Day 15: Tuesday 6/1/10

Somehow, I managed to miss breakfast again after waking up on time... I taught my kids how to sing "You'll be in my heart." They really seemed to enjoy singing. I also played ping pong with a couple kids in my class. They're really good, and they were able to give me some pointers and were very encouraging whenever I made stupid mistakes.

My project at Dandelion is becoming more concrete, and I'm making great progress with the planning/execution.

Finally, my day was ruined by a huge thunderstorm. Right after I walked out from the supermarket, rain started pouring down. Besides the fact that it was after my shower just half an hour ago, the rain had a lot of crap in it. At first, I didn't realize and I thought it wasn't that bad since I thought it was just water. Then, I realized that there were a lot of dirt particles in the rain as I saw on my shorts. BLEH, bad day...

Day 14: Start of another week

I missed breakfast yet again. By the time I got to the cafeteria, they had already put away all the food :( Looks like no 馒头 for me. The students were ecstatic to see us return, thinking maybe we had left for good even though we had reassured them last Friday we'd be back. I talked to quite a few of them on QQ over the weekend.

The highlight of my day was learning Chinese caligraphy. I sucked at it but it was still fun. The teacher wrote our names for us which looked really cool. He also gave us a scroll with a proverb on it as a gift. Mine said 厚德戴物. Oh yeah, I finally took my first hot shower at the school... took awhile to get to that point.

The kids in my class tried to arm wrestle with me. By the end of like round 5, my right arm was really sore. Thankfully I still won all of them lol. I played basketball with some kids from other classes, but I didn't really want to try too hard since they're still kids after all. Playing too hard might injure one of them unnecessarily.

Nothing else too eventful happened today.

Day 13: Returned to the school

Good bye, nice warm showers.... I'm going to miss you for another 5 days. I finally bought a solar powered apple with flapping leaves and a solar powered dancing panda. It took me a couple hours to find, but they were well worth the time. Eventually, these little nifty gadgets will make it to my car as ornaments. I also bought an ancient Chinese instrument called 竹排. So far, I can only make horse footsteps. It's pretty cool.

Today, I also visited 钓鱼台, a fancy, private hotel resort for government officials. The security was pretty tight. Only authorized license plates were allowed to enter. Apparently, the hotel is actually like a mini-neighborhood, full of private luxurious houses. One night in there is about $2k USD. Two days before my visit, Hillary Clinton was living in one of those houses. Pretty neat.

Finally, I'm sad to report that Haiwang broke my sunglasses. They slipped from my hand as I was just about to put them on, and they fell right under Haiwang's left foot, which he then proceeded to take a step forward and bent up the metal frame. Now, I have to buy a new watch and another pair of shades at a 批发产.

Teaching again tomorrow. YAY

Day 12: 天坛

Today, we went to 天坛. Derek tried to get the student discount on his ticket but got rejected. He called the service hotline to complain about the situation but got nowhere. Eventually, he had to pay the full admission price. There wasn't too much to see, only like 4 note worthy building. One of the them was the echo wall. We tried to see if it actually works, but I think there were too many people to hear anything.

After 天坛, we looked around in 红桥, which was essentially a huge black market, full of fake name brand products. We could buy Rolex watches for around 40 yuan... sketchy right?

Later, I hung out with my mom's friends again. We went to 后海 for dinner, and as we were walking around after dinner, I realized that this area was full of bars. The night life here was hustling and bustling, pretty cool. Nothing else too exciting happened. We celebrated DLo's birthday a week in advance for some reason, and I missed KTVing with the group :(

Day 11: Friday, 交通饭店

It's Friday! Rather uneventful day at the school. The usual... breakfast (馒头，粥)...lunch (salty veggies mixed with a few pieces of meat, rice)... dinner (KFC bucket of fried chicken).

I taught oral English to my class today by playing telephone charades. They learned the game very quickly and were really into it. It was a fun class. In fact, since next period they had independent study, they wanted to keep learning English and have another oral English class. However, I only prepared one class lesson so I could not teach another class period. From this, I could tell that they really want to learn and can be enthusiastic about English.

This hotel is much better than the Red Wall Hotel that we stayed at last week. We will be going to Tiantan tomorrow. Fun!

