Alternative Fall Break - Baltimore 2009 October 17-20

This is the church that we stayed at for the trip

Alternative Fall Break - Baltimore 2009 October 18

With our daily bread employment center where we served dinner

Alternative Fall Break - Baltimore 2009 October 17

Us organizing a second hand storage place

Alternative Fall Break - Baltimore October 17-20 2009

Tree planting on October 17th of Fall Alternative Break I participated in 2009

Sogen Con :)

I went with my friends to Sogen Con down in Sioux Falls Convention center this past weekend and here are part of the cosplay crew:

Video thanks to spiritpup at youtube

On the Eighth Friday of First Book Fun...

got ready to go. Yep, I did, at some points I think I realize that aside from the grant proposals that I'm doing and of course all the letters that I'm sending off to foundation, I've more or less stopped learning things. Which in part is probably my own fault for not asking enough questions.
Anyhow, we did have some impressive meetings with Kyle Zimmer and some top secret functional strategic meetings that most everyone from every department went to. I've realized from these meetings that your social network is probably the most important thing, especially if you were looking for money from corporations. The social implications of this I'm hesitant to expand on here but I do have some personal ideas.
From my talks with Kyle, I get the idea that she's a lady who really knows her stuff and is someone who you'd call charismatic. I can certainly see how people would willingly work towards the ideals that she has. It really is quite impressive and somehow makes me wish I could be half as charismatic as her and maybe our CAB would be that much more effective.
Haywood has also arrived and I'm surprised to learn that he will be with the strategic alliances team as originally it seems he was suppose to be working on the individual and foundation donation research. However, since I have quite a bit of experience and probably due to timing, things seem to work out this way. He seems to have a great grasp in the business world and I'm definitely hoping he will join our campus advisory board in the near future.
So before I head off I will have to update this blog some more with all the fun things that I've been doing in DC and of course, visit all the Smithsonian museums that I have not visited yet.

It is amazingly awesome to be in DC on the fourth of July, America's Independence day

On the Seventh Friday of First Book Fun...

So this post was actually posted by First Book's blog yesterday and I'm just re-posting it here for my Friday entry :)

I am one of three co-chairs who head up the campus advisory board (CAB) at the University of Pennsylvania. Let me tell you that being at the helms of a campus advisory board is not an easy thing to do and the best comparison I can come up with is that it is like being a taxi driver. Henceforth I shall refer to myself as a CAB driver and boy am I glad that I'm not the only driver. Sometimes there are so many obstacles in our path like getting tutoring groups on our campus to board our CAB and become a recipient group. Other times like when midterms rolled around our CAB stopped rolling for awhile and it took a few pushes to get it moving again. Going through the potholes and detours, we are so glad to have an awesome CAB mechanic, Nicole Thompson, Campus Advisory Board Manager at First Book's headquarters who can always help us with tune ups and get us on the road again. Despite the obstacles, it is a great path to be on. During the past year, we have had so much great experiences learning to drive the CAB in our community and have made so many great connections to various organizations on campus and helped to add to many organizations brand new books to their events and even held events of our own! At the heart of West Philadelphia, we know there are many kids in need and hope to improve our CAB towards delivering more books these kids.
It may not always be a smooth ride, but I, along with my fellow CAB drivers will go down the First Book path wherever it lead us to make possible the delivery of books for kids in need.

On the Sixth Friday of First Book Fun...

Many things happened. For one, we have our new development coordinator now and she's just awesome! I love her because she's so enthusiastic and we've been able to get many things done. For one, a new project on getting grants for one of our First Book National Book Bank distribution that invovles a Native American author. I actually got to read the whole book after I went on an errand to buy it from the corner Walden Books store and it was a pretty funny book. No wonder the author received many awards. It is a very good coming of age book to inspire American Indian teenagers. Thus, we've been working pretty hard looking at grants available and strategizing on ways to raise funds to make this distribution totally free for recipient groups, in other words, searching for money to cover the shipping costs. In addition I also looked into how to write grants and letters of inquiry and such and am actually learning a lot.

On other fronts, we heard back from some of our celebrities for the inquiries that we sent out for the WBGYH campaign and I just have to communicate in a clearer way of deadlines on when we need their info by. So altogether, this has been a good week.

On the Fifth Friday of First Book Fun...

