Wind in My Sails

Four years ago, I attended the International Drama Education Association (IDEA) World Congress in Ottawa. There I learned that the next one would be in 2007 in Hong Kong, and the theme would be "Planting Seeds". This trip is a dream come true made possible by a grant from the Hardner Fund, my late world-travelling aunt, my mother and my husband, and a host of Nichols faculty and administrators, especially Yajie and Mary. One thousand thanks to all. You are the wind in my sails.
Like my colleague, Sheila, who is in Avignon, I was inspired by a student's senior project blog from China. Thanks, Julia and Sheila. My posts may not be as frequent or complete as yours because I am not taking my own laptop with me, but I will try to get to an internet cafe periodically throughout our 19 day sojourn.
My daughter, Charlotte, and I are on my way in less than a week and have been planning our trip for months! (Nancy, our administrative assistant and school nurse extraordinaire, has been a font of information as have Yajie, Mary, and a great website: journeywoman.com.) Charlotte will participate in workshops designed for teens at the IDEA Conference and will perform in the closing ceremonies.
After the 6-day conference, we plan to take the overnight train from Guangzhou to Zhengzhou to see the Shaolin Temple (think David Carradine, Kung-fu) and the Longmen Caves. Then we will hop on the train again heading to Beijing where we will have a PACKED 5 days of sight-seeing before heading back to Hong Kong on the express train - a 25-hour trip! We figured that we would see more of the country by train than by flying from place to place. Thanks to Yajie, I have all my train ticket requests written in Chinese and her voice saying them recorded on my i-Pod so that I can try to speak coherently as well. I am even learning how to say, "I'm sorry that my Chinese is so bad!"
My hero, Jackie Chan, said in a recent interview that he wanted all Americans to speak Chinese and Japanese, all Chinese to speak English and Japanese, and all Japanese to speak Chinese and English. My Chinese will be Mandarin, not Cantonese, but I'm working on it, Jackie! Wo shi xiju laoshi. I am a drama teacher. (Sorry the tones aren't marked in my pinyin.)