Wuhan Journal: Final Lecture
Before I get into the rundown of today, I want to post one quick photo of me in action at the three hour lecture I delivered on Wednesday.
I think of all the lecture shots this was my favorite, because it's got a few of the students and a great shot of the lecture slide showing my branch library homepage. Here I was talking about the library blogs and the posting of events on the website. I covered a whole lot of material in the class. The students were basically getting a crash course in American public libraries from me. The rest of the course from my friend was all about academic library work. So this was the only opportunity to get this information to them so I was really honored to have the chance to speak to them about the kinds of things that are happening in the world of Public Libraries. The students asked some fantastic questions, and many of them seemed eager to download the slides. I also gave them my email address so that they could send me questions if they wished.
Now, onto today.
Today was my last full day in Wuhan, and it oddly began at 6:00 a.m. I don't know why, but we all woke up hella early. None of us could explain why we all woke up at that crazy hour since we all went to bed around midnight. I figured what the hell and just stayed up. Sadly I got bored really early on and just started reading blogs. If you read my Facebook you probably figured that out. I was posting all kinds of ridiculous things like the preponderance of tattoed shirtless men on paranormal romance novels. All of the prep work was done for the day so all Jon and I had to do was really just chill until we went to the lecture at 2:30.
Around noon we headed out to get lunch and we went to this Uighur restaurant. The Uighurs are a minority group in China who speak a variant language similar to Uzbek. They also make a pretty damn good stew. We got this Lamb dish loaded with enormous chunks of carrot and potatoes with some green chilis and a spicy tomato sauce. It came with a side salad of tomatoes and cucumbers and strips of green chilis. It was hella tasty and absolutely enormous. But we managed to eat all the bits out of the soupy sauce and I cleaned out the cucumber plate. By the time we finished it was time to head over to the school for our talk.
When we got there Se Lee opened up the history room about the Wuhan iSchool and we got to see the busts of the founders of the school and some historic gifts from other Universities and prominent books from the faculty of the school. It was really quite impressive, and probably one of the nicest rooms in the school building. Why didn't I take pictures! Oh well. It was there that Dean Chen gifted me with a wonderful copy of the official history book of the school, and a beautiful burgundy tote bag in honor of the 90th anniversary of the Xin Xi Guan Li Shue Yuen, the School of Information Management. Which I have learned to say correctly as my host has been learning to say it correctly over the course of my being here. After that we headed up to the lecture hall for our joint talk.
We gave our talk in the lecture hall at the School of Information Management. They had arranged for a beautiful red banner with our names on it just slightly above the logo for the school. It was really very special. Jon and I spoke about how our different life experiences led us to going to the Information School at the University of Washington, how that education prepared us for going into the library world and how our paths, as well as those of others in our cohort, diverged upon graduation. We got a lot of positive feedback from the students and they asked some very good questions. One student asked us whether we feel that there is still a role for people with degrees in library science, and another asked me about how I believe the role of the public library is developing. They were incredibly bright and I believe that they have a good future ahead of them. I also feel like Jon and I were able to really speak directly to their concerns and show them how to make it in library science. It was a great time.
After the lecture the faculty all went to a farewell banquet together. Lydia said that she had seen enough pictures of only food and that I should get into the picture with the glorious banquet table. So here I am, with the glorious banquet table. There were some fantastic things in there. A great roast duck, tender meat and crispy skin, just right! And a good piece of flash fried pork. Some leek dumplings and a various assortment of dessert things. The soups I could take or leave them, mostly I left them. But it was wonderful. There were rounds and rounds of toasts, and I got to try the local Wuhan BaiJio, which is a kind of fragrant plum flavored brandy. It was great.
We all headed home from the banquet with a good feeling about the day. I tucked in and started writing up my stuff and collecting my thoughts for heading out to Thailand tomorrow. I had a bit of packing to do, but I put that off for the morning. Instead Lydia gave me a flash drive with all the photos, videos and a recording of the presentation for me to download to my hard drive. I uploaded all my pictures and started writing this when Jon asked if I wanted to go out for a Chuar snack and a beer. What the hell it was my last night, why not have a little street food.
So we headed down the path to East Lake and amazingly at night the street just turns into an open air grill stand. There were a half dozen vendors out and a whole series of tents with tables and chairs. We stopped by this guy's booth and got two pork skewers, six lamb skewers, two mushroom skewers, and two bread skewers and a couple of beers. Fucking awesome. Everything was covered in spice and tasted amazing. They cook it over a little charcoal griller so it comes out with a good smokey flavor along with the spice. The meat was excellent, the mushrooms were really tasty, but the bread was a big highlight. It's the same kind of bread that they use to make the hot buns in the morning, only they slice it into chunks and cover it in chuar spice. Great way to cap the trip.
We were a little late getting back to campus so the gates were closed and we had to take the ultra-long way around and climb a few flights of stairs going up the hill. When we arrived back at the foreign teacher's house the door was bolted and we had to wake the security guard to let us back in. But he was kind and didn't give us grief for coming back at 11:30 on a Friday night. Tomorrow I fly, so next you hear from me I'll be in Thailand. Stay tuned!
