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