I have just returned home to St. Louis after a challenging semester of schoolwork and an extremely exciting rowing season. Last week I traveled to Sacramento and spent the weekend racing division I collegiate teams from all over the country in the NCAA championship regatta. Three full days of racing later and I was totally exhausted. It wasn’t until I flew home yesterday that I have finally had the opportunity to properly consider the adventure I am undertaking this summer.

While there are many things running through my mind while I day dream about our trip to Jishou I am most excited to experience China from a perspective that extends further than the typical tourist’s travels. The PiA group gets to become a part of the Jishou community and contribute as teachers and representatives of American culture. I can’t wait to become connected to my students and my PiA group. I wonder what everyone I meet will be like. Will they like me as a teacher?

I am also very excited to explore the tastes, sounds, and smells of Jishou. I have been to China before but as a tourists and I have never visited Hunan. Based on previous PiAers experiences I am confident that I will find Jishou’s spicy dishes satisfying and exciting.
Although my rowing season conflicted with a few of the trip’s preparation sessions I found the TEFL weekend and orientation very helpful. I am a little nervous about traveling and immersing myself in a culture quite different from my own but the TEFL and orientation sessions gave me confidence in my teaching abilities. When I finally had the chance to observe an ESL course I made great strides in my understanding of student teacher relationship and the importance of student based learning. My observation experience was so enjoyable I think I would like to volunteer at Princeton’s YMCA ESL program when I return in the fall.

This summer in China I hope to break through my spicy food threshold and become acquainted with Jishou’s athletic facilities, even if that only consists of my running shoes. I hope to grow close with my fellow PiA teachers and reach out to my students. I hope to learn even more from my students than I attempt to teach them. Most of all I hope to become a contributing part of the Jishou community and continue in carrying out PiA’s mission and further developing PiA’s summer of service program.

Spicy food all around!
Emily

I arrived in Auckland over a week ago and I still have not unpacked. That certainly does not reflect my work ethic; it just shows that coming back to my home country after 9 months of absence creates a long list of people who I need to catch up with. Every single day this past week has entailed me having to treat everyone to either lunch or dinner (sometimes both), not really giving me time to think about one of the greatest opportunities I have received in my life – teaching minority students in China for 8 weeks.

Now that everything has (kind of) settled down, I can finally focus on the tasks ahead for the rest of my Summer. Before I leave for Asia, I need to get a head start on my Japanese and Chinese language studies, establish the foundations for the Sustainability Ambassador Program at Princeton and learn how to cook traditional Chinese food so I do not starve in Junior year. The excitement that boils in me when I think about Jishou is indescribable. Although all of my other tasks for the Summer are enjoyable, none of them can even begin to be compared with the new experiences and learning that I will encounter in this Princeton in Asia program.

I have always been interested in teaching, and I am planning to complete the teaching prep certificate at Princeton. This opportunity will give me the in-class experience to reaffirm my decision to become a teacher (at least for a while anyways). Ultimately, I want to work in education policy but I feel that to be able to reform the education system, one must have classroom experience. The international perspective gained from this program will definitely help me to think of innovative ways to teach and understand cultural gaps that need to be bridged.

I worked as a tutor at an education consulting agency right after I graduated high school. The highest number of people in my “class” was 4. In Jishou, I hear it will be 40. This change in numbers will definitely pose a challenge – in terms of getting every single student to contribute to the discussion and leaving no one feeling left out. The fact that they are not fluent in English present the most obvious problem – communication. I have also heard that because I can speak a little bit of Mandarin, I will possibly be allocated to teach the lowest level English speakers. Right now, I cannot imagine what the classroom situation will be like – will I be teaching the students English or will they be teaching me Mandarin?

TEFL training really opened my eyes on how the style of teaching really matters in the classroom. Coming from a bi-cultural education system, I saw how each one differed and how each one had their own strengths and weaknesses. TEFL, on the other hand, showed me something completely different. The teaching style was not content-based, but student-orientated. Everything came back to the student and the techniques it uses seem very logical and well-thought out and I wondered why it wasn’t used in every classroom. I find that TEFL is the first stepping stone on the path of becoming a great teacher; it creates a strong foundation and leaves plenty of room for development.

So, I really look forward to teaching in Jishou. But of course, that’s not the only thing I am looking forward to. The food, the people, the culture, the scenery, the basketball, the ping pong, the 8-ball pool, the spicyness and the communal feeling I remember I had in the brief time I was in China at the beginning of my life. On the trip, I will be the group’s unofficial photographer and capture plenty of priceless moments to share with all my friends and also the rest of Princeton.

I’m counting the days until I arrive in Pudong Airport, Shanghai.

As the Chinese say – 下次再说吧。。。

Victor.

