the airport. Just trees for miles and miles and then a few squat buildings, then you are on the ground. A full applause from the Nigerians upon touchdown was a nice touch. As for the hotel—don’t ask, let’s just say it is well below the standards of both Ms. Cecilia Nipp and Ms. Rosie Lyons. They would have both moved to [View Full Entry]

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so what happens when your destination has not one book on the travel shelf? The Milwaukee airport has one of the best used bookstores anywhere--Renaissance books. And in their travel section they have everything! Europe, Asia, South America. Books that go back to the 60's. But nothing on Nigeria. Closest they have is Morocco. I guess that means once again I am off the tourist track. The GYLI adventure continues as I head to Nigeria for the first time. I will be doing a series of workshops for schools with APEN (Association of Private Educators Nigeria) as well as for the [View Full Entry]

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On to Bangalore... first for those of you that want to see Cecilia's side of our many travel stories here blog is here: http://uaglobaladventures.blogspot.com/ At the Pune and Bangalore airports, I was indeed forced to swallow my words about never checking a bag in India. Bags we were able to check on the way to India we were not able to check in from Pune to Bangalore. So I was forced to part with a bag that I wondered when I would see again. Kingfisher is the name of a popular beer and the airline we flew for this leg. The [View Full Entry]

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Pune is a city of 3 million in the state of Maharashtra, and also where my friend Vishwas lives. After we had a brief intro to the UWC campus and lunch, we returned to Pune to explore the city, and because Cecilia wanted to shop. This is one of the key lessons of GYLI--that in a group setting sometimes your own needs are put aside for the group. The group was Cecilia, Vishwas, his wife Jotti, and I. Half of the group needed to shop, and half did not, so we proceeded to Tulsi Baug, the local shopping area (not the [View Full Entry]

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We left our hotel in Mumbai yesterday--it was quite a place the Leela. I told the travel agent that we didn't need 5 stars, but if this was only 3 or 4 stars, I was hard to see why.... It was magnificent. On 4 hour ride north and west to Pune, it seemed to take us an hour just to get through Mumbai--sprawling, with high rises everywhere. I guess when you have so many people, you just have to build up, because there is no way to house everyone on their own piece of land. We arrived at the United World [View Full Entry]

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Impressions of the first day. We had a great day learning much about India from just one school: American School of Bombay(ASB). We never learned why the school kept the same name after the city changed to Mumbai in 1996. For those of you that are not familiar with international schools—they exist in every major city to serve diplomats and foreign nationals. In this case it is about 50% kids of Americans living abroad, and the other 50% are those with American citizen ship, or other foreign nationals who want an American style school. We met with a couple of the [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone, As I make my way to India, it is a series of firsts: first time to Aisa; first time to India; first time to develop a completely new location for a GYLI program; first time traveling with Cecilia Nipp; first time conducting teacher workshops for non-native English speakers; first time flying for 18 hours straight; first time converting everything in rupees; Thanks to everyone for all you have done to support me on this journey! I am sure that I will gain much from working with students and teachers from India, and I hope that we are engage [View Full Entry]

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