Nancy, Johanna, Lynn arrive in Beijing
Thursday, May 7
Today I head off to China! I met my two
co-instructors from Tufts at Logan Airport and we waited in the airport
lounge to begin our (almost) 14 hour direct flight from Boston to
Beijing. This trip had been all planned and arranged by the
director of the Chinese side of the program we all teach for at Tufts.
We teach Chinese seniors from Wuhan Foreign Language School who spend
their last year of high school at Tufts improving their English language
skills, adapting to American classroom culture,
and applying to colleges in the U.S. As with most teaching jobs, it’s
intense and requires a lot of intellectual and emotional energy on our
part throughout the year. This trip is a big “thank you” from the Great
One (the name of the Chinese side of this partnership).
In the lounge we debate what to bring for gifts and
anticipate the flight. On board the plane, we find our tight economy
class seats (why do they always make you walk through business class so
you see what you’re missing?!) on one of the
newest models of planes of Hainan Airlines. We taxi down the runway and
take off for the other side of the planet.
The flight is loooonnnnnngggg and we, of course,
are seated in front of the noisiest family on the plane who keep kicking
our seats as we attempt some sleep. But, as we fly over the Arctic
Ocean we see an amazing sight. Frozen water stretching
as far as we can see out the small windows of our “air bus”. The smooth
white is punctuated with topographical mounds of white which are either
islands or great mountains of ice embedded in the sea. Amazing. As we
pass over the Bering Strait, I can understand
how the ancestors of the first people to move into North America could
cross the frozen expanse. But that must have been quite a journey.
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