John’s Blog

I’m sitting on the floor in the airport in Xiamen near the only place I could find an outlet. The outlet is nearly four feet about the ground, and I’m a bit worried that the power adapter is going to fall out and land on my head. If it did, my head would hurt a little bit and the computer would turn off because the battery system is broken due to some water I spilled on the keyboard a few months ago.

I’m using the vip lounge wireless network, which would probably be upsetting to the vip lounge folks if they knew, not to mention the folks who run the paid CMCC wireless network.

We had an IELTS lecture in Fuzhou on Saturday and another one today in Xiamen. The one in Fuzhou was attended by about 1200 people, and there were about 800 people at today’s lecture. Both lectures were to help promote New Channel’s new franchises in Fuzhou and Xiamen. It was fun to see the new schools and meet the teams running them. I’d met the head of the Xiamen school before, but it meant a lot to meet the rest of the teachers and staff at the schools. I think they both have the potential to do really well.

Catherine and Will are actually also in Xiamen today with Catherine’s UC students. They left for the Wuyi Mountains on Thursday and arrived in Xiamen by train this morning. They’re plane leaves an hour after mine, so I might not see them until tonight.

I’m going to go ahead and click “post” before the adapter falls on my head.

Yesterday was the final session my July Culture Class. Thanks to all of you for making it a great time!

The summer break is here! Most of the students arrive tomorrow, but today marks the arrival of many students for our residential classes. It was fun to come to school today and share in their excitement.

My Culture Class starts tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to meeting the students that I will be spending ten days with.

We had a meeting today with the teachers who will be teaching Innovations classes over the summer. We’re excited about turning Innovations into a really special course.

The classes are almost full, we have a great new classroom, and the teachers for the summer are all fabulous.