Walking in Beijing

Greetings from Beijing! All's well here; we have limited internet connectivity, apologies for my delay in sharing news. It's been a great first couple of weeks!

"swine flu = really big deal in China"
We as Americans are a concern, so for the first seven days we were in dorms secluded and taking our temperature each day. We all worked to have a good attitude about it and in the end I think we did. It was good in that we had a solid week of uninterrupted training and bonding; there is a great deal in the trainings and we had, well, ample time for focused training! No distractions like the outside world! It has sincerely been very cool to meet all these people from around the US, each one with an amazing story of how & why they came to China for the summer. It's wonderful to have Britt and Chan from back home here on the team too, they are a joy to be around. There is a gentleman on our team who is really quite good, leading us as a group in many things, he is a DTS alum

"of COURSE you're not even in China for a week and you're already teaching swing dance"
One night, June 26, we were practicing 'American dances' that are popular among students in the program, you know the classics like Chicken Dance, YMCA, Cotton Eye Joe etc ;). Naturally at some point we were goofing around, one thing led to another and I taught about an hour of the basics of 6 count swing. :-o

"There's a city outside our dorms!"
Now that we are out of confinement we've mixed touring with prepping the campus. Couple of days ago we saw the Great Wall, it is remarkably impressive! To celebrate the 4th we went to an American restaurant - TGI Friday's! Today Sunday we're going to church at Haidian Church and then to the Silk Market for "retail therapy".. looking forward to seeing it after hearing so much about it.

"The real purpose"
Students arrive July 7 for "TIP" which is Total Immersion Program - all English and only English for 20 days. We are in the final throes of preparation, reviewing lesson plans and prepping materials. I've been assigned leading daily warm ups, vocal exercises and diction, including tongue twisters; a perfect fit for my background and training from theatre days! The whole program is shaping up to be fun and definitely reminds me of summer camp!

Feel free to send me email via gmail to keep in touch, or I'll read comments here when I'm back in August.
Happy 4th!!

~lg