Chengdu Visit

Left Beijing at 5:45 a.m. and headed to the airport. Flew Air China from Beijing to Chengdu it was about a 2:45 flight. Chengdu is located in south central China and has a population of about 17 million.  Please see the link below for information on Chengdu.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu

To pass the time on the plane I filled out my March Madness brackets, I never do too well so maybe this is the year for me!

In Chengdu we met with Zhang Zhixiang, Chief Director, and discussed issues related to education in China and the US. He praised the Northland Pines School District for our initiative with Northland Adventure Quest and how excited the Chinese students were to attend.  After our meeting, we visited three schools. 

One was a kindergarten Center with 300 kindergarten students attending. Chengdu has 30 kindergarten centers in its district. I was amazed to find out the student day for the kindergarten students is 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.  Our second visit was an elementary school which focused on art. We saw some amazing art work.  Our third and final visit was another elementary school. 

The highlight of the day was meeting with 8 students who attended Northland Adventure Quest along with their parents. We all enjoyed watching the video of NAQ and reliving some great memories

So it was a great day and the temperatures even hit the 70's.

I was able to get the picture below uploaded of the Global Center, which I also saw the day before....

I took this picture of the Global Center from the car on the way to our hotel. My picture does not do this building justice...it is the largest single building in the world!  It is over 17,000,000 square feet in size.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Century_Global_Centre