It is fourth of July weekend and First Book has actually taken the day off as an organization. Thus, we're left to our own devices to find fun in a meaningful way. This has been somewhat of a slow week as my supervisor has taken the week off to see relatives and go to her high school reunion in Florida. The rest of the office seem to be in a holiday mode too as there weren't too many people around. Thus, we actually didn't have a development department meeting or any other meetings for that matter. However, we did hire a new development coordinator and I'm excited that she will be starting work next week so that we have more people in our department.

From last week's social media and blog meeting, I did get assigned to do several blogs for First Book's official blog and have been researching on relevant blogs that might want to help us to spread the word about WBGYH. The one other major change that we saw with WBGYH was that our voting was pushed back from July 15th to the end of July and beginning of September. Some of this due to the timing issues in relation with Michael Jackson's death and vacationing dates. Anyhow, I guess I will off to do some more work on researching blogs and other social media sites.

My aspirations for this blog

So yours truly has multiple blogs and all the previous entries in this one just got moved over to the blog here:
http://lindaxiaokang.wordpress.com
It's mostly pictures from my travels throughout China and Europe

This blog will now chronicle my musings, struggles and triumphs with college, politics, philosophy, research among other things and hopefully a bit more academic.

For my other official blogs:
Charity Grows
http://charitygrows.wordpress.com
This one was made because I am currently working with a variety of non-profits and trying to keep up with the news etc for non-profits based in the United States.

Bible Angels
http://fridaybibleangels.blogspot.com
This one is a shared blog that I started with several of my friends who have really encouraged each other in our Christian faith and we hope to keep going even after graduating.

The extremely personal blog, I rather keep that one to myself, but if you're really curious, ask me about it.

Fourth of July weekend in DC

It is amazingly awesome to be in DC on the fourth of July, America's Independence day.

I do have to tell a joke:
So an American business man is talking with his business partner in Great Britain and conference call is about to end, so the British partner says, "Why don't we continue this tomorrow?" the American partner says "Tomorrow we're closed over here because it is independence day" and the British partner goes "Oh, it's Thanksgiving."

Anyhow, I have a weird sense of humor. Continuing on to what I did for the weekend.

So first I checked out the Folk Festival at the National Mall that is put on by Smithsonian every summer and it was a lot of fun. It was not anything huge but I at least got to learn some Welsh dances since this year one of their themes is the Isle of Wales, where I have actually been to :)

Anyhow, here are the pictures:


This is the Folk Life festival right in front of the Smithsonian castle


I went into the castle and they displayed the scene from Night at the Museum, Battle at the Smithsonian. Which I still have not seen yet, but definitely will, hopefully at one of the Smithsonian IMAX theaters.

I volunteered for the Independence day parade and got to be one of these balloon holders.

This is actually our balloon, I'm the person with the pink dress


This when we were getting ready with the balloons, we were the last one to go so we got bored

The Artomatic exhibitions

What is Artomatic you ask? It is basically an art exhibition hall located at the Navy Yard metro station stop on the green line. It exhibitis for about a month, it was the month of July and I went on the last few days. My achievement was that I saw every floor and there were around ten floors, so it was awesome.

Here are some photos that turned out well.

More info about Artomatic
http://www.artomatic.org/about/whatis


The views were great from the building:


I like the bunny cart in this one and notice the godzilla with McDonald take out bag

Series of peeps:

This one is ofthe Beijing Olympics







Parody of Mary Poppins


A play on Wall-E

On the fourth Friday of First Book Fun...

I took a break because it was my birthday today. Yep, so this week First Book saw two of its fellows leaving First Book and of course one of them had to be working in the development department. So basically, our development department is now just me and my supervisor.
I suppose you could say I got tired of waiting around for celebrities' publicist to answer or not answer my emails asking for their clients favorite book from childhood but anyhow, I did indeed take somewhat of a break today after getting everything that I needed to have done for First Book.

However, my office mate, Meghan and I have been getting along really well ever since she arrived and we've dubbed our office the cookie monster world since we both absolutely loved cookies and both sad that now cookie monster has to be known as the fruits and vegetable monster...no more C is for cookie and that's good enough for me from that lovable blue fluff of fur.


