Home Sweet Home

Well, the final stage of our journey, the drive back to Eagle River. Left Chicago at 6:00 a.m. and we have about a 6 hour drive home. This was a great experience and I met some wonderful people while in China. The hospitality we received was unbelievable and the people from China could not do enough for us. During our journey we have traveled nearly 17,000 miles. 

In the US we don't realize how good we have it compared to what I witnessed in China. A few examples of this include:

1. Being able to drink tap water; we could not drink water from the faucet (not even to brush our teeth)
2. No restrictions on our Internet sites
3. The great conditions of our school buildings compared to China
4. The number of students in our classrooms compared to the Chinese schools
5. Being able to see blue skies, the stars and blue water
6. No smog or pollution
7. Seeing the woods and forest
8. The appreciation for nature
9. Non-crowded streets
10. It does not take us an hour and a half to go 4 miles during rush hour; we don't even have rush hour!

 I could go on but I think you get the point.  Home sweet home - made it back to Eagle River! We had a great journey, I really missed my family and it is so good to be home! Go Badgers. 

China Last Night in Shanghai

March 21, 2015

Although very tired, today was our last day in China. We were scheduled to fly out of Shanghai Pudong Airport at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening Shanghai time, which would have been 5:00 a.m. Saturday morning Central time. I knew jet lag would set in on the way home. 

As today was Saturday we did not have any school visits, or meetings. Xiadong, along with his friend James, and Ben and Ben's daughter Claudia who attends college in Shanghai (yes these are their American names - most Chinese people who travel a lot also have an American name; let's just say it is much easier this way), graciously gave us a tour of down town Shanghai. We walked along the Huangpu River, there was a great walkway with vendors along the way, we also saw a Veterans' Memorial. 

This area of Shanghai is like Wall Street in the US with banks and financial institutions everywhere. For our final excursion we hit the crowded streets of Shanghai; there were stores, vendors and places to eat along the way with hundreds of thousands of people walking everywhere in this area. My only thought here was..... do not lose Xiadong and his friends or I may miss my flight home. 

We left the busy streets and headed to the airport. It's hard to explain in words what the driving is like all throughout these large cities; lets just say it's crazy and many people do not even drive in this mess. Cars, taxi's, mopeds and bikes in every direction, everywhere you can see. 

Boarded the plane at 5:20 to prepare for the 14 hour flight back to Chicago. Finally after sitting on the plane for two hours we are able to take off. Yes, people on the plane were getting a little restless. To pass the time on the plane I tried to sleep, watched the progress of the flight on the monitor in front of me (what I noticed most is that it took us forever to cross the Pacific Ocean) and finished writing my blogs so I could post when we landed. I can't even tell you how much I am looking forward to having Internet with no sites being blocked by the government.  

Landed in Chicago at 7:30 p.m. The pilot did a great job making up the time we lost sitting on the runway. It's hard to imagine that we left Shanghai at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 21st flew 7,048 miles and landed in Chicago at 7:30 p.m. and it is still Saturday night March 21st! Went through customs, called our hotel shuttle and headed to the hotel.  Will spend the night in Chicago and head to Eagle River early Sunday morning. 

Yangzhou Dong Guan Primary School and Geyuan Garden

This morning we toured Yangzhou Dong Guan Primary School. This was a first though sixth grade school, which is a common grade structure in China. Enrollment here was 3,100.  President Jiang Zeming attended this school while growing up.   Please see link below....
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Zemin

We were able to observe a 6th grade English class. It was a great lesson and the teacher did an excellent job delivering this lesson to the 56 students in the class. The students asked us so many questions.  We also showed the video created by SOAR student Nick Lofy of Northland Adventure Quest 2014. If you could have seen these students eyes as they watched this video, it was priceless. We take our blue sky and fresh water as a given!

After lunch we were able to tour the Geyuan Garden. The Geyuan Garden was known as "the garden of the long-lived Ganoderma" during the Ming Dynasty. In 1818 (the 22nd year of the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor), salt distribution commissioner Huang Zhiyun, bought the land and rebuilt the garden as a private retreat.  Please see link below.... 
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_Garden

Late afternoon we left Yangzhou and headed to Shanghai on a high speed train for our last stop before heading home. Shanghai has a population of over 24 million.  Please see link.... 
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai   The train ride was awesome!

