{"id":42,"date":"2009-06-11T10:19:27","date_gmt":"2009-06-11T15:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/?page_id=42"},"modified":"2009-07-11T04:39:42","modified_gmt":"2009-07-11T09:39:42","slug":"preparations-before-departure","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/preparations-before-departure\/","title":{"rendered":"Preparations Before Departure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vital Information:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Essential elements in prepping for our first-ever teaching sojourn at\u00a0 Hwa Nan Women’s College in Fuzhou, China included:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Issuing a call for student applicants around early January, and interviewing likely candidates in mid-February.\u00a0 A special application form adapted by the instructor from the one used during the study abroad process at Morningside was used to help select candidates to be interviewed.\u00a0 Even more than having a background in education,\u00a0each candidate’s personality and disposition<\/em>was carefully assessed.\u00a0 Possessing a sort of Daoist “go with the flow” character should prove most important in coping not only with a new & unfamiliar culture, but also in dealing with the somewhat amorphous nature of our teaching assignments at Hwa Nan (more on this topic to appear below).<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Using Airteks<\/strong> in San Francisco, CA for plane reservations.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Using International Currency Express, Inc.<\/strong> in Beverly Hills, CA (www.foreignmoney.com<\/a>) to secure an emergency supply of Hong Kong and Chinese currency for our trip over.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Using China Visa Service Center<\/strong> (www.mychinavisa.com<\/a>)\u00a0to procure the necessary tourist visas.\u00a0 To obtain a visa to China, one must either show up in person at the consulate (our closest one is in Chicago), or use a licensed visa procurement service.\u00a0 It takes six working days for the consulate to process a visa, normally, and costs around $175 a person.\u00a0\u00a0China Visa Service Center\u00a0was very professional and efficient!\u00a0 They email you when the application is received, and when it been shipped back.\u00a0 By shipping the passports and applications together, we paid a single shipping fee.\u00a0 We also used the instructor’s name and Morningside shipping address, as the Printshop can receive and sign for FedEx packages anytime it’s open.\u00a0 By the way, we first tried Interculture Tours in Chicago, which the college had used previously for the May Term trip in 2008, but after first expressing interest in helping us, they stopped replying to emails.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 Students participants are allowed to choose the four hours of credit they are to receive from among relevant courses offered at Morningside College.\u00a0 This year’s participants (including the instructor’s daughter) selected the following:\u00a0 Internships in MORN or HIST, Preceptorship in History, Senior Thesis in History, Topics in Global History: Contemporary China, and May Term.\u00a0 With but one exception (the May Term course), the students chose to divide their credit between two different two-hour courses.\u00a0 As such, the instructor needed to prepare syllabi and assignments for SEVEN different (and unrecompensed) summer courses.\u00a0 Keep in mind that the majority of such courses also require special registration forms and signatures.\u00a0 All in all, this aspect of the program takes up unexpected extra time!<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0 Students\u00a0should consult with Karen Gagnon about the possible financial aid implications of their participation in the Hwa Nan program.<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0 Students and instructor also need to devote time to conceiving and prepping the courses to be taught at Hwa Nan.\u00a0 At present, we’ve been asked to teach some combination of the following courses (capped at 30 students each) during two-week long, back-to-back sessions (M-F mornings from 8:30-11:30):\u00a0 Public Speaking Skills, American Culture,\u00a0Spoken English\u00a0(Beginning and Intermediate), and Spoken Japanese.\u00a0 That breaks down to two courses per participant.\u00a0 All but the English Conversation classes are credit-bearing for Hwa Nan students.\u00a0 Unfortunately,\u00a0Hwa Nan\u00a0informed us that it was up to us to decide how and what to teach in the courses (which has lent an element of real uncertainty to our preparations).\u00a0 Moreover, we received several different iterations of our teaching schedule over time.\u00a0 Much time has been spent researching books to use in our courses, especially books on American life and culture (we ordered eight or nine used books on Amazon.com), as well as drawing up draft syllabi\u00a0.\u00a0 Instructor assigned the\u00a0participants\u00a0without some previous education coursework\/teaching experience\u00a0to the more informal conversation classes (of the students two have such experience, and two do not).<\/p>\n