So I went and visited the Franciscan monastery for my birthday even though I'm not catholic. (Although my office mate is) and just relaxed and wondered through their gardens


These monks definitely takes good care of their gardens.

On the third Friday of First Book Fun...

We sent off someone who has been with the organization from the very beginning...one of our first employees who Kyle Zimmer was very reluctant to see go. It seems that she had been with the organization for more than a decade and was one of the key players of the organization. It was a major going away party and the people who have been with the organization for awhile now were all very teary eyed.

Going through the files of First Book, it seems that there's a high turnover rate and I wondered back to my experiences of being a tutor and what implications of this is. Of course, First Book does have an institutional memory on its computer drives where transient people like myself can see the history of the organization from the inside out.

Looking back to the previous friday entry, I just realized that I have not explained much about the What Book Got You Hooked? Campaign, essentially the campaign was started three summers ago to engage the donor base, so it was an interactive campaign to try to get the donor involved. So First Book asks the donors what book got them to really enjoy and hooked on reading and the site features the favorite books of celebrities. I believe there are over 80 celebrities featured on the site currently. The campaign's climatic closing inovles people from all 50 united states voting for the state they want to see receiving 50,000 books for the recipient groups in that state.

Voting is suppose to open on July 15th but check on the site to make sure:

http://booksforkids.firstbook.org/whatbook/

On the second Friday of First Book Fun...

I should try embedding my rendition of 12 days of christmas parody song for First Book Fridays in here sometimes as it might spice up my somewhat boring posts to this blog. Anyhow, so another week goes by here and "on the second friday of first book fun I did...*drum roll* two celebrity requests for WBGYH campaign.

People here at First Book really enjoy using abbreviations that confounded me for sometimes until I got the courage to ask, "umm...what does that stand for?" So please excuse me if I use some myself in here. Anyhow, it seems that people also like to be out of the office quite often too as I seem to get a lot of out of office replies from people. So last week after I got myself to be quite familiar with Kintera, the database software that we use, it got somewhat more complicated. Apparently you can analyze the database also on excel and I added another set of skills for looking at large amounts of data and inputting specifications to net myself some interesting database points for trying to figure out which states had top donors.

So it seems that First Book's unique proportion of funding may not be so good in the economy as a majority of funding of the organization comes from corporation and the economy does not seem to be favoring large corporations currently. Thus, in the development ends of things we are looking at how to lure in more individual donors and finding foundation grants, which is what I've been busying myself with this week. In times of a rough economy, it seems the foundations have also been affected somewhat as I'm extremely disspointed by several grants that would have worked out perfectly for First Book but they have discontinued taking in applications, or you would have to know someone on their board to apply or your organization would have be a previous applicant.

In terms of individual donation pleas, we're moving into the territories of social media and I have been included on meetings pertaining to this. As with my previous experience with working on starting non-profits, the power of social media can be a very powerful thing and I think First Book is definitely going in the right direction with placing themselves on twitter.

First weekend in DC :)

Where I took the opportunity to visit a ton of musems, but not the famous Smithosonian ones. I actually went to the

26th Annual
Dupont-Kalorama Museum Walk Weekend

http://dkmuseums.com

I went and rode on the metro and did this for both Saturday and Sunday.

My favorite would definitely have to be the Anderson House, which was built in early 1900s and winter home of Larz Anderson III (1866-1937), an American diplomat, and his wife, Isabel (1876-1948). The house had some very unique combinations of both western and eastern influences as Larz was a diplomat to Japan and actually brought back articles from Japan that were put in the house.


I really wish I read some books on photography when I took these pictures.


I adored the princesses in this painting, which was based on a real coronation event of a russian princess I believe.


You can somewhat see the eastern influences in the Anderson house in this picture of the katana and the Japanese panels.


I went back to the Anderson house and admired the beautiful interior of the house some more.

I also really enjoyed the Phillips collection which had artworks from world famous painters like Degas and Renoir.

This is actually from Jacob Lawrence's migration series about the migration of African Americans from the south to the north from 1916 to 1919.


This was a painting from the group THEY at the Meridian International Center and part of the Metropolis Now exhibitions. They paint pictures of people in various rooms and I haven't figured out the message of this painting yet.


I sort of ran into a political protest near the statue of Ghandi when I was walking over to the Anderson house on Saturday.

