Last Lecture-Craig

I am going to use Craig's entry to introduce his Last Lecture.  Since he is brief and to the point I will supplement with photos to make to a photo journalism entry.  In this case a photo is really worth a thousand words.

"Tuesday evening and my Lecture is over, happy day and no more worries or prepping for the action.  Actually I think things went pretty well in spite of the heat and uncomfortable classroom arrangements.  I delivered an hours worth of information on my nearly 30 years of Air Force/Air National Guard career.  It appeared that most of the people attending were able to stay awake.  Kathy and a student, Jack, were very helpful in running the technology and all I all I think the briefing was informative, probably not very entertaining but the good part, it’s over.  WX was hot and humid but no rain today sky conditions are cloudy and gray most of the time but we’re grateful that the rains have stopped at least momentarily."

The audience was nearly all young men graduate students.  They are very interested in airplanes in general but even more so of the U.S. Air Force.  It was surprising to me how much of the technical information they understood.  Questions about specific models of the KC 135, engines, air speed, and specific missions.  Craig steered around questions about the VietNam War.  I always wonder about what they have been told and taught about in their classes.  Craig made one comment that took to air out of the room when he was discussing his job during the VietNam War.  His priority for the mission was to make sure as they flew from Okinawa over the South China Sea into the Gulf of Tonkin without penetrating Chinese Air Space because the Chinese would shoot down a U.S. Air Force plane.  " We were not your friends then! Maybe were not your friends now!" Silence.

Weekend Wash Out

The BYU teachers from both Guangzhou universities decided to take a weekend trip to a National site just outside of Guangzhou to the North. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site about two hour train ride.

 The Danxia landform refers to various landscapes found in southeast, southwest and northwest China that "consist of a red bed characterized by steep cliffs". It is a unique type of petrographic geomorphology found in China. Wikipedia

During the week we picked up our train tickets both going and the return this time along with a hotel reservation.  On Thursday I teach at the South Campus so the bus ride takes about an hour longer to get back to our apartment.  As soon as I arrived at 1:15 we took a cab to meet the others at the Guangzhou East Railway station.   Our train was a 2:13 departure so we barely had time to grab a McDonald’s sandwich then to the escalator for the train waiting area.  All eight of us had arrived, small miracle in and of itself.  We found a spot to sit for what we thought would be about 10 minutes until boarding.  One glace at the train board told us the train had been delayed from 2:13 to 4:30.  All that rush just to get a train delay, oh well.  We can always find interesting things to entertain ourselves in China.   

 A storm was brewing outside, a downpour was beginning.  We watched as the cloud cover darkened and it became almost black as nighttime.  We could hear the downpour on the ceiling of the train depot and before to long the leaks began to appear.  The water dripped from the light fixtures to the floor and anything in its way in the waiting hall.  We were moving seats rapidly to find a spot that wasn’t already wet or wouldn’t become wet soon. Two hours later the board registered yet another delay, it was now pushed back to 5:30.

Our Chinese is very limited and we began to wonder if we needed more information than just the delay time.  The Chinese people are great to try to help the foreigners out, but our limited language abilities became pretty humorous.  At first they speak in a normal tone, a few gestures and pointing to the Chinese signs, then a little louder and vigorously pointing to specific words on the Chinese sign, then they are yelling very slowly the Chinese so we will be able to understand.  It always makes me smile when the Chinese speakers get frustrated with our lack of language and begin writing Chinese characters first on their hand then they always take our hand as if they are spelling it out for us to understand. Unfortunately, none of that helps when you do not read or speak much Chinese. 

We found a student that was able to explain that the storm had washed out parts of the road and train track to Danxia.  The delay was an indefinite one until it was safe to leave. 

We decided it was time for us to leave and not take any additional chances in a location that was compromised.  So we are all back in our apartments for a rain soaked weekend.

Last Lecture- Kathy

We can tell we are getting very near the end of the semester because we have been invited to deliver our “Last Lecture.”  South China University of Technology hosts an International Scholar program each year and invites the Foreign Teachers to present a lecture to the University audience, both professors and students are invited to attend, usually on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening in an auditorium.

The invitation was posted on the International Office website and throughout the university.

The latest cultural lecture will be given by Prof. Kathryn Anderson from 7:30 pm to 8:30 pm on May. 20, in Room 302 of the 34th building on the Wushan Campus. The lecture is entitled Mandarin in American Schools.

I wanted to share with SCUT the efforts being made in Utah to develop and implement our Dual Immersion Mandarin Chinese program in our public schools.  Since I do have some prior knowledge about that program, it was fun to put together.  It has continued to grow and expand and is currently very popular and difficult to enroll students.

I wanted Chinese professors and students to understand the efforts being made by public school students in Utah to learn Mandarin Chinese.  I started with 2008 Governor Jon Huntsman and later Chinese Ambassador as a great example of a politician fluent in Mandarin Chinese.  Utah Senate Bill 41 and the implementation of the first schools to implement Mandarin Chinese in a 50/50 Dual Immersion content area program including my school, Lone Peak Elementary.  I took the opportunity to share my experiences in the development and implementation of that program and the impact it now has on students. 

Most of the audience was aware of the efforts to learn Chinese in the secondary schools across the country in a stand-alone pull out program during the daily schedule. They were not aware of any program that reached as far as Kindergarten and was imbedded in the curriculum.  It was a real ah-ah moment for them to recognize that Utah is moving forward rapidly to prepare future business leaders to communicate in Mandarin

It was an opportunity to stand and be proud of the hard work being done by teachers, principals, district and state leaders to support student success.

