Connecting Mandarin and English,
          Chinese and American,
                    people with people

Plans are Evolving - We're Headed to China
(March 5, 2008) (return to Homepage)
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     It's not a new idea nor a life long dream to teach English in China. The idea was kindled by stories about how difficult it was to advance educationally in China because one required to know English in high school and to enter college.Of course, English was not readily available to the poor families in the villages. The flames of interest grew when we discovered the warmth and compassion of Chinese students in the Masters program at Western Oregon University (WOU) where we teach. The first student we met almost immediately gave us contact information.
     As the number of international students in the Masters program increased from one to three to eight to more than thirty, our relationships evolved where Gail and I have been given the names Mama and Baba by both Chinese and Saudi students. Through these new found children we have discovered friends around the world and one has arranged for us to teach in China during the fall term 2008. We have signed two contracts, one in English and one in Chinese, and we hope that they are the same. We will be teaching English at Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University (JSTU) in Nanchang, Jiangxi Providence. We describes the location of Nanchang as we would describe Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States, in the south and in from the east coast.
     Our contact in at JSTU is Kan Zhang, the father of Weiwei Zhang, who is the first international student to complete her MS Ed-IT at WOU. We look for to his wife's (Yiqi Chen) visit to Oregon for Weiwei's graduation this spring. I are praying that she will be granted the necessary visa to travel to America.

A note about Chinese names: I have written the names of Weiwei Zhang, Kan Zhang and Yiqi Chen using the American format: personal name first and family name last. In china the names would be written in reverse order, Zhang Weiwei, Zhang Kan and Chen Yiqi. You will note that the daughter Weiwei has the same family name as her father Kan but the mother retains her family name Chen. The pronunciations would be approximately "way-way jong", "con jong" and "ee-chee chen". These names will return to this blog as we already have developed a friendship with them.

     The next step will be to complete the medical exams with our doctors to determine our health. We've seen the forms and it seems like there is some concern about our sanity and Sars. Nanchang Traffic