Well, it is 9:05pm (Tuesday) and I am currently standing with the rest of the CIS Asia group in the Shanghai airport awaiting our luggage. We were in Beijing for the day and had two high school visits- one at the International School at Beijing (ISB) and the other at Western Academy of Beijing. (WAB) Both were strong fairs where we saw a large number of not only seniors, but also juniors and sophomores as well! Interestingly, I also learned a little bit about how the Olympics affected the local area – for example, school for both of these high schools started 2 weeks later than normal due to the Olympics! To reduce traffic during the Olympics, cars could only drive every other day – if your license plate number ended with an even number, you drove one day and if it ended with an odd number, you drove the next.
One thing I realized that I should explain is about our typical high school visits on the CIS tour. A typical visit will have us visiting a high school for several hours. During that time, we will hold a college fair for students, sometimes hold college workshops (The College Essay, How To Utilize A College Fair, etc.), eat lunch/ snack with students and talk to counselors. Thus each visit is pretty in-depth and we typically will do this at two different schools – which makes for busy days! There is not much down time because even when we are not “doing” anything per se, we are checking emails, preparing for workshops, etc.
One other fact to note is how interesting it is to be in Beijing immediately after the Olympics and Paralympics. It is pretty obvious how proud China was to host these games. Lots of ads & memorabilia still exist which I am sure will continue for a little while longer.
Earlier today, because we had a little bit of free time (2 hours) before we needed to be at the airport, we went to a Chinese silk factory where we learned the silk-making process. The tour started from the silkworm & its cocoon and went through until the final product of sheets, scarves, ties, etc. I have some great pictures that I will be sure to share when I have the chance to upload photos!
On a side note, please excuse any typos or grammatical errors or formatting issues that you might encounter in my blogs (especially those in Asia!). I am posting using my mobile phone and thus it is a bit more difficult to write than if I had an actual keyboard in front of me!
Well we are almost to our hotel at this point so I bid you a good morning/ good evening to you wherever you are 🙂
Next stop: Shanghai, China
Destination: Elon 