Pictures!

Should be here: http://picasaweb.google.com/schragoo/Anshan 

I hope.  Goodnight!

And I thought Italian driving was bad...

Monday, January 11, 2010

3:51 PM ANSHAN –

Greetings from the backseat of our special Volkswagon sedan en route back "home" (as Leah so referred to it today) to Beijing.  As I type this we are flying past cars at 180 km/m giving a simple honk as we pass cars to let them know we are coming.  I feel surprisingly safe with William as our driver, but this is very much emblematic of my experiences abroad: Me in the backseat of a car unsure of the traffic codes and/or our destinations. We keep getting our picture taken by speed cameras.  I wave, William ducks.  It's quite fun. 

The past 24 hours has been a whirlwind tour.  We woke up early yesterday, ready for our journey to Anshan.  As soon as Borja arrived, true to form, the first thing he said to us was: "Alright guys, change of plans…"  haha. Apparently, our flight home wasn't booked properly so we audibled and jumped into William's car for the five hour drive.  By the time we get home (late tonight) we will have driven easily over 11 hours, delivered two speeches and eaten four HUGE sit-down meals in a span of 30 hours.  Not bad, eh?

While highlights of the trip included meeting our accountant Victor's sister, our four-star hotel suite, working with Leah until late adapting our speech, and a caramelized potato dish that I am surprised isn't more popular in the US, I think the best way to describe my experience in Anshan is through pictures. So before my battery dies I hope to download and tag most of my pictures from this trip so I can upload them when I get back to the hostel in Beijing. Until the next time, Ganbaei! 

Change of Plans

Saturday, January 9, 2010

10:23 PM – BEIJING

Yes, Beijing!  Some of my more astute readers may observe that Beijing is not the city I should be updating from at this point in our venture. And, yes, they should be correct had not plans change by the minute on this tour.   As Leah and I were eating breakfast yesterday morning we received a text from William and Borja saying that our schools for Saturday and Sunday were going to be cancelled due to a blizzard rolling through the Anshan province. 'What luck!' We both thought as we had been fretting over the amount of material that needed to be changed and the lack of time necessary to make those changes. 'Now we have time to work!'

And then we hit up the Lonely Planet book to figure out what we could do for the day. Did we want to do the Great Wall? What about the Forbidden City? How about trying to find a market? Let's do ALL of that.  Oh, and now that we don't have to work tomorrow, let's go clubbing tonight!  Yes!

We ended up staying in the hostel and catching up on e-mails and such until Borja came and took us to the Temple of Heaven. We spent most of the day walking around in the freezing cold watching the older Chinese men playing cards while the women danced. We watched the old mix with the young in games of hacky sack. We caught up on each others' lives and spoke to each other through opposite ends of long walls.  We froze our butts off and warmed them up in a pearl market where I haggled my first piece of merchandise (a replica Breitling Navigator watch) down from 1000 RMB (Yuan) to 250 RMB (roughly 36 USD).

After deciding I still probably spent too much for it, we went to eat, where we trusted Borja to get us something edible. After a bowl of noodles bigger than our heads and some red-sauced eggplant meal we went back to the market where I picked up a couple of iPod covers (including a Michael Jackson one!) for pretty cheap.  Relative to the US price that is.

After a long day of dancing with older ladies, yelling down walls, and pushing for bargains, we decided that work could wait and that we wanted to go out after a quick nap. So Leah and I got back to our hostel around 6:00pm, set our alarms for 9:00, and put our heads on the pillow.

9:00 Came and went. So did ten. And so on until 1:30 AM when we got a little bit of wind to us and decided to text Borja to find out if any places were still open.  Borja was passed out, too.  Well, I'm fine with sleeping a little more, how about you, Leah? Yup…

Next thing I know is its 6:00am.

I headed down to the "recreation room" (which is just a TV room) where I sat and watched a funny little white guy on the piano and figured out how to upload pictures.  Finally, I was interrupted by a self-proclaimed former Navy Seal from Texas named Wiley who was on the run from the US government. His stories we consistently intriguing, graphic, and for all I know 100% true, but I felt compelled to leave him in order to wait for Leah to wake up. Fortunately, she woke when I entered the room and I greeted her with some of the one-liners I had just heard that would not be gentlemanly of me to reprint here.  Suffice it to say, Wiley did manage to give me some advice on Chinese women.

From then on, Leah and I spent our ENTIRE DAY working on our presentation. We arrived at Bookworms (our fake office) before 9:30am and didn't leave until 6:00 when William picked us up to take us to the printer and then out to dinner where we feasted in a very nice restaurant. Duck, chicken, potatoes, tofu, soup, eggplant, mushrooms, and a handful of other dishes I had no idea what was in them filled the entire table around us.

We ate our fill

And drank some beer

Caught up with Will

And had some cheer!

