Longest flight ever.

My trip to China is a mere month away. The question that seems to always come up is, "When are you leaving?". Followed closely by qustions about the details of my flight. So here I am to clear these concerns up. I fly to New York City on August 28. I leave New Orleans at 10:55 am (central time) and arrive at JFK at 2:45 pm (eastern time). The program that is in charge of our travel plans and accomidations in China, CET, asked for all of the students from the five schools involved in the Beijing trip (UNC, UNCC, Guilford, Davidson, Lenoir-Rhyne, and of course WFU) to arrive in New York by 12 noon on the the 28th. Obviously, my flight arrives at 2:45 which is a tid bit late. But after speaking with an employee at CET I was told that orientation really did not begin until 3:00 pm. So, hopefully I can make it to our hotel (I still don't know which one yet) without missing too much of the Orientation. On the other hand, I feel like the orientation in New York, much like the orientation at Wake, will be completely useless. We watched a video at Wake during our orientation that explained that culture is different in other countries. Wow, thanks for the enlightenment. Anyway, sorry for getting off the subject. So, continuing with the flight schedule; We leave JFK airport the next day, the 29th, at 1:30 pm to head to Tokyo, Japan, on a flight that is incredibly too long. We arrive the next day at 4:20 pm (local time). Don't ask me to calculate flight time and time change ect. because frankly I'm lazy and horrible at math. We have a layover until 6:10 pm in the Tokyo Airport, at which point our flight to Beijing begins. We arrive by 9:00 pm in Beijing, where I will either immediately need lots of sleep or alcohol. So there is my flight informatoin. If anyone is interested, I will be flying Japan Airlines, which sounds like a very nice airline (with unlimited snacks and bottled water). That's all I have to offer on that subject so far.






By the way, I changed my picture hosting site (not that I had posted any pictures so far anyway) to the following: Flickr account. There is also a link on the right side of this blog to the link as well.

Goals and what not.

So, while thinking (which yes, I do sometimes), I came to the conclusion that "Hey, I'm going to China soon and that's an incredible opportunity." With this obvious revelation, I have decided to use my newly constructed/cheesy blog to help me take advantage of this opportunity. How is this possible? Well I'm not really sure, but here it goes. I am going to create and post my goals for the trip, here, for everyone to see. In doing this, hopefully I will be more conscious of my goals AND everyone who reads this will hopefully gently remind me of my goals or scream at me when necessary to stay on track. Thus:

A. Speak Chinese as much as humanly possible while abroad.
-This is my only chance that I know of to really learn Chinese first hand....so yea.
2. Explore the culture of Beijing and any other community of China that I am able to reach.
- I've been very lucky to travel as much as I have in my lifetime, but none of the places that I have been to will be anywhere as different as China. So hopefully I can learn more about myself and others and blah blah blah.
C. Travel in China every chance that I get.
-This doesn't just apply to trips to other cities and to the Great Wall, I want to see EVERYTHING. If someone is going into town to buy dog food, I want to travel with them just to be exposed to everything that I can.
D. Stay in contact with my Family, beautiful girlfriend, and friends.
-Cause lets face it, I'm going to be across the globe, it will be nice to talk to the people that I love, and I think they'll miss me too (hopefully at least a little).

Anywho, those are my goals so far. Feel free to recommend other goals to me. I probably forgot something very important and obvious (which I do quite a bit). Finally, I know that all of you would like to send me care packages filled with awesome stuff....I'm not really sure what, but then again I don't have much of an imagination. So, I'll post the mailing labels that CET sent me below. At least send a card or something (money optional), and you may end up with something from the China.

Chinese version:

中国人民共和国
100089 北京市
海淀区
西三环北路83 号
首都师范大学
国际文化学院
Scott Mannear

Translation:

CET Program
College of International Education
Capital Normal University
83 Xi San Huan Bei Road
Hai Dian District
Beijing 100089
PRC

That's it for now, peace.

New stuff

So, it's a month and twenty days until I head to Beijing. I don't have too many updates to offer, but a few things have happened since last time. CET, the program in charge of SASASAAS, which is the program at Wake, which is in charge of travel to Asia and Africa (which are two of the A's in that crazy acronym), sent us a 22 page pamphlet to read through about what to expect in China. It basically reminded us that, surprise, culture is different in China. I did find out for sure that I will have wireless internet in the dorm, though I may have to pay for it.....but its cheap. So it will be no problem to stay connected with all my family and friends back home. Also, we were required to pick classes yet again, I'm not really sure why though, but it looks like I'm going to be taking 17 hours. 11 of those are going to be Chinese and the other 6 should be "21st century Beijing" and "Ancient Chinese Philosophy." I was kinda looking forward to doing as little as possible academically.....oh well, it never stops with Wake. On the bright side, I also found out that the school in Beijing will offer extra curricular classes in Chinese cooking, so that should be awesome! Anyway, I'll post again when it gets closer to the trip.