Day 10: Thursday! aka one more day till Friday aka back to the city!

Sorry about the long blog title, but I think it says it all.

Today, like yesterday, was a jam packed day of learning and fun. I got up at 7:10, but I was still too late for breakfast. Disappointed, I still went to all the classes. First of which was two periods of Chinese. We critiqued essays and discussed areas of improvement and suggestions as a class. The teacher actually asked me to proof read one girl's essay. I tried my best to give her some good feedback, but I felt that maybe I wasn't so qualified. Just because I'm a senior in college does not mean my Chinese is that good. Keep in mind I moved to the U.S. when I was only 8, aka just finished 2nd grade. So my Chinese level is still about there. Anyways, I managed to pull it off.

Next, I had a biology class. I was really surprised that they talked about the toiletry issue in class today. The teacher had the students reflect on what problems exist with the current bathrooms and then what changes could be implemented to improve current conditions.

It's a small world. Even at Dandelion Middle School, I bumped into a UNC alum, Jim Best, who is the principal at Dalton School in NYC. He and Zheng Hong signed a collaboration to help train the teachers here and try to find ways to let their own passions transfer to the students through creative means. For example, he talked about incorporating math and physics through basketball since it's a popular sport here. During P.E. class today, we had special guests from Nike. I'm not sure how sincere their motives were, but they basically played a game with the kids and rewarded the winners with some random crap. I felt that the most important part of their journey here was taking pictures with the kids and using that as advertisement/CSR for Nike, showing the world that they care, but in reality, I still think they don't. Spending like 3 hours with the kids is not going to do any good.

The children in my class are really starting to open up to me. They see me as like a big brother and would address me as such. Even the teachers have told me that the couple of kids who sit in the back used to be really quiet and not interested in school, but now, they've become very lively and have taken a strong interest in learning English. It's an honor to have that kind of effect on these children. They taught me how to play their game during recess. They exchanged emails and QQ numbers with me. The guys opened up quick, but I'm really surprised how the girls also approached me. Usually, I tend to think that they're more shy and reluctant to talk to older guys, but I guess not.

OMGGG let's talk about dinner... For the first time eating food at the school, I felt full after a meal. We had slices of birthday cake, which was absolutely delicious. I haven't tasted anything this good and flavorful since the last time I was in the inner city of Beijing. Ridiculous right? Well it's true. Good night.

Day 9: Classes

Today was quite an eventful day. For breakfast, I had the usual… 馒头. I think the most inspirational story comes from Chinese class today. They read a story about how a Swedish group of mountain climbers made it to the top of a mountain first but were trapped in a blizzard on the way down. All of them died, but one of them had kept a diary. Another group of British climbers, despite not climbing to the top first, discovered the frozen Swedish bodies, gave them a proper burial, and retrieved the diary to take to the owner’s family. Afterwards, the children in the class started sharing their own adversities and how they overcame them. One kid talked about how his parents had a huge fight, and his mother decided to commit suicide by drinking a vial of poison. Fortunately, doctors were able to revive her at the hospital. Another girl talked about how her little brother had to undergo three major surgeries when he was young. His dad had to try really hard to set up an appointment to see an expert doctor and consult about the proper steps. The process took a long time, because there were so many patients and not enough doctors. Finally, another boy burned his arm really bad with hot water when he was three years old. Consequently, he has a huge scar on his arm as a reminder of what adversity he has overcome and his determination to succeed in school.

On a side note, I ate my first raw tomato in … I don’t even know when the last time I ate one was… I despise them sooooo much, but these kids in my class offered it to me, and I couldn’t say no. I gulped it down in front of them as a sign of my appreciation for their gift, but let me just say, it tasted awful. YUCK!

Finally, I played street ball with some kids at the school again, but this time, I played with kids mostly from my class. It’s good bonding time. Dinner was really good; we went out to eat, and we literally cleared off every plate right after they brought it out. Good times… first filling meal in a week! Oh yeah, I just took a nice freezing shower. Loads of fun… for those who went on the Costa Rica trip with me, think about our showers and think how it could be worse, and that was my shower. THE END

Day 8: First day of class

Wow, let me just begin by saying that today has been like the longest day ever. It’s my first official day working with the kids. I got up at 6:30 for breakfast, which was again 馒头, but hey, what can I do, it’s free food, and it’s what the kids here eat. Classes started at 8am sharp, and with my 初一第三班，I had math for the first two periods.