 

Now the night has come, and the new day brings new travel.  We will still be going to the Anshan province – this time we should be a go. I hate to admit but despite the 12 hours of sleep I had last night, I still feel like I'm a goner as soon as I lay down. And that's exactly what I plan now to do!  I hope you enjoy the pictures and Thank you to Mrs. Schrage's class – we will be working on answering all of your questions as soon as we can!

 

Yao Ming,

Steve

 

Tienanmen Square

Friday, January 8, 2010 

1:00 AM BEIJING - Ni Hao-dee ya'll!  I am writing from my hostel bed in Beijing where I am doing head nods trying to stay awake. We just got back from a dinner meeting with Borja and his wife after having spent the day exploring Tienanmen Square.  If I had two words to describe the square I would use: Quite Large.  Other than that, perhaps due to the lack of history I was privy to, the square itself didn't have as huge an impact on me as the people inside of it.  

The many and varied faces that we saw were mostly all of Asian descent (very few Caucasian) and all seemed to be very friendly and willing to talk to the two of us despite the fact that no one knew more than four words in the other language.  Leah and I regularly joke that we are work boyfriend and girlfriend and when we are on the road outside of our workshops it is never more evident. Especially when people treat us that way - taking our pictures, going out to eat, etc.  It's funny, eh?

Highlights of the day included: 

- A HUGE TV screen in the subway stop close to us that when I walked in had an advertisement featuring Jackie Chan (which made my day). We have decided to include him in our speech.

- ON the subway, when you looked outside, projected onto the walls as you passed were full color advertisements that even though I couldn't read a character were pretty neat and caught my attention.

- The snow on the ground and the thousands of people walking around taking pictures.

- KFC for lunch.  Can't beat fried chicken. Plus, I braved duck skin last night - I think I am entitled to have western food while I still can in the big city.

- The Zhengyangmen Gate - a 600 year old building with all four floors recently opened to the public in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Chinese government.

- 16 million people.  That was the theme for today and the answer to almost every question we had:  Why is the subway so crowded at 2:00?  Why would anyone want to eat dog?  What is with all of these honking horns?!

- The "Bookworm" bookstore / western restaurant where essentially Borja and William post up for meetings (otherwise they work out of their apartments).  They had a large collection of English books to be read at your leisure and provided a very nice/chill atmosphere for us to work on our powerpoint and presentation.

Tomorrow (correction-) TODAY we will be heading to a more rural area where we are going to present speeches Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Tomorrow we embark on the "short" four hour train ride to get there.  I am not sure if the Internet will be readily available but I hope to update when possible.  Also,  I have attached two pictures.  (I do not know if they will upload properly).  The first, of Borja, Leah, myself, and our Club Penguin friend we named "Chip" in our office (aka hostel) this morning.  The second is of me and Chip in front of a big portrait of this guy.  Please note that I am partial to the politics of peace and do not intend to make any political statements by this photo, but rather I was drawn to it's imposing presence in the square and wanted a picture, darnit!    Plus, everyone else was doing it.

Thank you for all of your comments! Thanks to Danny I think they will be sent to my e-mail from now on. We shall see. Lastly, Aunt Chris, do we really have Pittsburgh and Detroit in our blood?  And we dare to dream of becoming "wine attachés" in a European country?  That is a hefty order, zia. Madonna mia. Ciao ciao!

They are watching...

Thursday, January 7, 2010 – 2:48 A.M. CST (Local) – BEIJING

Hi again!  It is now quarter to 3 A.M. local time here in Beijing and I can't sleep!  I managed to get about four hours in so far but I thought I would try and update real quick.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to respond to many (or any) comments because they have many blogging sites blocked - but I should still be able to post.  Just don't tell anyone.

Alright I have no idea where to begin so I am just going to plunge in.  Our colleagues William and Borja were waiting with smiling faces after we went through customs yesterday which was probably the best feeling of the trip so far. Leah and I weren't entirely sure they knew which flight we were on and we hadn't officially confirmed they were going to pick us up. Needless to say we were a little apprehensive. After formulating several gameplans in the event they weren't there, it was a relief to know we weren't going to have to implement them.  It was also a great relief to talk to Borja who is taking the driver's seat for our tour and essentially hosting Leah and me for the next three weeks. 

A little bit about Borja.  I met Borja several months back during our We Day bonanza (that's a good word to describe it right now).  We were able to hang out a little and he explained to me a little bit about his life.  Born in Spain, raised in Holland, has lived in China for just about 5 years now (he is 25) and is recently married to a girl of Chinese/Korean (I think) decent.  I hope to meet her soon.  Borja's Chinese is surprisingly good – though he is modest about it – and is a very REAL person.  The two hours we spent with him earlier this evening has given us a greater perspective of the task at hand then the past four months.  It is also nice to know that he has a fantastic grasp of the situation and presents it to us in a very blunt and unassuming manner.  Leah and I both work best when things are not sugar-coated for us.

