Starting work and school

Karis had her first full day of school. She is taking British lit, US foreign relations, Asian studies, choir, Bible, and auditing Mandarin Chinese. She went with the son of another Fulbrighter after school to buy uniforms for school--she had to buy an extra large size which barely fit. I don't know how we are ever going to find black shoes for school. They might have to give her an exception for now.

I had my first meeting with the entire team of Fulbright faculty working on the general education curriciulum change at the universities here. It was good to finally meet them after being part of email correspondence in the fall. They each talked about the challenges of each institution. This helped me get a better idea on what we all are doing. Some of them are teaching a class this semester, but primarily they review course proposals, meet individually with faculty, attend the major meeting related to the curriculum changes to offer advice, and organize workshops for their campuses. Following this meeting I had a welcome lunch with several administrators from the Provost's office including the acting provost. We had an interesting conversation about Hong Kong and Mainland China. Two of the administrators are British but have been in Hong Kong for a long time in higher education. Culture--Hong Kong people would rather let their mother's die than miss a good financial deal. There is clearly a sense that Asia is where the world is going while parts of North America are beginning to look like the Third World. Top faculty are being recruited because resources are there for people to be top notch in their fields. They also described Hong Kong as a large village. When I asked about the cross-cultural context, one said that while it can be extremely frustrating at times, he worked at building relationships and clearly both of these men are well respected.

We ended the day having supper at the last minute with the Freake family, the Fulbright family from Connecticut. They are the most adventurous of all the Fulbright families here--they've eaten scorpions, taken the subway in Beijing and were almost crushed, tested the results of running out of money on their octopus card and trying to ride the bus, for example. If you need to know something, you just ask the Freakes and they can tell you how to do it.

The other good event of the day was that I discovered an old set of speakers in a box in my office. I brought them home and hooked them up to my computer and listened to NPR while doing the dishes in the kitchen. And now I have them hooked up to my mp3 player--music. It could feel like home if we could bring some order to our stacks of things laying around. I can't seem to organize myself. I think it is jetlag, though today I finally could work through the day without zoning out in the middle of the afternoon.