Musings

After a long and hectic week here on the Sias campus, yesterday (Sunday) really was a day of rest. I decided not to set an alarm, and so just woke naturally around 8:15 or so. I’ve been reading ‘The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared’ for the last week or so, and so I decided to stay in bed until I finished it. I had agreed to meet with the World Academy Media team at 10am, and so I picked up breakfast on the run, and headed over to the Administration team. There were too many of us…

I feel that I owe everyone an apology for taking so long to add this second part of my post. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to sit down and document my adventures. It’s just that I’ve been so incredibly busy. I’m teaching a 2 hour leadership class every evening, and as I didn’t get the curriculum outline until a few days after I arrived in China, I’m creating and delivering seminars almost in real time. At least no-one can say that my material isn’t fresh! One of the things that I’m really enjoying is that my students are just…

It seems that I’ve finally worked through the last of the flu-like symptoms (aches, chills, sore throat, cough, etc.) and although I had another bad night’s sleep, I woke up feeling much better and ready to face the world. I’d arranged to meet with Selia for breakfast at 7am, but when I got to our pre-arranged meeting spot, she wasn’t there. I checked my phone, and found a text from her saying that she’d not been feeling too well, and requesting to take a rain check on breakfast. Usually if I’m venturing off campus for breakfast, I tend to have…

For those of you who know me, I’m the guy who went to China as the father of one, and came back as the father of six. Words cannot really express the way that I bonded with these young leaders, but I love them and am committed to helping them be all that they can be. As part of their commitment to the World Academy for the Future of Women, all World Academy members develop a project that addresses one of the eight UN Millenium Development Goals (MDGs): Selia Wang is a World Academy member and student at Sias International University….

One of the many highlights from my trip to Sias was meeting Chung To, Founder of Chi Heng Foundation, a program for AIDS-impacted children. He spoke at the 6th International Women’s Symposium, highlighting the massive AIDS problem in central China, primarily caused by illegal blood selling. Because of unsanitary practices, up to 1 million people are infected with AIDS in Henan province alone. The Chi Heng Foundation focuses on those children impacted by AIDS. They have lost their parents to the disease, and many of them have contracted HIV/AIDS themselves. Their program supports the placement of children locally and those…

23 hours of travel down, just 8 more to go. That means I’m in Los Angeles (LAX) with a 3 hour layover before my red-eye flight to Philadelphia. It just took about an hour to retrieve my bag and get through customs. My bag was the one that had clearly been opened by security in Beijing, and rather then bothering to close it properly, they’d wrapped it with plastic ties.  As I stepped out of customs, I saw a Starbucks and headed over for a large breakfast tea. I did manage to get a couple of relatively long sleeps on…

As I mentioned in my last post, last night was pretty emotional for me (and today was even worse). I’d bought gifts for some of the students that I really bonded with, and I’ve just been so busy for the last two weeks that I’d failed to personalize them (I’d bought most of them journals, and so I wanted to write something in each of them), and then I still had to wrap them. From 8 o’clock onwards, until about 11:30pm, I met with a stream of students, and each meeting was a mix of laughter, happy tears and words…

Usually, when I’m on vacation or visiting a new place, some form of mechanism kicks in about a day before I’m due to leave, and I find myself ready to go home. I always enjoy my trips and adventures, but when it is time, I usually can’t wait to be back in my own house. This trip to Central China hasn’t been like my usual trips. While I long to be back home with my sweetheart, I’m also very sad to be leaving here.  I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to get to know and love the…

Yesterday was Homecoming day on the Sias campus. As that wasn’t a tradition in the UK when I wasn’t a college, I can’t really comment on how true to form the Chinese version was.  The morning started with a parade outside the main Administration Building. Each of the different Schools within Sias had been given $150 to decorate their floats, so it really was an exercise in ingenuity. Apparently, this is a relatively new tradition on the Sias campus (last year was its inaugural year), although you wouldn’t think it from seeing the floats, as some of them were really…