On the way to Shanghai we crossed the Yangtze River (English pronunciation: /ˈjæŋtsi/ or /ˈjɑːŋtsi/), known in China as the  Yangzi, is the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world. behind the Amazon and the Nile.

Yangzhou School District

We were up very early today to catch a flight to Yangzhou (Yang-zoo), it was a 2.5 hour flight. Yangzhou is a city in eastern China with a population of over 4.5 million.  Please see the link for Yangzhou below

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

As we left Chengdu and were in the air, it really gave me a great perspective of why Chengdu is called the new area as I was able to get a good view of the hundreds of high rise buildings being built. The Tianfu New Area (which is the name of the school district) in Chengdu will be a sister school district to Northland Pines. To give you an idea of how big this district is, they are in planning phases of building 25 new schools and 25 more to immediately follow for phase two, and the third phase is an additional 50 schools!

The associate director was in attendance and once again was very impressed with our school district and our great relationship with China. They are very envious of what we have at Northland Pines. We spent about two hours talking about global education.  I felt a little out of place when I was describing the size of our district and our 1,350 students. The Yangzhou school district has 624,574 students, 689 schools and 45,942 teachers.  Now that is a big district; however, they were very impressed with the things we are doing at Pines.

After our meeting, we went on a tour of a High School Affiliated with Yangzhou University. This high school has 2,500 students and is the second rated high school in Yangzhou.  The student day here is 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Yes that's correct! Many students stay until 9 p.m. to study and some students spend the night in the school dorm.  The school serves three meals a day; breakfast, lunch and dinner. After the tour we met with the staff and administration.

Yes, it was a great day and we really enjoyed seeing this incredible school district.

Educational presentation in Chengdu, China

Things are going very well here and I have great pictures to post.  Unfortunately, due to the Internet issues in China I am not able to post them to my blog.  As I continue through this trip, the difference in Internet freedom really comes through as Facebook, Twitter and Google are all blocked here.  I am realizing how easy it is to take our freedom of technology use in the United States for granted.  That being said, when I get back to the U.S. I will be able to upload all of my pictures into the correct blog dates.  

We had a great morning as we did an educational presentation to over 200 Chinese educators in Chengdu, China.  We presented at and visited a 7-12 school with over 5,000 students.  All students in public schools here wear uniforms to school.  All the educators were very interested in learning more about our teaching practices in the United States.  They would like to start changing their practice and include more technology and tech ed into their daily classroom schedule.  They were very impressed with the Northland Pines School District and our use of technology and the opportunities we provide our students in the tech ed area.

We had lunch with the school officials and again continued to talk more about education.  Late afternoon we were treated to a tour of a Panda Research Center.  It was so spectacular to see these pandas close up and in person.  The neat part about this tour is at certain times of the day the pandas were actually outside of their fenced in areas.    

Here is a link I found that talks about the Panda Research Center.  These are truly amazing animals.

http://www.cits.net/china-guide/places/panda-breeding-base.html

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

Capital Normal University High School Visit

We spent most of the day at Capital Normal University High School where we talked to students, staff and the principal. It was a great visit and the students asked some interesting questions. I really enjoyed the tour and talking to the students and staff. Students have a long day as school starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 4:45 p.m.  They usually have two to three hours of homework.

It was so nice to see a warm welcome to the Northland Pines school District in Beijing, China

A picture of the school with the principal 

Another view of the school

A model of the school

Students listening to my presentation. Note the student uniforms. This was a public school.

After my presentation, the students were so eager to learn about American Education. This was an English class 

Hot lunch

I liked this picture because one student was using chopsticks and the other a spoon

Having lunch with the English Department and the principal 

Saying good bye at the school

Late afternoon we met with a reporter for a Chinese magazine and had a great discussion about education. 

Talking to a reporter 

After we finished the interview, we toured the Summer Palace. It was an unbelievable sight. See the link for a brief history lesson.

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

  

Enjoy the pictures I took while at the Summer Palace

It was a great day today and tomorrow will bring another adventure! As my Monday is over here in China, school is has just begun Monday morning at Northland Pines.