Lectures, Food, and Fireflies

With a travel day behind me, serious work has begun at Stony Point Center in New York.  Here, my colleagues and I are working hard to be sure we are as prepared as possible to understand historic and modern China.  Our experiences will be richer with this context.  Lectures included, How the Past Still Shapes the Present, The Last Hundred Years or So:  An Historical Overview, Modern Chinese Society, China’s Education System, and our first language lesson.  We’ve also viewed two movies, To Live, and Vote for Me.  One take-away from our lecture about how the past still shapes the present is the idea that there are very few things that the Chinese will not eat.  China has gone through several periods of famine.  During famines, people must eat what they can, and that’s what they did.  I’m not sure exactly what to expect at our meals or what I will be adventurous enough to try.  Stay tuned.

If you know me, you won’t believe it, but I haven’t taken any pictures yet.  If I had, I would surely have tried to get a good photo of the fireflies out tonight.  I’ve only seen them once before in my life, and they continue ignite (no pun intended) my imagination.