The long awaited moment has arrived -- placement!!!!!!!! I finally know which city I'll be in and what school I'll be teaching at: Nanchang in the Jiangxi province at the East China Institute of Technology.
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| Nanchang, here we come! |
Nanchang is a small town of 4 million people, about 1.5 million of which are students at the various universities. It's located in Southeast China, between mountains (I knew I was not destined to live in flat plains all my life) and China's largest freshwater lake, called Puyong Hu. The closest really big cities are Hong Kong and Shanghai, but Nanchang is considered enough of a city that it is home to numerous industrial and textile factories. It even has a Wal-mart, so you know it must be a bastion of civilization.
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| I suppose small is relative... |
Nanchang was also the birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party, so the opportunities for truly learning Chinese history and culture will be abundant!!! There are many memorials throughout the city and many university students eventually join the Party because of the guanxi (networking) it provides, so it will be an up close and personal look at how the Party works and what its future looks like.
It is 13 hrs ahead of Tulsa time, but later it will only be 12 hrs. because they don't do daylight savings. If you would like to know exactly what time it is along with the temperature, dialing codes, and a sundry of other random things, you can go to http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=566.
I will be teaching at the East China Institute of Technology, which means my students will be predominantly boys and predominantly engineers, math majors, and economists. Thank goodness I'm taking macro and micro economics this summer or we'd have nothing to talk about! My team consists of another girl and two boys and then our female team leader, so I'm sure you'll be seeing plenty of pictures of them. Our apartment is only about 5 minutes walk from the school, but it's on the 4th floor, so I'll have a built-in stairmaster.
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| Is this an institute of higher learning or a hotel? |
That's about all on the new information. I'll be sure and update you as I find out about it. For now, though, I'm off to figure out how to pack for a year and extreme weather conditions with only 2 suitcases and a 50lb weight limit. Fortunately, what is impossible for me is possible for Dad... and there's always Wal-mart (proof that he works in mysterious ways).
Supertourist over and out.
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