I leave for LA early this Saturday morning (the 22nd), to go see the city for 2 days with Dave and Jon, then Sunday night is the LOST series finale, at the Orpheum LA!:
http://globalcashcard.com/lost/
My plane then leaves LA for Guangzhou (GZ) early Monday morning, due to land the afternoon of Tuesday the 25th. The plan so far is to hang out at SYSU (Sun Yat-Sen University, the hosting Local Chapter, or LC), get my bearings, and snap out of jet lag until I start teaching Wed., June 27. My teaching contract lasts until August 27, and I plan on flying straight home after that.
Some of you have been asking, "but Dan, what group are you going with in the first place? Where are you teaching? How did you get connected to China?"
Well, those are great questions, and I apologize for not answering them sooner. I am going with a student group, AIESEC:
http://www.aiesecus.org/
Which is apparently the world's largest student group. A friend mentioned to me his plans for teaching English in China, invited me to an info. session, and I applied for an internship abroad. AIESEC Minneapolis is the LC that is sending me, and AIESEC SYSU:
http://www.sysu.edu.cn/en/index.html
is the receiving LC. There are about 30 other total college foreign-exchange students in Guangzhou this summer, teaching English; most are from the U.S., and most of those seem to be from southern California (no one else from MN though!).
I am teaching at Bart Foreign Language Training Center:
http://www.bartlanguage.com/index.asp
As far as I know, I am the only AIESECer teaching at Bart. The others are teaching at (a) different school(s). The age range of my prospective students is 5-18. My manager at the school tells me that the school devises my lesson plan, and that my job is mostly office hours, with some classroom time. It also looks like I'll be doing a fair amount of teaching (both English language and American culture) through games and songs. It sounds pretty sweet (and challenging) to me!
I will be living in an apartment, very near (if not in the same building as) the school, and about a block away from the nearest transit station.
Here's a cool video about Guangzhou:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhRQnaCqmBA