Hui Yuan Hotel Shijiazhuang

... tv's, an audi, and a BMW. This is not in any way typical, but I wasnt complaining.

One night we made dumplings together and another night we went out for beijing duck. It's very very good.

It must have been pretty comical to watch a 6'5'' white kid get led around the city by a little chinese girl, but Becky was a grade guide. (She recently graduated highschool and will attend university in Beijing.)

... three trucks to Taiyuan direction, there's enough room to fit both Liu Chang and I but we have to split up.

In China trucks are fitted with at least two drivers. One would drive while the other would sleep. The truck runs nonstop. I talk with Mr. Qiao as we climb the steep mountains that cuts between Hebei and Shanxi. He's from the countryside outside of Tianjing. They are going to a small place outside of Taiyuan to bring back iron rods ...

... words
I chose- none of which went together very easily so I received some pretty
creative stories.

*Field Day/Relays outside- We met in the classroom- I drew
pictures on the board and explained “Run backwards race, 3-legged race,
piggyback ride race, and wheel barrel race” –Gave away the medals my mom sent
from home (mine and my brother’s soccer, cheerleading, basketball, golf awards)
Since all the students ...

Peanut Butter and Jelly Day :) *We decided to bring a little taste of the West to our Middle School by making over a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and distributing them during the students lunch time. It was crazy! We had Willie and our friend John controlling the crowd and Kara and I handed out sandwiches. It was a lot of fun until we got in trouble by the school because theres a rule against it.. even though we told them all about what we were going to do.. ehh ...

... fertile land that boasts splendid cultural history. As such, Shijiazhuang is home to many significant cultural relics, such as the oldest stone-arch bridge in China, Zhaozhou Bridge, and one of China's three hanging temples Qiaoloudian Hall (Bridge-Tower Hall). Moreover, the grand Taihang ...

... in Europe" and then I'd give them a few minutes to write down as many as they could think of and then they'd go back and forth. I was happy to see they got really into it. The last five minutes of class I showed them money from different countries (they went nuts!) and I gave pennies to the students who tried the most during the game. The first 2 weeks we were back, I was downtown at Mickey's office every day. I was ...

... She ordered like 8 different things- I know she said she wanted me to be able to try different chinese dishes but it was a bit much. Had her write down a few of em though so I could have other people try em too. We talked about her family, her job (works at a power plant), why she wants to learn english, and a lot about the differences between america and china (politics, religion, social classes, education). Although we're usually told not to ...

... workout and my hamstrings have hurt for 3 days now. We have been hanging out with a lot of other foreigners. I think that's what happens anywhere. We used to always think at Drake that the foreign kids would only hang out with each other, but you find a comfort in being with others who are different. We have hung out with a lot of people from Australia, UK, Ethiopia, India...and China. We have this one super friend who is Chinese and is getting his masters in English ...

... an amusement park/carnival in it. We saw a lot of young people- they kept saying "megguoaran" (american) and pointing to us. That night we met up with josh for dinner(a person in our program). we said we'd meet him at the train station since we couldn''t find a map online that we understood and still had no clue what part of the city anyone was located. when we got to the train station we walked around for quite a while looking for him- didn't ...

... excellent information on the typical med school curriculum and the process of matriculation. Luckily, I can also access the journal database at the UW and thus spent yesterday afternoon perusing research journals on medical education. Discovered that medicine is in the throes of "evidence-based medicine" just as in education we are in the throes of "evidence-based teacher education." Which made me wonder what my doctors previously relied on -The ...