What we NOW know:  We have 10 schools booked!  Borja has been able to secure several more speaking engagements INCLUDING three in a city where William and our accountant Victor are from in Northeastern China.  The name of the city escapes me but apparently they make a lot of steel there so in my mind I have already likened it to Pittsburgh – a city I have never visited but have somehow managed to form a memory of.  Funny how that works.   Maybe it's transferred like a memory from the pensieve in Harry Potter.  I digress…

I think the biggest challenge at this point is going to be introducing these children to a concept that is very foreign to them: thinking on their own.  Borja explained the schools here as very disciplined no-nonsense environments that are very mechanical and deliberate with their curriculum. That way of learning is very much in contrast to the message our organization and workshops attempt to foster, though I would also argue the two methods to be complimentary.  A steady regiment of both deliberate and freeform education, I believe, promotes disciplined creativity which can be beneficial to all professions.  Mostly Borja is just excited to have us here – as a pretext for engaging schools that were not previously committed to fundraising for FTC.  The three of us will be going to schools in Hong Kong (a place none of us have been) and most likely will be presenting a brief summary of our involvement in China to employees at the Disneyland offices for Club Penguin – as a way for them to better understand the philanthropic undertakings of their corporation.   

Lastly, Big Brother is watching.  Everywhere.  And just like a sibling, interferes with everyday life.  I haven't been here for that long but government involvement in everyday life is VERY apparent.  From the minute we walked out of the airport and saw hundreds of people shoveling the streets to get rid of the snow to walking into the hostel and staring at a machine that reads your body temperature and alerts an authority if you have a fever (remnants, Borja said, of the Bird Flu that raised alarm several years ago).   It is also very evident in regards to the internet.  The Chinese proxy doesn't allow for facebook, youtube, blogger, etc.  It also didn't allow me to view anything from CNN.  It is a strange feeling waiting for a website to load knowing that either a person or a machine is deciding whether or not I should be allowed to view the page I am trying to access. Also,  as I have just experienced, I must be careful about what I say- apparently using the terms "freedom" and "American Hero" (two very commonly used expressions in my personal everyday chats) will lose you g-chat and g-mail privileges. I hope they let me back on so I can send this out!

Until the next time, friends!

Steve

Plane to China: Take 2

Tuesday, January 05, 2010 - 8:24 PM EST

SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC – Hello again. As with my previous flight I am starting to write you just before the halfway point.   This time we are high above the Pacific and I feel like I have exhausted and/or dismissed all of the options available to me on my AirCanada TV in front of me. Am I worried?  Absolutely not.  I have my book to read, I have you to write to, and thanks to my dad's generous donation of his iPod (and with the help of some friends) I have been able to bring my entire music library, which is enough to keep me going for about 40 days.

Currently, I am jamming to Atanas Illitch's album "Conscious of the City" with the title track playing.  I am certain most of you are unfamiliar with this CD and that, I must admit, saddens me.   It was an album often played in the Schrage household when I was younger and reminds me of warm summer days with my dad cutting the grass wearing short shorts and a Coca-Cola tee.  Albums like these reinforce my desire to build an extensive music collection – and make me feel less guilty about spending a quarter of a paycheck on music and movies at HMV (that's another story). 

Previously, I passed my time watching the movie "500 Days of Summer" which, as several of my friends predicted, I very much enjoyed. I also, on recommendation of my brother Billy, listened to U2's album "The Joshua Tree" all the way through.  Well, I slept through most of it but it was just what the doctor ordered.  Thanks bro.

Despite mentioning that I have dismissed all of the options available to me on ACTV, I am actually very pleased with the selection of movies available to me.  Several interest me, including "The Dark Knight", "Gran Torino", and the latest Harry Potter – all of which I have already seen. The remaining few are light comedies that I am just not feeling right now.  Hah.  You know it's a long flight when I have time to write out an entire conversation I am having in my head.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other things to discuss.  Combining my previous notions of the Chinese and the many varied warnings I have received about their culture I find them all to ring predictably true.  Already, I have experienced the forewarned "hawking of a loogie" in the urinal at the airport, and currently a man is standing up and staring directly at me – as he has been for the past 10 minutes or so and has done several times already during the flight.  Leah tells me to get used to it.  Leah has been blissfully excited by the quantity of "cute little Asian babies" running around the plane.  I must admit, I find their stares much more tolerable than those of their senior counterparts.

Alright, I think that is good for now.  I anticipate many more unusual cultural quirks in the coming days and can't wait to share them with you!

