Huazhong University Student Radio Program

Hi Bill,
I understand you may be traveling at this time, but I wanted to share a video I made. One of the highlights of my experience was an interview I did at the Huazhong University student radio program on my last day in China. It's a 17 minute slideshow & interview of my experiences traveling and teaching. The image quality is low to keep the file size down. I hope you enjoy it.

Click here to see my video.

Also ...

I wanted to share this short article I wrote about my experiences in China with TFF. Below is a link to the quarterly newsletter of the Colorado Chapter of the American Planning Association, see pages 8 & 9. It went out to about 400 urban planners here in Colorado. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Click here for the article.

Take care,

Daniel Murray
Master of Urban and Regional Planning, Candidate
University of Colorado Denver

I loved, loved, loved the experience!

Hi Bill,

I wanted to let you know I'm back from Wuhan and had the time of my life. Thank you for selecting me as a representative of TFF. I loved, loved, loved the experience! Saying good-bye to my students was extremely difficult. We had so much fun together in class. Thanks again for organizing the foundation and making it all happen.

BR

... what an extraordinary experience ...

Hi Bill,

I arrived home late last night so dealing with the jet lag....anyhow, before I jump back into work and other matters just wanted to let you know what an extraordinary experience it was at Wuhan and other places too! The students were so friendly and went along with all the class activities. They are very bright and some of them really have a sense of humor! I will miss each and every one of them. My teaching assistant was a doll....very efficient and willing to help me with anything I needed. I hope I can maintain some e-mail connections soon...after I get back to some semblance of a routine.

Also, need to mention my TFF colleagues....what a collegial bunch! So helpful and friendly!
The support meetings to discuss activities and lesson plans that were held during the summer were invaluable.

I appreciated that during the TFF orientation meetings, you and others were blunt and forthright about what we would experience ("You will work very hard") and your mantras "Be flexible and patient", "Expect the unexpected" were phrases that rang true and really helped to put this first time experience in perspective. With this, there were no surprises as you and others pretty well put it all out on the table.

Finally, the pre-tour was enough to get a very tiny taste of China. Going to a remote part of the Great Wall was truly a spiritual experience. From the students, I got some recommendations for classical texts that were mandatory so China will be with me for quite awhile.

Thank you for this opportunity!

Sincerely,
LT

It is a pleasure to be here

Hi Bill,

All is well at HUST this year. The group of teachers this year is cooperative, fun, caring, sharing, etc. It is a pleasure to be here.  The admin. appears to be appreciative. We got money on the first and second Wednesdays. They had a school bus and 2 TA's take us on a city tour. Bill sent the following to our siblings and sons last week.
R

Yesterday was the end of our first week of teaching. Our students are new PhD candidates. They have a wide range in age from mid twenties to 40's. Some have been out working for many years and are going back to school to get a PhD. Many are married and have a child. One of my students has not started because she was busy giving birth to a child. Many of the students' spoken English is actually quite good but they have great difficulty understanding spoken English either from teacher or fellow students speaking. We teach from 8:30 to 5:40 daily except Thursday from 2:30pm to 10:10 pm. We each have 4 classes of 18 to 25 students. The students have two 1.5 hour English classes each day with two different teachers. During the 4 days we had before classes started we walked much of the campus. It is quite large (4 miles long by 2 miles wide). The largest lake in Wuhan has a small extension which extends into the campus. From my classrooms, there is a nice view of the lake and the forest surrounding it. The large open air market on campus has several tailors. We both arranged to have some clothes made with one of the tailors. The attached pictures are of the classroom complex where we teach. It has space for 20,000 students so it is a very busy place. It is one of many large classroom complexes on the campus. Friday was teacher day in China and two of Rosemary's classes bought her elaborate flower pieces. One of mine gave me a red carnation.

We finished today at 5:40 pm and then went out to dinner with our teaching assistants. They took us out for teachers day. Had a feast. After the feast we went with them to see their dormitory rooms. They had to get permission from the manager to bring us up to their rooms. 3 or 4 students per room. Cold showers down the hall. No hot water, air conditioning or heat but otherwise nice if small rooms. We have a 3 day weekend this week because Monday is a holiday for the mid autumn festival. Plenty of time to rest up. -- *B & R*

... tell you what a great time ...

Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:38:58 -0700

Bill,

P and I wanted to drop you a quick line and tell you what a great time we had. It was hard to say who learned more the teachers or the students. Thank you for what for us will always be remembered as an opportunity of a lifetime. We are talking about returning to Wuhan with TFF. Hope to see you when we return to Tucson. Thanks Again.

J & P

This year's experience in Wuhan was the best ever.

Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:34:34 -0700

Dear Bill,

This year's experience in Wuhan was the best ever. We felt really comfortable with our teaching model and saw the students develop a great deal of confidence over the three week period. We added lots of singing and physical activities. And we were very surprised at how much the Chinese students liked the exercise-type energizers at the beginning of class each day.

N's TA was astonishingly good - so dedicated and responsible. We really bonded right away and now feel we've got a friend for life in him.
H will be sending you more photos and videos. We hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed being there to take them.

Our colleagues were all very interesting people in their own right. And it was nice sharing the experience with them as well.

We know you have certain priorities for the TFF program. But we would love to be considered again for next year's session as well -- or any of the other interesting programs that you know about.

Wishing you the best,

N and H