Right away, the math teacher introduced me to the class. In fact, she actually had me teach math in Chinese...which turned out to be somewhat of a disaster, considering my limited Chinese vocabulary of math terms. They were learning how to set up inequalities word problems related to money interest rates. The math teacher literally handed me a math textbook and said, teach them example problems 1 and 2, so I had like 5 minutes of prep time. The first example that I was supposed to show them went terribly wrong. For the longest time, I could not figure out what the problem was asking so I couldn’t set up an equation. Also, my Chinese writing sucks so the kids spent awhile just watching me struggle to copy the problem on the blackboard. I tried to follow the teacher’s hints and prompted them to work through the problem. After awhile, I realized that I had failed and requested for the teacher to come up and take over. During the time that she was explaining the first example, I had sufficient time to look over the second example and familiarize myself with the given conditions. Sure enough, I felt that the second problem went a lot better. I was able to guide them through the setup and clearly explain the solution, only two problems…one, the students had the answer solution too so I don’t know if they actually knew how to solve the problem or they were just reading off their books; two, I had not clearly setup the problem like the teacher had intended for it to be done so she had to briefly re-explain using the correct Chinese math setup. I later learned that the same teacher teaches a couple other math classes, but after me, she stopped offering for us to teach the class, because she realized what a scrub I was, haha.

I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon with the kids in class. Their school day is torturous, much longer than a normal school day in the U.S. I sat through 2 math periods, 1 English period, 1 biology period, 1 Chinese period, and 3 rest periods. Their English class involved learning through phonetics. It went pretty slow but very class interactive so we only made it through 3 actual vocabulary words. I thought the biology class was really interesting. A lot of the stuff that they’re learning I was not exposed to until high school biology. Finally, the Chinese class was very intense. It took me awhile to understand the 古文 that they were reading. My only excuse was that I moved to the U.S. when I was eight so my Chinese level is still that of a second grader. Oh well, I guess I should watch more Chinese and Korean soaps!

Later today, I played street basketball with some eighth graders. We faired a lot better against them than the other day playing against the teachers, so we’re either improving or just not playing people of the right age group. I’d like to think it’s the first. Anyways, it was a lot of fun. One funny thing did happen though. One of the guys from Duke (DLo) ripped his shorts somehow, as if he did the splits. It was freaking hilarious!

Finally, the last thing I want to mention today was learning how to play Settlers, aka Catan. I believe it’s a German board game, but yeah, it was really fun and addictive. One game lasted like two hours! People got angry, vengeful, frustrated, laughed their heads off, and some had really bad luck… All in all, it was a really cool game. I think more people should try it!

P.S. The food here is really salty and lacking meat…. I feel like I’m becoming vegan… primary diet includes rice and 馒头. Bleh… and you wonder why kids are malnutritioned… they’re living on 6 yuan for 3 meals for godsake!!! Someone help them!

Day 7: Settling In

今天很早就起床了，学生们6：15开始体操，然后就开始了广播。 我一听就马上觉得回到了旧社会，每天听毛主席的原则，要努力，要有精神，不能浪费一粒米饭。我们一天三扥饭都在学校吃。 我现在才真正的体会了他们的情况。 基本上看起来一个星期一次饭里才有鸡腿，真是要饿死我呀。。。我们今天还买了个小冰箱 300 元。 不过这些都还不是最大的问题。 蚊子已经开始多起来了，唉。。。 而且蒲公英中学还一直停水，气死我了。。。好郁闷，洗碗刷牙都麻烦。 吃好饭只有一点点水能用来洗碗的，那也只能将就一下了。 我们洗衣服都到Kent的公寓里去洗了，应为没有水，而且又比较懒，哈哈。 每次需要一个小时。 那个洗衣机还特别的小，所以我明天还要去洗衣服，我把我的衣服分成了两半。

有两个好笑的故事。。。第一，我犯了个老外的错误，在公共汽车上被逼的买了两张票，应为我拿着一个箱子装衣服到Kent的公寓去了。买票的人说，“你的箱子也要买票” 我从来没听说过这种事。 回来的时候，买票的人没这么要求我，所以我觉得那人在欺负我是外地人啊。。。郁闷。而且总算洗了个好澡，太爽了，还是热水呢。

