Plane to Vancouver/China

Tuesday January 5, 2010

9:30 AM EST EN ROUTE - Hello web world! Greetings again from 36000 feet in the air over middle of nowhere Canada!

I am currently en route to Beijing by way of Vancouver and am just under half the way through my first flight of 5 hours. In Vancouver I will be boarding a plane that Leah and I, after twenty minutes of calculating, estimate to be about 10 hours long. Not too bad. All in all we should be spending over 25 hours in transit and will be arriving around 4:00 PM in Beijing, 1:00: AM Toronto time.

That is if my calculations are correct, which, at this stage, I would hesitate to bet even a pencil from the pencil machine in Mr. Ancypa’s office on.

Thus far I have been jamming to the XM Country channel (awesome), and grazing a book recommended to me by my friend Jason called “Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell” – a thousand page fantasy novel about magicians in early 19^th century England – which has managed to grab my attention fifty pages in, makes me feel good about bringing such a lunk of a book with me to a different continent!

In other news, I AM GOING TO CHINA, and I have no idea what to expect or what to do or say when I get there! We are being greeted by two in-country representatives from Free the Children and will be staying in a hostel recommended by the Lonely Planet travel guide. I am excited. Those of you who spent some time up north with me the past couple of weeks will know that I have been attempting to learn a few phrases in Mandarin to help me once I land. I am sure it will come to no surprise to any of you that when I tried them out with my Chinese roommate Xin, the blank stare I received back reminded me of a student being called upon to answer a question about a book that he never read. Fortunately, after I translated back into English what I was trying to get across she kindly helped me with my intonation and even taught me a few more, which, at the moment seem to escape me. Oh well, Bu shi – right Uncle Marty?

Now, perhaps to the most pressing question on your mind, what the heck am I doing in China?? The short answer, “speaking to elementary school kids” doesn’t seem to cut it for most people. As some of you may know, my speaking tour called “Think We” is sponsored by Disney’s Club Penguin. As a way for them to further their already generous philanthropic contributions in the countries they operate, they have decided to add a speaking tour to travel to English speaking schools in these countries in efforts to engage the youth through active and charitable lifestyles. That is where Leah and I come in.

To be honest, we have no idea what to expect. We are going to schools with “a high level of English” but Leah and I are preparing for a loose interpretation of that statement and are in the process of slowing down and making clearer our current presentation.

Thus far, we have five schools confirmed, and will be in the country for 25 days (returning the 30^th). We expect to have additional schools confirm while we are there and potentially could see up to 12! That has been the nature of our tour so far – finding out sometimes merely days prior to an engagement – and fortunately is also what we have been preparing for since September. It also leaves us with the opportunity to do some sightseeing - an activity which Leah has more experience than me and which we both eagerly anticipate.

I think I will end it here and attempt to write some e-mails that I need to catch up with. Maybe I will pick this up again on the longer flight, maybe I won’t. Either way, you won’t see this at least until I touch down in Beijing! Zài Jiàn!