Eleven days ago, I officially concluded my sophomore year at Princeton by turning in my last take-home exam for my engineering dynamics class. It wasn’t until that evening that the notion that I would be spending 8 weeks in Asia really started to register. Throughout my considerably busy spring semester, I felt as though I had gotten to the point of simply going through the motions, trying to get everything done without truly processing what I was doing or why. For the first time in quite a while, I was able to start to wrap my head around the idea that in five weeks and five days, I would be on the other side of the world.

Needless to say, I am animated for Asia! I have always had a passion for language studies. But as a girl who spends most of her time in engineering lectures or buried in problem sets and lab work, my humanities interests often fall by the wayside. I cannot wait for a summer devoted to language and culture, an opportunity I would never truly be able to experience inside the bubble of the Engineering Quadrangle.

My excitement surely was heightened by the TEFL course. From learning how to teach grammar, vocabulary and punctuation to determining the value of assessments; I now feel much more capable of not only handling a classroom environment but also of evaluating my performance and determining ways in which to improve.

TEFL also happened to make me much more aware of some of the difficulties that I might experience in Asia. I am a fairly organized person who likes to plan. However, often, things will not go according to plan, and I will have to shift to a contingency plan or another lesson altogether; a transition that I foresee being a challenge for me. I am also newly concerned about making sure that my students both understand me and get what I want them to get out of my lesson plan. Through TEFL, we practiced writing specific and attainable objectives, but my real concern is that my students may meet the objectives but not really retain the information or be able to practice it outside of the context of the lesson.

Orientation made realize what I might expect to experience culturally in Asia, and I must say, it made me both joyful and jittery for Jishou. I am excited to see, taste, touch, and smell new things; but I am concerned about some of the interpersonal relationships that I will be developing and working on. I hope to bond with my fellow SoSers as well as my students, and I hope to both teach them and learn from them. But I also know that I need some “Emma time” once in a while, and I hope that I will be able to balance that.

As I was lying in bed eleven nights ago, I thought about how truly fortunate I am. I feel lucky to have been accepted to participate in this experience. I feel honored to be entrusted with the weighty task of teaching. And I feel blessed to be traveling with such an extraordinary group of students who are kind, passionate, and inspiring.

Most of my summers have been spent in the safe confines of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Suffice to say, I expect this to be the most incredible summer I’ve ever had!

Peace for now,
Emma

I am, for lack of a better term, completely psyched to be heading off to China this summer. I’ve never been to Asia and I can’t wait to experience such a radically different culture. I’m really looking forward to the minute difference as opposed to the larger expected ones. I’ve heard for instance, that there isn’t much in terms of cheese in China. It’s the tiny things like these that are going to make this trip exciting for me.

I also can’t wait to be an English teacher and share my culture with my students, as that is the real point of this trip. I’ve taught swimming before but I’ve never done anything quite like this. With swimming, it was easy to measure a student’s ability. Either they could do the breaststroke or they couldn’t. And if they were hesitant or scared to start, I could just push them in the water and say “it’s do or die” (don’t worry- no one ever died). Teaching English will be completely different. Can you really ever measure someone’s competence in a language? Does there exist a “do or die” scenario for learning English and how can I use it? These are questions I hope to solve while I evolve as a teacher.

There are a few things that I’m apprehensive about in this trip. At the same time, I’m excited for these aspects because if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing in character. First off, the heat and humidity. As Chris mentioned, I’m from Wisconsin. For those of you who haven’t been to Wisconsin, it’s a veritable paradise. Perfect climate, perfect environment: Wisconsin has it all. SoS alums have made mention of times in Jishou when it was 110 degrees with 100% humidity. Suffice to say, that does not bode well for me.

Additionally, earthquakes. I’ve never been in one and I’d like to keep it that way. Throw me a flood or a tornado and I’m fine, but with an earthquake I’m not so sure. Fortunately, PiA seems capable of handling natural disasters so I’m not too worried.

My last more serious concern is that I won’t be able to impart as much to my students as I want to in 6 weeks. That’s a pretty short timeframe in which to teach English. However, TEFL did an excellent job of preparing us and I think if I go in with the realization that my students might not be fluent by the end of my time with them, I’ll be able to more positively focus on the progress that they do make.

So, while I will continue to make the most of my time home in Wisconsin, I can’t wait to leave for China. The cultural boundaries and stereotypes that will be pushed or dashed, both in my perspective and the perspectives of my students, hold promise enough to make this a memorable and worthwhile summer. That this SoS group is a great and friendly bunch with extremely impressive credentials only pushes that bar further.

That’s all I really have to say for now. Peace out and check back for blog updates.

Keepin’ it real,
Nikolai Kapustin

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and this year’s program. My name is Chris Schlegel, and I’m an alumnus both of Princeton University and of Summer of Service.

In 2006, I traveled with twelve fellow undergraduates (including Rory Truex ’07, the program’s co-founder and first student leader) and Leslie Medema, currently the Deputy Director of PiA, to Jishou, Hunan Province, China. Prior to our departure, Summer of Service was, primarily, an idea—a well-organized, well-thought-out, and well-intentioned idea, sure, but more or less an abstraction. During his previous travels throughout central China, Rory had determined that quite a bit of good could be done at a teachers’ college in an undeserved community, far from the bustle of China’s eastern corridor. He subsequently drafted a program of cross-cultural exchange: Princeton students would teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses to men and women studying to become English teachers in Hunan Province.