第二，我们今天和几个老师打篮球了，输得好惨啊，要哭了，Yi和我们一起跟老师们打。他们其实打的并不是那么好，所以输得无缘无故啊，真是的，还害了我摔倒了好几次在水泥地上，应为地上很滑，难改方向。 估计明天就疼了。

还有，我会在Facebook上把我拍的照片都放上去，像我住的宿舍还有东西东在了，你们慢慢看吧。 睡了，88

Day 6: Moving to Dandelion Middle School

Wow I can't believe I actually slept in today. When I woke up, it was already past 10; usually I would be up by around 7. Interesting way to start the day. When I got ready to go outside to get some breakfast, I realized that most of the places were already closed and were getting ready to serve lunch so I just ended up buying 一个大饼.

Around noon, we checked out of the hotel and were on our way to the school. Before that, we ran into a little mishap. The bus we requested was supposed to be a 15 seater van, but they gave us a 9 seater van, so we couldn't fit all of us and all the luggage. The hotel was responsible enough to get us another car without adding any additional charges. When we reached the Daxing district, I could already tell this area was much different than the inner city. There was one road, barely paved and almost like a dirt path.

We arrived at the school about an hour later. The conditions were actually much better than I expected. We were greeted with warm hospitality, and our presence was immediately felt. Though, by now, the students were pretty used to foreigners coming to their school. Sarah gave us a tour of the school, showed us where the dorms, classrooms, library, offices, etc.. are. I'm quite impressed by the school and what they have to offer, given their difficult circumstances.

Later, after we settled in, we went to check out Kent's place. It wasn't luxurious but definitely a level above ours. Oh yeah and talk about gender inequality... The school gave us 4 guys one small cramped room with bunked beds while the 4 girls got 2 rooms, each bigger than the one we have. Their rooms are also very close to the bathroom and shower rooms, while we have to walk across the school campus to get there. Edit: Never mind... the school gave us another room so we have two per room now!

For dinner, we ate at the restaurant 玛瑙饭馆 right next to the school. The food was delicious and cheap, well above my expectations. Only the 水煮牛肉 was bad. None of us could chew the meat, so we suspected that it may not be beef but some other sketchy meat. Note to self, never getting that dish again, EVER. The supermarket food is rather expensive though, because I paid almost $1 per little milk carton.

In any case, I would consider today a success and tomorrow, I'll begin figuring out my school project and write out a plan.

Day 5: City Adventures

今天是第一天有时间在城里转着玩。我毫无疑问的跟着我妈大学最好朋友的一家出去玩了。 正好他们的女儿，钟吴燕，在北京大学（北大）读大一，让我进去参观参观了。 北大可牛了，就是美国的哈佛大学啊，一年招生2000名。 一般性的人进也进不去应为现在北京正乱着呢。前一阵子，发生了一次枪案，杀了一个大学生。现在每个大门都有保安守着，要看身份证或学生证在能进去。 第一次见到他们的女儿燕燕，对她的印象很不错。她是在北大学英语专业，打算以后到美国去读研究生。 她带我参观了学校，同时跟我用英文对话。 向其他的中国学生们，她也是听力没啥么问起，只不过是有些口音，估计是没法改了。

在北大，我发现了很大的中国与美国的文化差别。 首先，她们的宿舍不让男生进，除了刚开学的时候，让男生帮她们搬家。 女生能进男生的宿舍，不过一看就知道除非是去看男朋友，不会有女生去男生的宿舍。 好惨啊，我连男生的宿舍也没能看成，没有学生卡不让进。我只知道他们是4个人一个房间，而且晚上11点关电，生活比较困难。 他们图书馆和实验室也是没有学生证不能进的，好可惜啊。。。我在他们食堂吃了顿饭，挺好吃的，而且非常便宜，3-4元。 中国是这样的，越好的学校，越便宜。 北大学费每年只要5000人民币，更杜克没法比的。。。郁闷啊，要吐血了。。。 呜呜呜。。。