I think of all the lecture shots this was my favorite, because it's got a few of the students and a great shot of the lecture slide showing my branch library homepage. Here I was talking about the library blogs and the posting of events on the website. I covered a whole lot of material in the class. The students were basically getting a crash course in American public libraries from me. The rest of the course from my friend was all about academic library work. So this was the only opportunity to get this information to them so I was really honored to have the chance to speak to them about the kinds of things that are happening in the world of Public Libraries. The students asked some fantastic questions, and many of them seemed eager to download the slides. I also gave them my email address so that they could send me questions if they wished.
Now, onto today.
Today was my last full day in Wuhan, and it oddly began at 6:00 a.m. I don't know why, but we all woke up hella early. None of us could explain why we all woke up at that crazy hour since we all went to bed around midnight. I figured what the hell and just stayed up. Sadly I got bored really early on and just started reading blogs. If you read my Facebook you probably figured that out. I was posting all kinds of ridiculous things like the preponderance of tattoed shirtless men on paranormal romance novels. All of the prep work was done for the day so all Jon and I had to do was really just chill until we went to the lecture at 2:30.
Around noon we headed out to get lunch and we went to this Uighur restaurant. The Uighurs are a minority group in China who speak a variant language similar to Uzbek. They also make a pretty damn good stew. We got this Lamb dish loaded with enormous chunks of carrot and potatoes with some green chilis and a spicy tomato sauce. It came with a side salad of tomatoes and cucumbers and strips of green chilis. It was hella tasty and absolutely enormous. But we managed to eat all the bits out of the soupy sauce and I cleaned out the cucumber plate. By the time we finished it was time to head over to the school for our talk.
When we got there Se Lee opened up the history room about the Wuhan iSchool and we got to see the busts of the founders of the school and some historic gifts from other Universities and prominent books from the faculty of the school. It was really quite impressive, and probably one of the nicest rooms in the school building. Why didn't I take pictures! Oh well. It was there that Dean Chen gifted me with a wonderful copy of the official history book of the school, and a beautiful burgundy tote bag in honor of the 90th anniversary of the Xin Xi Guan Li Shue Yuen, the School of Information Management. Which I have learned to say correctly as my host has been learning to say it correctly over the course of my being here. After that we headed up to the lecture hall for our joint talk.
We gave our talk in the lecture hall at the School of Information Management. They had arranged for a beautiful red banner with our names on it just slightly above the logo for the school. It was really very special. Jon and I spoke about how our different life experiences led us to going to the Information School at the University of Washington, how that education prepared us for going into the library world and how our paths, as well as those of others in our cohort, diverged upon graduation. We got a lot of positive feedback from the students and they asked some very good questions. One student asked us whether we feel that there is still a role for people with degrees in library science, and another asked me about how I believe the role of the public library is developing. They were incredibly bright and I believe that they have a good future ahead of them. I also feel like Jon and I were able to really speak directly to their concerns and show them how to make it in library science. It was a great time.
After the lecture the faculty all went to a farewell banquet together. Lydia said that she had seen enough pictures of only food and that I should get into the picture with the glorious banquet table. So here I am, with the glorious banquet table. There were some fantastic things in there. A great roast duck, tender meat and crispy skin, just right! And a good piece of flash fried pork. Some leek dumplings and a various assortment of dessert things. The soups I could take or leave them, mostly I left them. But it was wonderful. There were rounds and rounds of toasts, and I got to try the local Wuhan BaiJio, which is a kind of fragrant plum flavored brandy. It was great.
We all headed home from the banquet with a good feeling about the day. I tucked in and started writing up my stuff and collecting my thoughts for heading out to Thailand tomorrow. I had a bit of packing to do, but I put that off for the morning. Instead Lydia gave me a flash drive with all the photos, videos and a recording of the presentation for me to download to my hard drive. I uploaded all my pictures and started writing this when Jon asked if I wanted to go out for a Chuar snack and a beer. What the hell it was my last night, why not have a little street food.
So we headed down the path to East Lake and amazingly at night the street just turns into an open air grill stand. There were a half dozen vendors out and a whole series of tents with tables and chairs. We stopped by this guy's booth and got two pork skewers, six lamb skewers, two mushroom skewers, and two bread skewers and a couple of beers. Fucking awesome. Everything was covered in spice and tasted amazing. They cook it over a little charcoal griller so it comes out with a good smokey flavor along with the spice. The meat was excellent, the mushrooms were really tasty, but the bread was a big highlight. It's the same kind of bread that they use to make the hot buns in the morning, only they slice it into chunks and cover it in chuar spice. Great way to cap the trip.
We were a little late getting back to campus so the gates were closed and we had to take the ultra-long way around and climb a few flights of stairs going up the hill. When we arrived back at the foreign teacher's house the door was bolted and we had to wake the security guard to let us back in. But he was kind and didn't give us grief for coming back at 11:30 on a Friday night. Tomorrow I fly, so next you hear from me I'll be in Thailand. Stay tuned!