8.\u00a0 Students\u00a0will have met\u00a0twice a week (TTH 10-12) since classes ended in May to work with the instructor on prepping the Hwa Nan courses and taking care of other details associated with the trip.\u00a0 The students have also been dividing their time with research for the proposed documentary film (see #10 below).<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0 Each student has also been encouraged to purchase a pocket-sized Chinese-English\/English-Chinese dictionary.\u00a0 Two of the better ones seem to be by Langenscheidt and\u00a0Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

10.\u00a0 Fundraising also proved to be a vital part of the process, as the students (thus far) need to pay their own way overseas, and total costs this year should be around $3000.\u00a0 Monies from an anonymous donor, a Ver Steeg Research Grant (to hire the students to do research for a proposed documentary on Hwa Nan Women’s College), and a promised teaching stipend from Hwa Nan should cover just over half that amount.<\/p>\n

11.\u00a0 As much as possible, we’ve tried to coordinate our travel plans.\u00a0 Itineraries and copies of the passport photo pages have been provided to the Dean of Students office.\u00a0 The same holds true for health information, where relevant.\u00a0 Itineraries were also emailed to Nell, our contact at Hwa Nan.<\/p>\n

12.\u00a0 For the participants without any prior knowledge of or experience with China, the book “China A to Z” was assigned. [Two students travelled to China in May 2008\u00a0on the Morningside College Choir Performance Tour trip, and completed HIST 222: Introduction to Asian Civilizations].<\/p>\n

13.\u00a0 China, one must remember, is a bureaucratic culture of long standing.\u00a0 As a result, decisions, especially where precedent is lacking,\u00a0tend to take longer to be made there (and often involve the gathering of input from all affected parties first before a consensus is reached).\u00a0 As we’ve learned in setting up this initial exchange, sometimes time must be allowed for answers to even the simplest-seeming questions.\u00a0 Patience is a virtue!<\/p>\n

14.\u00a0 Due to a one-night stopover in Hong Kong before the flight to Fuzhou, we made reservations for three rooms at the Novotel Hong Kong Citygate hotel near the airport (with free shuttle service).\u00a0 Cost should be just over $400.<\/p>\n

15.\u00a0 We were advised to wear long pants and collared shirts when teaching.\u00a0 Goodwill is a good source for cheap (and expendable) polo and short-sleeve shirts.\u00a0 Cargo pants with their extra pockets are well-suited to traveling.\u00a0\u00a0 Linen pants should breathe well in the heat.<\/p>\n

16.\u00a0 One must stock up on enough personal toiletries and medicines to last the month.\u00a0 Anti-perspirant\/deodorant was particularly hard to find in China during our last visit.<\/p>\n

17.\u00a0 We purchased a good supply of small gifts (Asian cultures are gift-giving cultures) at the Morningside College bookstore:\u00a0 pens with the Morningside College logo, keychain\/coin purses with the logo, and a couple of stuffed animal Morningside Mustangs.<\/p>\n

18.\u00a0 We seem to have settled on the following films to take with us to Hwa Nan (as possible teaching material):\u00a0 “Forrest Gump,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “American Graffiti,” and “Field of Dreams.”<\/p>\n

19.\u00a0 Greg A. will put together a collection of poetry for use in class.<\/p>\n

20.\u00a0 we’ve been asked to purchase and wear masks on the plane due to the current worries over swine flu.\u00a0 It’s also been suggested that we should quarantine ourselves on campus the first few days after our arrival in Fuzhou.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vital Information: Essential elements in prepping for our first-ever teaching sojourn at\u00a0 Hwa Nan Women’s College in Fuzhou, China included: 1.\u00a0 Issuing a call for student applicants around early January, and interviewing likely candidates in mid-February.\u00a0 A special application form adapted by the instructor from the one used during the study abroad process at Morningside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-42","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/guelcher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}