First entry for First Book Friday Fun

So this is the first friday that I have been at First Book and it seems to be a off day for most people on my floor. I wonder where everyone have gone to since I'm not seeing a lot of people. Onto my adventures that I've managed to get myself into this week:
So Monday I went into the office and it seems that I have been assigned to the development department and my supervisor would be the director of this department. I'm handed some random task that would get me accquainted with the database software that the organization is using to keep track of donations and donors who register and donate online. The week is filled by meetings with various departments and I learn the ins and outs of how the national organization works. Although the development meetings are composed of people from several different departments including communications, strategic alliances and community outreach.
Mostly I've been updating the database and working on some research for upcoming projects for the summer. The big campaign that I've been helping with is the What Book Got You Hooked? which happens to be the campaign for the summer. So far I've been familiarizing myself with the various deparments that exists within the organization and trying to figure out who is in which department. Trust me, it gets quite confusing. None of the other interns have arrived so I'm in an office by myself until my office mate gets here next Monday.

On an airplane again

Friday May 29th
Start off to Heathrow at 7:50 am on Kensington high street tube and switch at south kensington and get on to picadily line to heathrow, allow for an hour of time to get there.

Should have gotten to DC by around 6 pm, take the DC metro to whichever place I need to get to.

Unfortunately, due to weather conditions, my plane got canceled midway in Raleigh, North Carolina and I had to either sleep in the airport for a night or book myself a hotel for the night. Since I've already had the experience of sleeping in an airport terminal last summer in Chicago, I didn't want to repeat that experience again. So I booked myself into a nice hotel near the airport and fell asleep right away.

Tour of Stonehenge, Salisbury and Bath

Not in that particular order but there were some very interesting stories here.

So, I woke up very early in the morning at my hostel located in the deep neck of the words in a London park and headed off to the victoria bus station. For those of you who have not been to the bus station, it is located near the victoria tube station but not at the railroad station so be sure to add around 15minutes to your travel time once you get to the victoria station. I unfortunately missed the bus that I had bought tickets for on the internet and had to buy another ticket at a later time the last time I miscalculated the time it takes to get to the bus station by 5 minutes.

However, this time I was there bright and early and definitely got to be on the bus for the tour company's tour to Stonehenge, Salisbury and Bath. This day turned out to be the multilanguage tour day where our guide also spoke in Japanese for the Japanese tourists who were also with us.

So we set off on a day with wonderful weather for Salisbury's cathedral first. Unfortunately when we got there the cathedral is apparently under major constructions so you couldn't see all the glory and people bought postcards of how it would look once construction finished. With so many tourists I assume that the constructions was probably very much needed.

Then we went on to the highlights of the day, the famed Stonehenge. Which, after seeing it, I have to say, is not all it is cracked up to be. Anyhow, that must have been one of those days in the lows of tourist season since I got to take ample pictures of the stones alone. When you're there at the Stonehenge, they hand everyone an audio tour. I will definitely have to say that I prefer the actual guide tour to the audio tour just for the fact that the audio tours are veyr much long winded and although it has more details and such. I suppose it could be that I'm a visual rather than an auditory learner.



So then we went onto Bath, the site of an excavated Roman bath which dates back to 40 AD I believe. The site had been a temple of the goddess sulis before the Romans decided to expand it into a nice bath. There was also the Bath cathedral that was right next to the Roman baths and the village square where we saw all sorts of street entertainers. The Roman bath complex was huge and again we were handed audio tour sets. Well, here's where the funny story starts. Apparently I had misheard the guide for our bus for when to get together and when I came out of the baths the people from my bus had left. However, before I even had time to panic, another nice looking guide told me that the guide had told him that I could ride back to London on their tour bus since they were from the same company. Thus, it was indeed fortunate that their bus was running two hours late and I was able to ride back to London in their bus, which didn't have the Japanese language explanation but our guide and bus driver did tell funny stories of how the rich and famous lived here in Bath. Especially interesting was of how one time our guide saw Princess Diana when she was getting her hair done. He always joke to people and say "Hey look, there's ___(insert famous people name) and that one time it was actually true, they waved to Princess Diana and she actually waved back. Well, anyhow, I thanked God that everything turned out fine.