清华大学就在北大的旁边，不过没时间去看了，只是听说了些谣言。 传话是清华面积比北大要大4倍，而且更漂亮，不过有些问题。 清华就是美国的MIT，男女的比例是7对1啊。清华外面看不到人的，都在房里读书。我觉得他们太用功了。。。

下午我们去了顾和园，那里又是爬山又是踩船，可累死我了。在湖中，我耍了耍燕燕，故意让她自己踩船，可幽默了，笑死我了。 以后有机会再玩吧。。。不过做的我屁股疼死了。明天就要到蒲公英中学去了，请大家支持我，加油！

今天晚上到五道街去了，哈哈，这里有很多的故事，不过不适合在网上登出来。想知道就直接问我吧。

Day 4: Orientation Day 3

Finally, done with all the orientations!

This morning, we heard from Dr. Freda Murck, a Chinese art historian and the only foreigner consultant working at the Forbidden city. She made a lot of great recommendations for places to visit on the weekends. There are nice art galleries like the Red Gate and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. She also recommended Bookworm for those people who are book savy. There is also a nice flea market called 潘家园旧货市场, but buyers should beware that most of the antiques there are fake.

In the afternoon, Holly Chang, CEO of Golden Bridges, came to talk to us about China Foundation Center (CFC). This one was really interesting, but unfortunately, jetlag hit me hard around 3 in the afternoon, and I was only able to concentrate on staying awake and not really paying much attention to her powerpoint :(

Somehow, I managed to fight through the drowsiness and after that certain threshold, I was back to normal and ready to go for the last speaker, Eleanor Dougoud, who is a consultant in disaster relief for the World Bank. She told us about their involvement with the Wenchuan Earthquake Relief efforts. The reconstruction project is projected to take 3 years and over 700 billion dollars, one of the most massive undertakings in the world. The government has maintained a lot of control over the entire process and will guarantee housing to all residents in the affected areas with a hukou. The goal is to not only reconstruct the cities but to build them back better, with modernized infrastructure. She also talked about her work in Angola and Afghanistan, which were most interesting. There were a lot of ethnic and political tension in these areas and for a humanitarian to come in and help them is amazing. The 30 year long civil war in Angola had just ended and major work needed to be done in the reconstruction process. At the time, they needed a large source of general food due to the displaced agricultural sector during the war recovery period. Now, all sources of international relief funding have stopped due to the current corruption in the government. Over $1 billion went missing in the government budget, presumably usurped by the president, who incidentally is the largest land owner in Brazil. With the Afghanistan project, she talked about how she was trying to decrease mortality during child birth. There was a huge lack of doctors in Afghanistan, and even midwives were hard to find. A lot of complications resulted in massive bleeding, infections, and ultimately deaths. The barrier broke when one chief's wife had birth complications and required C-section. He okayed a male gynecologist to operate on her, which was considered very taboo and inappropriate for this area. Very cool and inspiring story about how one group of individuals made a difference in another country.

Ah yes, now dinner... COMPLETE CHAOS AND LACK OF PLANNING. There was a group of us who decided to get haircuts. Then when they finished, they would call us to go eat dinner at 鼎泰饭店. Somehow, we ended up meeting up there at around 9pm. By that time, we were already starving. My group bought some 肉串儿 from street vendors. I'm not sure if they were really that delicious or it was just because we were starving, but we agreed that they were amazingly good. The restaurant closes at 10pm so we were basically rushed through dinner. The restaurant is famous for its 饺子 and 甜点. The food was indubitably exquisite, classy, and expensive, though not by American standards. After the conversion factor, the dinner probably cost each person less than $10. For a meal of that caliber, it was a good bargain.

Okay, that's all for today. I'm wiped... must sleep now or I will not wake up till tomorrow afternoon!

Day 3: Orientation Day 2

Today was rather uneventful. We went on a tour at the Beijing Center (TBC). Supposedly, it's the largest book collection of Chinese culture/history in Beijing. Interestingly, it started as a library with only like 13 books. There are many valuable books, scrolls, and maps in the collection, either donated by various private parties or bought through book dealers. It's astonishing to see the comprehensiveness of the collection and what their facility has to offer its staff and students. Pictures will be uploaded at a later time.