Mold and Mildew

If you have a smart phone download a weather app and track the weather in Guangzhou.  We are now entering the third straight week of downpour.  I would not consider it rain, downpour describes what breaks open the sky and dumps.  Every time it starts I expect it to hit hard and quick then clear out but now after three weeks of this I understand that it isn’t going to clear out.  It is always cloudy intermittent showers and downpours but always raining.  This weeks forecast is more of the same. We initially hoped for May 1^st to be the time for sunshine we have now revamped our hopes for June 1^st.  I know I live in a rain forest and this is the rainy season but enough already!

The elimination process has begun already, little ahead of schedule.  I am beginning to clean things out that will not be returning to Utah with us.  The mold and mildew process has helped me make critical decisions.  Every day I find something new with mold or mildew growing on it.  I throw it our as quickly as I can but I have become a bit paranoid about the whole process.  I feel like I smell of mold everywhere I go, between the inset repellent and mold I am sure we are just like the Snoopy character Linus and travel with the interesting cloud combination of insect repellent and mold.  I am looking forward to returning to the Utah desert, a little hot and dry sounds pretty great right now.

 Shoes and belts

 Pants

 Skirts

 Walls, ceiling and windows

Pioneer Trek

This post is mostly for my adult children who all had the “Pioneer Trek” experience in Salt Lake City.  Their experience was a “rough camp” experience with pulling a wooden handcart, eating ash cakes; the woman’s pull, sleeping under the stars and walking all day long in pioneer attire.  I have heard the stories from all four as they returned and laughed at their dismay as what that experience was supposed to simulate. 

This past week the youth of China gathered just outside of Beijing for their Youth conference Pioneer Trek! I would never have imagined that Pioneer Trek complete with handcarts (Chinese Style) would be part of China. All the expat youth in the entire country of China gathered in Beijing. The Guangzhou youth reported their experience to me on Sunday.  It was an amazing feat. 

They were only allowed to take a “carry on” luggage to the airport and it was a pillowcase with very few personal items and a change of clothes.  No problems getting through Chinese airport security. It was decided they could not show up in Pioneer clothes at airports all over China that would absolutely raise a red Chinese flag.  Those long skirts, bonnets and cowboy hats were tucked away nicely in the pillowcases.

Not many Pioneer Trekkers arrive by plane, but the China kids did.  They were picked up at the Beijing International airport, no delay at the luggage carousel, those pillowcases made the exit very quick. Busses took them to the designated location outside the city.  Amazingly enough it looked similar to the Utah surroundings minus the mountains.   They checked in their cell phone and electronic gadgets as they got off the bus. Now they really were ready for an ancient experience They loaded their gear and pillowcases in the handcarts, built campfires, sat on buckets, learned the Virginia Reel and lived on limited food rations for the weekend.  They did not have ash cakes in the campfire however. 

Their experience was still close and raw on Sunday as they explained it, but not one of them said they were sorry they went. I was probably the most amazed at the recreation of the Utah Pioneers.  I shared with the Guangzhou Trekkers some of the stories that my own kids had told upon their return and suddenly they felt like their experience was “normal.”  It turns out it really is a very small world.

Notice the wind farm in the background! 

 This could be Emigration Canyon, SLC.

 Complete with Dutch Oven cooking

 Everyone had to carry and care for  a "rice baby"

 Check out the Chinese handcart!

This looks like any canyon in UT.

Guangzhou Railway Attack

China Knife Attack: 6 Wounded In Stabbing Spree At Guangzhou Railway Station

Posted: 05/06/2014 2:21 am EDT Updated: 05/06/2014 1:59 pm EDT

Print Article

• Share34
• Tweet8
• 
  
• Email7
• Comment37

• 
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

MORE:

China Hacking AttackGuangzhou Railway StationChina Knife AttackChina

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese police shot and wounded a suspect who attacked passengers at a busy railway station in southern China on Tuesday, leaving six people injured in the third high-profile assault on civilians at a train station in a little more than two months.

There was no immediate word on a motive for the violence in the Guangdong provincial capital of Guangzhou.

The attack came despite heightened security countrywide in the wake of two deadly attacks at train stations blamed on extremists from far-western China. The country also has seen mass stabbings carried out by people with grudges against society or who were deemed mentally ill.

The latest incident happened late in the morning at the Guangzhou Railway Station, city police said on their microblog. Officers arrived as passengers were being hacked, and shot and subdued a male suspect with a knife after he failed to respond to a police warning, the statement said.

Following initial confusion about the number of attackers, police said there was only one perpetrator. It said the person was receiving treatment in a hospital, but gave no further details.

Police said six people were injured and taken to a hospital, not including the suspect.

Last week, a suicide bombing at a train station in the far-western region of Xinjiang — where extremists among the Turkic Uighur Muslim population have been waging a simmering insurgency against Beijing for years — left three people dead and 79 injured, prompting Chinese President Xi Jinping to demand "decisive actions" against terrorism.

In March, five knife-wielding men and women believed to be Uighurs slashed at crowds at a railway station in Kunming city in southwestern China, killing 29 people. Four attackers were killed by police.

Suggest a correction

Still More Work to Be Done

I recently returned from a weekend trip to visit the beautiful gardens and villages around Shanghai.  The government signs for directions inside the gardens and public places always amuse me. It helps me understand why my students have such interesting preconceived ideas about English grammar and vocabulary.  They seem to have a set of memorized English rules and vocabulary words that were given to them early in their English instruction.  Usage is a difficult transition when you memorize lists of vocabulary words; it is all about application.