Canterbury

Wednesday May 27th
Go to the yellow and green line and get to high street Kensington and look for the YHA.
London on to Canterbury from Victoria station
and visit the Tower museum and Grey friars and the cathedral at 5:30 for their evensong.
Visited Gray friars but missed their eucharist because I missed the bus and also took a river boat ride and visited the east bridge pilgrim's hospital.

Oxford

Tuesday May 26th
Go for the 2hr tour at 2 pm in front of the TIC at 16-17 broad street.

York

Monday May 25th
Just need to get to York Minster at 5:15 p.m for their evensong.
What I did:
Took a walk along the river at around 3 to get into town. Took around 2 hours and made it in time for the evensong service. Took the opportunity to light 3 candles for everyone I was praying for and also admired the architecture. The choir that sang was only visiting as the minster choir had the day off. Overall experience was great. I was still debating on whether the church would charge for visiting but I think this is a bit of the best of both world, people can still worship for free but the church upkeep can be sustained by visitor's money. The evensong was full at this church and the minister sang the prayer beautifully and psalm 119 was sang by the choir and old testament was read from numbers and the new testament from John as the two lessons.

scotland

Friday May 22rd
Went on the tour today and stopped in many places on the way. Our guide was very intriguing guy who wore a kilt with a genuine Scottish accent that should have been in a band.

Saturday May 23rd
Went exploring in the isle of Skye today.
Heard many interesting stories from our guide.

Sunday May 24th
Found out who was the real brave heart. It was actually Robert the Bruce and not William Wallace.
Folklore:
Don't break with tradition for turning his daughter to stone.
The massacre of Glen Coe, our guide told a very touching story.

Edingburgh

Thursday May 21st
Went to Edinburgh today and explored pretty much all of the castle and went on the Royal mile. We tried going to the Holyrood palace but unfortunately that was closed for visitors due to a special event. So we went to the elephant house which was where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter on the backs of napkins and we read napkins and such. Also visited the Scottish parliament building which was made to look like leaves from the aerial view and had some very interesting architecture and we went into the debating chamber to watch the members of parliament debate some random bill.
Really wanted to go on the ghost trail and the walking tour but did not get the time. Thus, I'm going to have to drop by in Scotland again the next time that I'm in Europe.
Our hostel was amazing, it was one of the MacBackPackers hostel with a great view because it was only steps away from the hostel.


Edingburgh Castle


Hanzi and I at Edingburgh castle


My little tiger got to take a picture with this cute highland bear


I got to take a picture with the guard


On the way to Rowling's cafe shop, we took a picture with the Friar's Bobby

Glasgow

Wednesday May 20th
went to Glasgow with Hanzi and visited the cathedral there in the necropolis and the museum of religion.
Got to know a bit more about all the different religions around the world and such.
Then went on to kelvingrove museum which reminded me a lot of the chicago's museum of natural science in size and scope except this one housed works from Monet, Rennoir, Rembrandt etc.
I didn't realize there were hidden meanings in dutch art and the men in armor was actually a mystery.


Outside Kelvingrove Museum


Glasgow cathedral used to be at the center

Manchester angel

May 19th
Got to Manchester all right and rode on the wheel which showed most of the city's sites.
We saw a beautiful cloud that looked like an angel and shared the story of Francis.

Tuesday May 19th
8:00-11:00
Train to Manchester
11:00-12:00
Lunch
make plans on n
what I actually did:

Cardiff for a day

Monday May 18th
7 am
Get up, eat, get to Victoria
8-11 am
Cardiff
11-2
Central station
get 16-25 card
get to welsh museum of life
get pastries
2-3
meet kent at TIC
ask about caerphilly and castel coch
3-4
Caerphilly castle
4-5
Caestel coch
5-6
Cardiff castle
6-7
Evensong at Llandaf cathedral
7-9
Eat and get back to Kent's
Check email, get Edinburgh host

May 18th
Headed off early morning to Cardiff, the capital of wales and managed to go to the welsh museum of life before heading over to meet with Bob who agreed to host me through couch surfers website. We walked over to his house after meeting at the tourist information center and his house is extremely hard to find, you basically have to follow a particular course in the river.

The Welsh museum of life had replicas of everything from furniture to ways of making things of the olden days. I just quickly went over the village and the castle. St. Fagan was apparently the founder of castle or something.. Have to give thanks to God for letting me have plenty time of reach he bus upon my departure form the museum.

