China here we come!

Our trip has finally arrived!

Here is our ROUGH itinerary for family and friends who will be following along through our blog!

May 30-June 1st: Students and Faculty will arrive in Beijing

June 2nd-June 9th: We will be staying at the A. C. Embassy Hotel in Beijing, while going on cultural tours, including the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Beijing Opera

June 9th: We will leave Beijing for Tianjin, where we will be hosted by Tianjin Normal University.

June 10th-20th: We will teach our curriculum to students in China.

June 20-28: More cultural tours and day trips, both in Tianjin and Beijing.

June 28: Completion of the program.

Preparation for our trip

During the last semester, we have attended many team meetings to help prepare us for our trip.

During these meetings, we have learned a lot about China, as well as each other. We got to learn a little bit of Mandarin, thanks to our Chinese Language Learning Team, and we learned about contemporary issues in China thanks to the Center for Chinese Studies.






We have also learned about the arts and culture of China. Austin even got some practice performing a Chinese Opera with the former dean of an Opera School who came to visit us from China!








We spent a lot of time preparing our Communication Through the Arts curriculum that we will be teaching the children of China. During one of our final team meetings, students presented their learning modules to UM site leaders and visitors from China for feedback and approval.







Both the faculty and the Chinese visitors were very impressed by the creativity, innovation and hard work that our students have put into this project, and the presentations were met with rave reviews!

We've worked hard, and now we are finally ready to go!

In the next few days, we will be packing up, and heading to Beijing!