A new return to GuiZhou

I'm sitting here enjoying a rare moment of stillness while the students are in Chinese class. We have fallen into a routine of early morning meetings and language classes, afternoons of independent study classes and optional lessons around Kunming. The students are learning the ins and outs of daily life in a Chinese family, and how to navigate the web of bus routes between the Program House, their home stay houses and the University district. The students are working hard on their independent projects, the instructors are working hard on contacting mentors and arranging guest lectures and the weeks spin by. We are somewhere between a groove and a rut. It's time for us to get out again. (the photo is XiJiang, a village in GuiZhou)

This Sunday Lear and Mark and I will pile the dozen of us onto an overnight train to GuiZhou- the provence due East of Yunnan. We will ride the rails to KaiLi, a city three hours East of the capital city GuiYang, and then find our way into the hills in search of a village to call home for the week and families willing to host our horde. Our aim in this adventure is to break away from the day to day we have come to know and to provide some alternative perspectives on what day to day life means in China. As Lear Mark and I have never been to GuiZhou, nor do we have contacts there, this is an opportunity for the three of us to break away from our own routines and push ourselves to risk a bit and encourage inclusion of the students in the prep and planning, transit-tracking, village-visiting, house-hunting, food-finding, and lesson-learning. I can't wait to get on that train.

We chose GuiZhou, in part for its unfamiliarity and, conversely, in part for my familiarity with planning adventures there. During my studies in Missoula my IYFD cohort wrote a proposal for a Fulbright Hayes group study grant. We proposed to take UM professors and Missoula K-12 teachers on an educational tour through areas of China (GuiZhou) and Laos that are the ancestral and current home of many tribes of the Miao or Hmong people. Missoula is home to nearly 300 Hmong families and we found the idea of helping area teachers understand the ancestral home of the Hmong people an exciting idea. The Fulbright Hayes committee, however, did not. So I have found my own way here and am in the process of reviewing our proposal and recycling parts that have relevance to my students. Funny how life works.

On a different note, yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of our students arrival in China. Time is funny here; though the days seem to crawl to completion, the weeks fly by.  It won't be long now at all until we leave Kunming for good to begin our circuitous travels towards Beijing and then fling away towards new and old homes in the States, Korea, England and India. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, GuiZhou...