Finally at our Sister School!
Hello from China!
Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to write. Mrs. Ekstrom, please let your children know that on Tuesday I will be teaching a class and sharing their great cards and drawings with those students. Right now I am housed at the Primary school (grades k-4), but later this week I will be visiting the Middle School and will be giving the cards to those students. I’ve already been told that communication between our classes is both wanted and possible. More on that later.
My journey so far has been fantastic! We flew into Beijing (24 hours of travel) on Tuesday/Wednesday of this past week. Unfortunately, the computer I brought along did not work with their internet connections and I was not able to write to you until now (Sunday evening). There is exactly 12 hours difference between us (so right now it is 9:45 PM for me, and 9:45 AM for you on Easter Sunday). We have been visiting many historic sites and even ate one evening with a Chinese family in their kitchen. The food is wonderful and using chop sticks is getting easier and easier!
Today I had a 5 hour train ride from Beijing to Jinan. Shandong Province is China’s “bread basket” and all along the way we saw farm after farm. The Chinese love their veggies and much of the land is given to growing them.
Since I just got to the school this evening I have not had an opportunity to see if I can upload pictures to this site using the school computer. If I can, my next communications will include pictures of the school and sites I’ve visited earlier this week. Tomorrow morning I get to address the students for the first time. There are 1,400 students in grades k-4 at this school. That should be interesting!
Please check back each day as I will be at the school until Friday morning when we head back north to the capital and plan on posting now on a regular basis.
Have a wonderful vacation!
Mr. Lazaroff
April 17, 2006 @ 12:03 am
Ed,
Just in case you have trouble uploading pictures to the weblog, here’s an alternative method. Go to http://flickr.com and open an account ( a basic account is free.) If you have a photo you want to add to this site,
1. Upload it to flickr as a public file
2. Click on the photo and then click on “all sizes.”
3. Click on the small or medium size designation
4. Copy the photo address where it says “grab this photo’s URL.
5, Go to your post and insert a photo using the little button with the picture on it. Where it asks for the photo’s address, just paste in the address you copied from flickr in step 4.
It sounds complicated, but it’s really simple once you do the first one. I find this is the easiest way to post my own photo’s. If you try to upload them directly to the blog, sometimes you will get an error message to the effect of “file too large.”
Good luck.