1

Ecuador, attempting to prove that it's indistinguishable from Costa Rica, tricks a tour group thinking they've gone to Costa Rica into believing that they were going to Costa Rica when in fact, they were taken to a part of Ecuador that was, apparently, indistinguishable from Costa Rica.

I'm really not kidding:

As Ecuador residents arrived, not in Costa Rica but another Ecuador airport, Tena, where they were given fake stamps in their passports as they went through a staged passport control. No attention to detail was spared as huge posters were placed over the welcome billboards at the airport. Adverts depicting Imperial beer and 'Esencial Costa Rica,' Costa Rica's national brand, were displayed in the airport to throw the group off the scent.

Even fictitious immigration documents and car licence plates were created to make the group think they were in Golfito, a port town in Costa Rica. On top of all that organisers used mobile phone and GPS blockers to keep passengers from using technology to discover the hoax. (...)

2

In more serious airline news, the Congressional Research Service, a policy-analysis agency within the Library of Congress, released a 20-page report titled Terrorist Databases and the No Fly List: Procedural Due Process and Hurdles to Litigation. Footnote 41 (of 201!) reads:

Prior to 9/11, aviation security was handled by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA ordered air carriers not to board certain individuals who were deemed a threat to aviation safety. On 9/11, this "no fly" list contained 12 names.

Somehow, I guess I assumed that there were more than twelve people on the no-fly before 2001. But then again, in hindsight,

For the next ten days, I'll be in Beijing, China (specifically "The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China", I kid you not...) as a part of HSYLC, the (Harvard Association for US-China Relations) Summit for Young Leaders in China. Yeah, it's a mouthful.

More specifically, I'm here to teach math. I'll be teaching 3day*1.5hour seminars to four groups of 10-15 gifted students from high schools around China. In addition to that, I'll hold office hours, run a workshop on applying to college in the US, and lead extracurricular activities. (Mine will very likely be something dance-related.)

If you're curious about my actual curriculum, then rest assured that I'll write about it...later. Today's post is just a series of travel-journal snapshots from the past day-and-a-half-long day. Tomorrow, we begin checking in students, and on Thursday, we'll actually start classes. Until then, I'm adapting to life in a country where I literally can't communicate with most of the population... (On the bright side, they have air conditioning here, which couldn't be said of Cambridge.)

11-12 August

(1) JFK Airport

I walk up to the cash exchange. "Three hundred Chinese." The teller is bored half to death. "Three hundred dollar to Chinese?" "No, three hundred renminbi." I slide a credit card through the cash slit. "Cash only." Of course. "How much?" Sixty-six. Which is a problem, because I think I only have...sixty-nine. Okay.

There's still time to kill. Shopping list: power adapter, money belt, pepto-bismol. The store clerk tries to give me an all-in-one power adapter; I return it to the shelf in favor of