That abstract notion became, by the summer of 2006, Princeton-in-Jishou, Summer of Service. And over the span of five years the program has matured. We’ve now written four full textbooks (and are in the process of translating the fifth); we’ve shepherded five groups of Princetonians through Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) training; and we’ve traveled in separate years through Henan Province, the eastern Tibetan plateau, and other far-flung locales on our way to Jishou. This July we’ll spend a week exploring Gansu Province, an especially beautiful region populated, in part, by members of the Hui minority group.

The program might be divided, roughly, into three “spheres”—classroom, extracurricular, and community-wide. Regarding teaching itself, the Princetonians develop a set of materials in concert with the needs of their students. Our sessions are described as “lectures,” “seminars,” and “one-on-one meetings,” but in reality one aim is paramount: to maximize interaction with our students in English. Teaching—and, more importantly, learning from—our students in Jishou is absolutely the highlight of the program, and the reason I am most excited to rejoin the group in 2010.

As extracurricular activities go, the hobbies and interests of our teachers and students dictate the offerings. In 2006, we had “Rap 101” and “Theatre 101” groups, both of which ended up performing in our program-wide talent show in August. Subsequent SoS trips have held literary discussions and magazine meetings, hiking events, and dance-offs. Our extracurricular activities extend and enhance what’s taught in the classroom, and encourage students and teachers to communicate in a friendly, less rigid environment. They’re also a lot of fun!

Finally, I should touch on the community aspect of the Summer of Service initiative. What we hope to build this summer, as in previous summers and on PiA more generally, are long-lasting bridges between Eastern and Western cultures. These bridges can be broad and official—as in our fruitful relationship with the Teachers’ College of Jishou University—but they might also be smaller, less obvious, more personal. I can remember hopping on the bus to depart Jishou at the close of our 2006 trip and feeling, for a minute or two, as though I really was leaving home, rather than returning there. It’s moments like these that bind the U.S. and China on the level of “one-on-one diplomacy.”

I don’t want to give too much away—I hope to leave the bulk of the blogging to our fellows—but I thought I might introduce this year’s group:

Astrid Stuth—student leader; Princeton ’12. Astrid was a participant on the 2009 program; she’s put her East Asian studies background to good use in Jishou, where she coordinated (along with her fellow teachers) a beginners’ English-language curriculum. Astrid is a graduate of the United World College in Hong Kong.

Emily Gass—Princeton ’12. Emily is a rower extraordinaire (seriously; as I write this Emily is competing at Nationals) who has already been to China and who looks forward to returning! She plans to concentrate in East Asian Studies.

Emma Schultz—Princeton ’12. Emma is an engineering student at Princeton who has participated in her major’s “Engineering without Borders” initiative in Africa. She is excited to travel to China and is a proud native of Illinois.

Wendy Lang—Princeton ’13. Before she even entered Princeton, Wendy conducted chemical engineering research in methods of oil extraction from microalgae—although you’ll have to ask her what exactly that means! She is an engineering student at Princeton and one of three freshmen on this year’s trip.

Nikolai Kapustin—Princeton ’13. A man of many academic talents hailing from the great state of Wisconsin, Nikolai has served as a lifeguard in his community—and he looks forward to trying the best of China’s seafood! He is also a cheese connoisseur.

Megan Telles—Princeton ’11. Megan is a rising senior and a sociology concentrator from northern California. She has worked extensively for Business Today at Princeton, an all-student-run financial magazine, and has traveled throughout Latin America.

Ann Niehaus—Princeton ’12. Ann is a dancer on campus and a Woodrow Wilson School major from New York, NY. She is also a multi-sport athlete, and in her spare time she has helped raise money for an educational project in Afghanistan.

Henry Barmeier—Princeton ’10. Henry is a graduating Woodrow Wilson School major and a Rhodes Scholar. He intends to study policy methods for streamlining the production and encouraging the consumption of sustainable foods. (As I fancy myself, first and foremost, an aspiring educator, I should cite my sources: see more about Henry at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S25/88/96E38/index.xml?section=topstories).

Peter Florence—Princeton ’12. Pete is a former football player, a chemistry major, and a proud native of San Francisco (part of “NorCal,” for those who don’t know). Pete has served as a student leader on a Princeton University Pace Center “breakout trip” and has interned for NASA.

Victor Li—Princeton ’13. Victor emigrated to New Zealand from China at the age of six. He is an avid eight-ball pool player and is also extremely good at ping pong. Victor has volunteered extensively throughout the Auckland, NZ, area.

That’s all for now! It’s going to be a great summer, and we envision this blog as our portal to the world during our time in Gansu and Jishou.

For now, warm regards and all best,

Chris