Rough Waters

I might have known that things were going too smoothly :-). This morning our top boss, Lao Shi, arrived at the door of the classroom in distress. I stepped out into the hall to talk to him and found that the building in which we've been all week is now not available beyond Tuesday of next week. No specific reasons given and I will likely never know exactly why. There's money involved, plus construction. He said he thought he had another venue on a different campus of the U. I told him we could and would flex.

After all, this is China. If you have to have it all nailed down, don't come here.

Lunch was in a lovely restaurant with the president of the U. Seating is arranged from the far end of the table forward. The host sits farthest from the door. We instruct the team to let our hosts seat us because we don't know the drill and will be offensive. This is a Luke 14:10 world. Accordingly, we three leaders are seated with the president at the far end, and then the ranks roll out from there. The president is a delightfully gracious man who has deliberately improved his English. In fact one of our team tutored him a few years ago. He is always looking for new partnerships with international universities.

The food was absolutely amazing. It kept coming, each dish better than the last. Many totally new to our palate.

After lunch we leaders set out with Lao Shi in a taxi to the "new venue" only to find that the taxi driver didn't know the way. We saw a great deal of Beijing before we finally arrived, only to find that it simply would not work for our program. There was an excellent large plenary session room but no classrooms available.

Off we went again with Lao Shi's phone stuck to his ear to another campus of the U in a different part of town. This time we struck pay dirt. Good facility, great classrooms, large plenary room, and a willingness to allow us to share their space. This campus is still in session so we'll be rubbing shoulders with art and music students.

The down side is that we'll now need to leave our hotel about 7:30 AM each day and take a 20 minute taxi ride to get to the new campus. That means once we leave the hotel there's no going back to get what you forgot, unlike our current situation where we're a quick five minute walk up the street.

Time will tell if all this works out. Every year we come expecting some change, and every year it happens. This is the primary reason why we've begun to do all the training and orientation here on site rather than back in the USA. If we're all together when the changes happen, and our feet are on the ground, the flexing is a little easier and there's less culture shock.