OH! Also!  A big shout out to my buddy Nick Frat who had the foresight and initiative to call me while I was waiting in the Vancouver airport to report the good news that the magnificent university in Ann Arbor has picked a successor to the Athletic Director Bill Martin in David Brandon – former CEO of Dominos Pizza.  I am excited and optimistic for the future of Wolverine sports and can't wait to see what Mr. Brandon has in store! 

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!

We Day Madness!

Hello friends and family!

It has been a very long time since I have written and there is so much new to say that I am just going to quickly spew some verbal vomit all over this page in hopes that you can pick some of it up. After that disgusting metaphor… here goes…

I have my tour! My tour is called "Think We!" and it is sponsored by Disney's Club Penguin – which is a safe online environment for elementary school kids. It features penguin characters and moderators so that children are not subject to inappropriate content. My tour partner's name is Leah and she and I have spent the past month and a half or so gathering information and putting together our hour-long keynote address to be delivered to our main audience of elementary school children. It has been a considerably difficult task for myself as I have not been in a disciplined elementary school atmosphere for quite some time and I am learning to re-familiarize myself with school rules as well as re-learn how to deliver a presentation to a younger audience. Although it has been challenging, I definitely have found it rewarding and I am excited to put it to use at our first scheduled gig shortly after our second "We Day".

For those of you who don't know what a "We Day" is, it is essentially an event that Free the Children puts on to help inspire youth to commit themselves to acts of social justice throughout the coming school year. I just arrived back in Toronto from a trip to Vancouver where we held our first of three We Days. In attendance (and on the stage) at the Vancouver We Day was: His Holiness The Dali Lama (Big hit, the Lama), Sarah McLachlan , Jane Goodall, Mia Farrow, K'Naan, and Jason Mraz, along with my roommate Spencer West and several other Free the Children speakers.

We are putting on our second We Day here in Toronto on Monday and we are expecting a crowd of about 16,000 youth who get to MISS SCHOOL and come to participate in this pretty hip event. While the lineup in Toronto isn't AS incredible as that of Vancouver, it is still pretty impressive: Robert Kennedy Junior, the cast of Degrassi, Elie Wiesel, and Justin Bieber are among the list of presenters.

It has been pretty hectic around the office for the past couple of weeks as the majority of our staff has committed much of their time to putting these events on. I was assigned to the "Honoured Guests" team in Vancouver and was responsible for entertaining some of the presenting sponsors of the event including entrepreneur and We Day Chair Lorne Segal and some of his very influential friends from all over the world including Texas and … Italy! I was able to practice my Italian with some of them! It was great. In my suite as well were representatives from the Brooke Wade Foundation (including Mr. Wade himself) and from Environmental Packaging Technologies. I even got to meet the Mayor of Vancouver who will be in office for THE OLYMPICS! Heyooo!

In Toronto I'll be on the Seating, Parking and Transportation team where it will be my responsibility to help direct 300+ school buses and students into the Air Canada Centre all before our 9:00 start time. We have acquired the help of about 600 volunteers spread throughout the building and my tour partner Leah has the unenviable job of coordinating and organizing where they belong. This weekend for me will be spent mostly at the venue where I'll be organizing our group of volunteers and arranging where they belong and then helping out where I am needed – other teams will definitely be needing assistance in preparation for our ONE load in day on Sunday.

This whole production has been incredibly educational to be a part of. Despite our job descriptions ranging from website design to tour speaking to marketing, we have all shifted roles to help put on this incredible "rock concert" for social change along with over 20 other celebratory events and dinners scheduled throughout the several days. Despite the average age of our office being about 24 years old, we have managed to carry out this event with impressive professionalism. Of course there have been some minor hiccups (The Dalai Lama arrived a half hour early and wanted to speak longer, registration table issues, curtains falling minutes before an event, etc.) and many stressful moments, much of the finished product has come across smooth and polished. It has been exciting to be a part of and (knock on wood) I hope Toronto's We Day goes as smooth as Vancouver's.

In other news, I have had some time to see a good deal of Toronto on the weekends – I met K'Naan one weekend, I went to the Canadian National Exhibition and saw Pitbull with a friend from U of M, I was introduced to the Canadian rock band Blue Rodeo and attended one of their concerts, and every weekend I have been to the Sports Centre Café to watch college football (GO BLUE!) and the Tigers and now HOCKEY when I get a chance. Wings play today in Sweden!!

I am root root rooting for the Tigers… if they don't win the division it's a shame. And I hope to come back home to Michigan next weekend as it is Canadian Thanksgiving and I'll have a four day weekend! I need to connect with Leah though and we need to figure out what our schedule is like so that we are prepared enough to go on the road as soon as I get back.

Lastly, Leah and I intend to blog often throughout our tour and perhaps create another blog specifically for our tour experiences. We are very excited about the opportunity for travel that this tour presents to us and know that we are going to meet very interesting and exciting people all over the world. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope write soon about the success of our second We Day!