Had a pretty long talk with Bob and he also took me around to Cardiff Bay to give me a short history of the Bay and the buildings. I really liked the Wales parliament that took transparency literally, so have a building hat was all glass with thermal heating.
The then I forget, had visiting Llandaff castle. Missed the evensong by about 40 minutes so have to do that next time.
Wandered around for a couple of hours and got back and saw a program from BBC on clouds. The stratonimbus the cumulonimbus etc.

Well, unfortunate I could only go to Cardiff bay and the Welsh museum of living life via the bus, which was free. Did a very quick run through and some videos and managed to get back at around 2 or 3 and met Bob at the Tourist information centre and walked over to his house which was a really small apartment with a couch pulled out. We had a very interesting conversation about British politics, world environment etc and watched a show about clouds appreciation. I managed to make it out to Llandaff cathedral but missed the evensong entirely because I missed the bus stop that would have connected me to it. Thus, have to go back and visit one day as I didn't get to visit any of the castles either.
Unfortunately probably also forgot my electric tooth brush here too.

London adventures

the 17^th was an exhausting day. After traveling, I totally bumbled my plans for the day. Note to self, try to have everything arranged before leaving home.

So actually went to the wrong station to go on the Fat Tire Bike tour.

The day was terribly rainy and cold. Again, did not bring enough clothes as I was trying to pack light so bought a $30 sweatshirt that said London, England. Anyhow, I needed a black zip up sweatshirt anyways for next year I guess.

Basically got into Heathrow and was delighted that I could go on the London underground, colloquially known as the tube for really cheap.

So rode it to to Kings cross where I checked myself into the Ashlee house, which at first glance looks crappy, but actually not too bad although I really disliked the fact that it does not have free wifi.

So then went on to the wrong station for my bike tour but managed to actually catch my group and go with them even though I was almost half an hour late.

I was praying really hard that it would stop raining for the tour and it did, around the same time as when it was suppose to start. However, it was still cloudy and cold for our tour.

We visited all 4 parks in the London area and also Buckingham palace, and Kensington and Princess Diana's memorial walk. We also randomly ran into a parade of veterans I think and also some people with funny bowler hats and a lot of honor badges pinned on their suit.

Then after our tour I wondered around for at least an hour trying to find the right station to get to the Thames river cruise and also the London eye, was an awesome ferris wheel,

Then waiting in the rain for the evening service which was pretty amazing

First day of London

Sunday May 17^th

6:50 am

Arrive in London at

7-8 am

Heathrow airport: get luggage, exchange currency, find tube

8-9 am

Kings Cross station to find Ashlee House and also get 16-25 railcard

Store luggage there and also use internet at net stream cafe to email Kent

9-10 am

Head over to Victoria coach station

10-11 am

Westminster's service at 10 for the Matin

11-3 pm

Fat tire bike tour

3-5pm

Thames river tour

westminster's to tower

tower to waterloo

5 pm

London eye near waterloo

6 pm

head back to hotel and write in diary and extract photos

Journal:

The 16^th was mostly figuring out how to travel to DC. So I took the Chinatown bus with century coach and got dropped off in Chinatown outside of 5^th and H street. I had forgotten where the metro station was so had to ask a Chinese community church who were really nice. Earlier in the day while on the way to getting to Philly's Chinatown the screw of my glass came off and I was terrified as I could not put it back on by myself and did not have spare glasses and was partially blind. However, I asked this really nice man in the Chinese community church in DC and he told me that the metro station was 7^th and H and that the glasses shop was 7 and D and it was actually exactly where he said everything was. I actually doubted he knew where the glasses shop was and asked the Chinatown guide with my glasses that only had one glass hanging off of my nose, I'm sure the tourists thought I was weird or something. Anyhow, so that was fixed and I got to go to the really nice bathroom in the optical shop. Made it to the airport, helped out an air stewardess with pushing a person on a wheelchair into the elevator, I just told her I was a nurse and she was like okay. So check in with my bag even though my STA reservation did not work with the electronic device. I'm going to have to do that again when I get back. Sat to a very boring person who didn't talk much on the plane, he just read the book that his daughter told him to read. I believe he was going to Germany for a trip.

