University of Nanjing

This is a major scientific and technical university in this country. This morning James and I went for a walk and saw the physics building and the building for industrial explosives.

I knew that most of the high rises in China had been built post- 1980. For example, the Wall Street Journal carried this week an article about China saying that in 1979 Shanhai had 15 high rise buildings, and now has over 3600, more than Chicago and New York combined. I believe it. Visibility was poor as we crawled through Friday evening traffic last night, but there were whole villages of high rise apartments, many of which gave every impression of being empty. Some of them had styling similar to the 24 story monoliths that are sprouting on Panama City Beach, sort of pastel colored concrete, narrow, and every apartment with balconies.

As most of the buildings on this campus were built after 1980, you'd expect to see the sort of bland sameness of Russian polit-bureau buildings from the sixties, but it's interesting how there has been some attempt at architectural style for each building. I would describe the architecture more clearly, but I don't know enough about architecture to describe it.

The street scenes here are very vital. There are cars, vans, buses, bicycles, motor scooters and pedestrians vying for room to move. The streets are lined with vendors, tiny shops stuffed with goods, street vendors baking, chopping, braising, steaming, frying. Noodle vendors often have two or three tiny tables in front, and hungry university students, cheerfully chatting, lean over their bowls, slurping up noodles and broth.

We high end teachers dine indoors at large round tables that seat ten or twelve people. Young women bring tea, juice, milk and beer. Dish after dish is brought and placed on a large lazy susan, and spun around to reach each diner.

Further Adventures in Travel

We're fine and in Nanjing, so unless you enjoy vicarious misery, you can just skip to the next post. Things went fine with our altered schedule to Chicago until, no surprise, we arrived in Atlanta and were put in a holding pattern. After holding, we enjoyed sitting on the ramp waiting for a gate, and missed our flight to Chicago. We tried to get on the next flight, but we were stand by way down the list, so we weren't called, and we finally dragged into a Comfort Inn well after 11 pm, and had to be back at the airport before six, because we were still on the super special security, because we still hadn't completed our original trip.

We considered even spending the night at the airport, since we'd only have five hours to sleep at the hotel, but I decided the security problem with having to leave Sarah or me awake to watch the luggage, and the "Super Max Federal Prison" experience of having the lights on all night made it worth the hassle. It was worth it, we all got five good hours of sleep, which was important the next day.

We caught a seven a.m. Delta flight to Chicago O'Hare, went to baggage and were very happy to find our checked bag. Then we walked all the way to the United counter, to discover that we were part of a minority of the group on the Amercian flight, so we walked all the way to American.

My kids hauled all their own luggage on five hours of sleep. We were so happy we'd packed light.

The flight was long, fourteen and a half hours of flight time, plus all the time to board and unload a 777. We had no trouble at the SARS checkpoint, or at immigation or customs, and found the Foreign Affairs Officer for the University of Nanjing without incident.

About 18 teachers arrived that afternoon for this summer program, and there are a number of children, including a boy only a couple of years younger than James, which is good. We had to wait for another flight before loading onto a bus for Nanjing, but we left about 4:00 pm, and arrived at about 8:30 pm.

The Guodong airport in Shanhai is relatively new, and bigger than O'Hare. The bus sat about 18, and although we were packed in with our luggage like sardines, it was airconditioned. The weather is exactly like home, hot and muggy. We arrived in Nanjing at about 8:30 pm, and were immediately ushered up to a welcome buffet.

Thoughout this first 50 hour travel period, my kids were so good it was unbelievable. They slept sitting up when they could, they did not complain, and even when I knew they were exhausted, they were very pleasant through the banquet.

I'd left my camera on the bus, but I wished I'd brought it in to the banquet. The food was truly amazing to see. Dish after dish, each one more exotic than the last, but the oraganizer also knew there'd be children there, so there were things kids liked, like sweet and sour pork and corn.

I ate a pigeon egg in front of James. I ate spicy noodles. I ate strange and wonderful things, I ate things that were not so memorable.

We have a room, it has two single beds, so James and I slept in the same little bed. But it was air conditioned, and, a tremendous blessing, it has internet access, which was hooked up today. This afternoon we have orientation for teaching that starts Monday.

I have asked the Foreign Affairs Officer to help me find church services for tomorrow.

We're here, we're all okay, and I'm happy that we are here.

Lisa in transit

Lisa wants to let everybody know that she is in transit and unable to update her blog today.
If I hear any news before she arrives at her destination, I'll post it here.

Adventures in Travel

Everything went swimmingly this morning, we didn't seem to have forgotten anything critical, we arrived at the airport promptly, we presented ourselves to check in automatically and our tickets could not be found in the reservation system. They said they couldn't get us out today, which is a problem, since our flight to Shanghai leaves at 10:35 tomorrow morning from Chicago.

We were rescued by Delta employee Nikia Baker. who rapidly tried a half dozen different itineraries, including taking us out of Valdosta, Panama City and Jacksonville, and in the end she was able to fly us to Tampa, then to Atlanta, and then to Chicago. We'll get in late, but we'll get in tonight and make our flight tomorrow.

The kids were completely cool during this minor crisis, waiting quietly until it was done. Then we piled our stuff together, and went through security, where we enjoyed the super special excellent full body pat down screening, and thereafter I had to listen to Sarah express her distress over a smudge on her new purse. Shortly thereafter, we realized the reason we felt like we had so little luggage was because James left his bag at the Delta counter. The police helped us, and I left the kids with the police while I went to fetch the bag, enjoying another full body pat down on the way back.

