Americans sometimes wonder how the obesity epidemic has gotten so out of hand. What are other countries doing right that we are getting so wrong? In two words: portion control. The week before I came to China, I travelled to DC and spent five days hanging out and going to restaurants with friends. It seemed that wherever I went and whoever I saw, getting food with them was so required it was assumed I would…
Today is flight day. Nearly fourteen hours of sky time and the longest I have gone without night in my lifetime (By travelling to China I altogether skip the evening hours). My four hour layover in Newark, New Jersey turned into a five and a half layover which was spent half in fitful sleep and the other half conversing with fellow students in the Beijing Center program. We are all worried about the placement test…
The first time the notion of learning Chinese even entered my head I was sitting inside my high school auditorium listening to an afternoon presentation. It was 8th grade, and the heads of each academic department were giving their hokey, uninspiring but principal-mandated pitch for why we should be excited for high school. One speech finally grabbed my attention: on a projector, the Chinese instructor laid out the ten most spoken languages, starting from ten…