Later that day, we heard a presentation by Rachel Wasser, the President of China Education Initiative (CEI), a recognized and Chinese government supported NGO. They spent the past 3 years planning their project, and this year was their first year of implementation in Henan schools. They pair American fellows with Chinese fellows, and place them in middle schools to help prepare the students for 中考, in the areas of English, Chinese, and math. What they've seen this year has been substantial improvements in test scores and student retention rates. These trained fellows collaborate to develop an academic curriculum which can provide a sustainable method of education for rural areas. The next few years will decide the fate of the project and really evaluate the effectiveness of this NGO.

Finally, we decided on our projects which we will undertake the Dandelion School. So everyone is required to teach English in a 7th grade class and pick their own project. I will be working on a health-related project on nutritions, studying the effectiveness of newly added diet of an egg and a chicken leg per week and evaluating to see if any other foods are needed. Another part may include a way to provide vision education and promote awareness of eye problems and simple solutions.

We ate at 奥士凯银龙酒家‎, a lot of 家常菜. Overall, the food was pretty good, but since Haiwan ordered, the food was rather bland and flavorness. Note to self, never let a 福建 native order food again. 上海人 would never order something like that, because flavorful items, salty or sweet, are the preferred choice. Nothing extraordinary happened today. After dinner was over, I went to visit 人民广场 at night, which was an amazing view. Also, I went to 王福建, which is the Beijing equivalent to 南京路 in Shanghai. It was hustling and bustling, saw a lot of expensive clothes, accessories, and 老外. Chinese night life has definitely changed, but in some ways, it's still the same old. The shopping areas are modernized, if not even much better than American shopping plazas. However, a lot of stores close extremely early, around 10pm. I was shocked to see lights of stores going off that early. Where's the night life? Is clubbing the only thing around after 11pm?

Btw, tomorrow is the last day of orientations!

Day 2: DukeEngage in Beijing Orientation

Today has been a long day… longer than a normal school day. The first breakfast meal in Beijing was delicious： 油条，小包子，小混沌. It amazes me how cheap the food here is. 20 Yuan paid for eight people’s food…

Our day was packed with guest speakers starting at 9 am. First, we heard from Dr. Hong Zheng, the Dandelion school principal, who gave us an overview and history of the school. It was first established in 2005 and is still the only middle school for migrant workers’ children, out of approximately 300 schools for migrant children. I was very impressed by what she’s been able to accomplish in just a few years, raising literacy rates, and getting 98% of the students to pass the standardized test in just two years, especially since the first year less than 10% of the students were able to pass the test. Out of ~700 students who apply to the Dandelion school every year, only 200 are accepted, and even those students are already behind in their education, most scoring in the low/mid 30s when the average for public schools are around mid 60s. Most of these children end up going to vocational schools or straight into the workforce. Public high schools are difficult for them to test into, and even if they do, they do not have the money to pay for the tuition.

These children deserve more in life. They have proven through their test scores that they’re not dumb or incompetent; they just need a chance to prove their self-worth. The Chinese government has deprived them of that opportunity, and I find that to be a real shame.

Our next speaker was a project manager at Cisco Systems China and talked about CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Cisco has been really involved with several projects. One project was the Sichuan 5/12 Earthquake relief. Cisco helped sponsor mobile medical vans, which can go into rural areas. They also offer free psychological counseling to get them through PTSD. Their other project is IT support at schools, etc. They provide IT equipment like SmartBoards for schools and then follow up by training teachers on how to use everything.

Next, Dr. Shawn Shieh talked about grassroot NGO’s in China. They really have a hard time establishing themselves due to Chinese government and people’s distrust. In China, GONGO’s work better, because they already have the government’s approval and financial support. Again, it seemed like the Sichuan earthquake served as a catalyst for bringing all the NGO’s together and developing networking amongst NGO’s across various interests. It was interesting that there were 98 NGO’s based in Beijing, but only 9 in Shanghai. It makes some sense since NGO’s try to work closely with the government, but I think that since Shanghai is the commerce center of the world, it would also make sense for NGO’s to work closely with businesses to get financial support.

Following Dr. Shieh, we heard from Justin Barrow, co-founder of Microcarbon foundation and Climate Action (for profit organization), regarding the current global warming situation. What he is proposing is a very innovative entrepreneurial opportunity. Everything we do in this world will inevitably leave our carbon footprint. In an effort to slow climate changes, we’re attempting to apply carbon offset. People living in impoverished communities may not even have electricity. They can obtain renewable energy sources like solar or wind energy via a loan. Instead of burning coal, they’re now not polluting the environment, and consequently, they receive “carbon credits.” Through a mediator company such as Climate Action, individual donors or corporate businesses can donate money to sponsor these carbon-reducing initiatives and buy the carbon credits. This way, we’re helping these poor communities gain electricity and reduce carbon emission levels. How does this project relate to China? In 2002, China passed the U.S. as the highest carbon emission country. It is projected that in 2035, China’s emission level will be double that of the rest of the world combined. Justin customized a platform and separate company specifically to cater to the Chinese public.

Our final speaker for the day was Dr. Scott Rozelle from Stanford University. I found his talk on the future of Chinese economics fascinating. China’s GDP has been growing at an average rate of 8% a year. Their economic progress over 30 years is that which took the U.S. over 100 years to accomplish. However, what we’re discovering is that only 20% of the population attends college. In the future, if this number doesn’t change, China will be in trouble. The manufacturing industry in China is starting to outsource to other Asian countries like Vietnam. Replacing those jobs are quasi-skilled jobs, which required trained individuals. Without a proper education, these workers cannot operate the technology. What will the unskilled labor population do in the future?

Day 1: Arrival in Beijing

I’ve decided to keep track of my adventures for the summer, and I’d like to share my thoughts with anyone reading my blog. I’ll try to make it interesting!

Okay, so day 1 was a little hectic. After being on the plane for 15 hours, Beijing seemed like a slice of heaven. Freedom at last… despite the heavy pollution and black clouds shrouding the entire city. On the flight, I sat next to two people who claimed to just be friends from school. One time, I woke up from my sleep and saw the girl sleeping on the guy’s lap. My initial reaction was, aww, how cute. Then, I realized, she was sleeping face down right where his crotch area was, and I couldn’t help but lead my mind to the gutters. I suppose you could call it karma, because soon after, I bumped into my first obstacle of 10 week journey. I discovered that my Chinese VISA is only good for 60 days… so as of now, I’m not sure what will happen, because I was advised to take my issue to the police station.

Anyways, after unpacking in the hotel, our group went out to buy SIM cards for our phones to use in China. Keep in mind this is the first time most of us have wandered in Beijing by ourselves. Following my gut instincts, I started pointing to arbitrary directions to get to the store, and everyone followed. 5 or 10 minutes later, we realized that something didn’t seem quite right so I pulled out a map and discovered that we had made a mistake from the start. We should’ve made a right coming out of the hotel instead of a left. Not a problem… after another 20 minutes of following the map, we eventually made it to our destination and bought our cards. Success!

Later tonight, we ate dinner with some Duke alums working in Beijing at a restaurant called Lord of Salt, and yes, the food was indeed salty… The best part of dinner was after everyone left, and we tried making our way back to the hotel. You would think it’s as easy as getting a taxi and riding back to the hotel, right? Think again. It took us almost an hour to make a what would’ve been a 10 minute ride, because all the taxis were full/taken. Unable to find taxi at the restaurant, we started walking in the direction of our hotel, figuring that we would eventually see an empty taxi along the way. We ended up trying to get a taxi along the roadside of a highway, so it was a miserable FAIL. Finally, we walked to a smaller street more accessible and were able to get a taxi to go back to the hotel.

Whew, what a long day it’s been, and it’s not over yet. My mom’s best friend in college and her husband came to visit me. We chit chatted for awhile, catching up on life, and then tried to set up a time for me to hang out with their daughter who goes to school at 北大, show me around the place, I guess. It’s also a great opportunity for her to practice conversational English, because it’s hard to find people who speak fluent, unaccented English here.

After they left, I was finally able to relax and think about my goals and expectations for the summer. Quite a daunting road ahead of me, I must say… however I’m confident it’ll be do-able. Applying to med schools is rather stressful, selecting schools and filling out the application itself. Time management will be crucial since most of the daytime will be spent working on the DukeEngage project, and night time, I fear I’ll be too exhausted. *sigh* I’ll figure something out…

Tomorrow is a long day of DukeEngage orientation from 9 am to 7 pm. Oh boy!