So, we're hanging around the airport, waiting for our flight to Tampa.

See, our first small set back, but we are doing fine.

Trepidation

We leave for China tomorrow. I have a long list, with nearly every item checked off, except that I haven't actually started to pack yet. I have enough drugs to start a pharmacy, flyers and maps to entertain my students, a camera, a computer, but nothing actually packed. There was a slight trauma today about UPS delivering a Chinese phrase book, escalating stress about a case which is either going to settle or go to court in the next couple of weeks, and I'm wondering what possessed me to sign up to go to China in the first place.
Sarah, who is 16, has been packed since the weekend, and has been cheerfully visiting with friends non-stop this week. James is having a James and daddy day today. I am dealing with the idea of a month without my spouse by refusing to think about it. Denial is under-utilized as a coping mechanism.

Preparing to Go to China

For someone who was such a dedicated blogger for a year, the fact that I haven't posted since February seems sad. I have several friends that kept up with the whole election via blog. Now, I seem to mention the odd thing in passing and then drift away.

But going to China is different. I'm leaving next week to go to China, where I'll teach a summer course in English at the University of Nanjing. My son and stepdaughter are joining me, but Jim is staying home. It turns out it's just as well since a tree fell on our house last week, and we're currently residing in a long term stay hotel, and he'll still be there when we leave.

I took a Chinese language course this spring to try to get ready for this experience. My son has been studying Chinese for two years. My stepdaughter is going to rely on her good looks and charm. We are all in various stages of nervous anticipation.

Mentor

Nearly ten years ago, I started supervising the law clerks in my unit. I'm still in touch with many of the clerks, I think of them as "my" clerks, although they worked for the entire unit. Today I was talking with one who worked for me the first year I was supervising. He has various claims about my supervising. First, he claims that I said my standards were as follows: Show up on time, don't be drunk. I view this as a slight exaggeration. Second, he says that the first day he arrived, I told him I was glad he was there and to draft a motion in limine. Which was fine with him, except he didn't know what a motion in limine was.

He survived working with us during the first jury trial the unit had done in many years. Now he is a very important person in state government, and I have enjoyed watching him rise over the past ten years. He says I am his mentor. I think that is, once again, an exaggeration, for he was going to do well no matter what. I truly believe that. There are people you can drop to the bottom of the well, and they will be just fine. He is one of those people, but I enjoy the flattery nonetheless, and enjoy keeping up with him, and putting in my two cents whenever he is contemplating a change.

The first in his family to go to college, I'd like to see him consider the bench, but he has spent more and more of his time in administration. All of which is a rambling way of saying that I miss supervising law clerks, miss their youth and enthusiasm for the law, and wish that I could have some around on a regular basis again.

Guardianship Cases

Over time, lawyers develop specialties in their practice, and sometimes go for long periods doing only one sort of case. For some reason, for the last couple of years, my pro bono cases have all been guardianship cases. I like them fine, I guess. I try to focus very hard on getting everybody possible on board before I file an action to commence a guardianship, so that the needs of the ward are met, and the family is in agreement. When I can't get agreement from everybody, and sometimes you just can't, I try to be sure I'm on the right side of the argument. This process is particularly difficult when dealing with end of life issues for the parent of a disabled person.
I think it's often frustrating for siblings to come to terms with the fact that one of their number has special needs, and is going to get a special estate deal, and that deal might be better than their deal. Sort of the "Mom always liked you best" problem.
For the parents, it's not that they always liked "you" best, but that "you" needed them more, and will have greater needs after they die. But it doesn't mean the siblings have to like it, or be particularly happy about having to provide the moral and possibly economic and guardianship support to their sibling that their parents have provided. But they generally do it, often with extraordinary care and grace, sometimes grudgingly, but only occasionally not at all.

Chinese is Easy, Just like English

So says my Chinese instructor, anyway. He is teaching 8 adult students, there are two in their twenties, and two in their fifties and the rest of us are somewhere in between. The class is two hours long on Sunday afternoons. Mid-way through the class we take a ten minute break and do tai-chi. Because Chinese is a tonal language, and tai-chi has the same discipline of movement as ballet, I call it my singing and dancing class.

To say it is hard is an understatement. I feel ridiculous, knowing my Chinese is virtually incomprehensible to a native speaker. My writing is like a pre-schooler's. But the teacher, Mr. Li, is endlessly encouraging to all of us, and tells us that people in China will be pleased that we can say anything at all. Which is probably true, but I wish . . . well, some things are best done by the next generation. I went to school with plenty of kids whose parents had accents.

I have been so impressed with Mr. Li as a teacher that I have resolved to try to be as good a teacher of English as he is of Chinese. He comes to class carefully prepared, he has spoken with a friend who teaches Chinese at Georgia Tech and uses some materials from him, some materials he's gathered himself and a children's text book. He encourages us, corrects us sincerely, and is enthusiastic about our efforts.

This week we have homework of copying out a dialogue and studying the coming lesson. We also have to prepare to take dictation for body parts. In English, they pretend that you have phonetic rules for spelling, which are mostly notable for exceptions. In Chinese, they don't even waste time with that, and just tell you to memorize the pictogram for each word. So all I have to do is memorize 2000-3000 words and I can read a newspaper.