Overall, I felt like God was very gracious to me.

The 17^th was an exhausting day. After traveling, I totally bumbled my plans for the day. Note to self, try to have everything arranged before leaving home.

So actually went to the wrong station to go on the Fat Tire Bike tour.

The day was terribly rainy and cold. Again, did not bring enough clothes as I was trying to pack light so bought a $30 sweatshirt that said London, England. Anyhow, I needed a black zip up sweatshirt anyways for next year I guess.

Basically got into Heathrow and was delighted that I could go on the London underground, colloquially known as the tube for really cheap.

So rode it to to Kings cross where I checked myself into the Ashlee house, which at first glance looks crappy, but actually not too bad although I really disliked the fact that it does not have free wifi.

So then went on to the wrong station for my bike tour but managed to actually catch my group and go with them even though I was almost half an hour late.

I was praying really hard that it would stop raining for the tour and it did, around the same time as when it was suppose to start. However, it was still cloudy and cold for our tour.

We visited all 4 parks in the London area and also Buckingham palace, and Kensington and Princess Diana's memorial walk. We also randomly ran into a parade of veterans I think and also some people with funny bowler hats and a lot of honor badges pinned on their suit.

Then after our tour I wondered around for at least an hour trying to find the right station to get to the Thames river cruise and also the London eye, was an awesome ferris wheel,

Then waiting in the rain for the evening service which was pretty amazing as I got to pray outside of one of England's most beautiful churches even though it was raining.

At around 6:15 we finally got to go in after the organ recital was over. The service was surprisingly small of only around a hundred people with the canon of Westminster who was a woman. I was not sure if that's because they're very liberal. Anyhow, the service was about St. Dunstan who formed Westminster as a monastery. Apparently he was a patron of education and music. We sang songs like amazing grace and such. The person next to me in the pew was actually from the the united states and was on his way to an archaeological dig in Jordan as a volunteer, I thought at first he was an archeology professor at a university but he's actually a doctor. His wife is from China and had an umbrella with the heaven brand.

So wandered about for quite a bit after this as the yellow and green lines were closed for this weekend for renovations which was extremely inconvenient for me as I was just new in town and really didn't know much about the tube. But finally managed to walk over to waterloo station and get back to kings cross. Then I tried to organize my stuff and realize that my recharger was missing for the global phone. Also, I didn't have a watch or anything as I was depending on the global phone for my alarm clock etc.

So had to run around trying to find a phone place or a place that sold alarm clocks. Walked around for at least an hour and was apparently cat called by people who were drunk/sketchy. Finally managed to find a place that were really nice as to not only let me test out the alarm clock they also set the time for me. I'm so glad that I lived in Philly so the streets were not as terrifying as it could have been.

God has been at work for me today in the weather, the service at westminster and finding the alarm clock for a reasonable amount of money.

My interest in global health and policy

To Whom it May Concern, I have just finished my third year at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Health and Societies with a concentration of Public Health. In addition I am also a dual-degree candidate for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the School of Nursing at my university. My goal is to be a renowned nursing educator in the future, teaching the next generation of nurses to help and inspire others in the world.

My interest in Global and Public Health policy has lead me to take many classes on this subject and outside of my classes, I also participate in various public health venues on our campus. For example, I have helped to organize the National Public Health Week with the Civic House and the Center for Public Health Initiative that took place this past week on our campus. I also helped to organize Mental Health Awareness Week as part of Penn Active Minds executive board the previous week and brought in speakers like Dr. Bray the President of the American Psychology Association. I have also been to various lectures given by well known figures in the health sector such as Paul Farmer, Ichiro Kawachi, the current President of American Medical Association Nancy Nielsen, the former American Public Health Association Dr. Walter Tsou, and many others. These lectures have really inspired me personally and I really want to bring that to this internship, to capture the wisdom and experiences of these leaders in health policy and inspire others. (For details of the National Public Health Week, check out: http://www.cphi.upenn.edu/NPHW.shtml)

I realize that I am so very fortunate to be attending such a great university and definitely want others to be inspired also. In addition, this summer I will also be at Washington D.C. which will put me in a position to gain access to even more inspirational people working on the policies that I have been learning about in my classes. Also due to my community service involvement, I have the honor of working with Ashoka board member Kyle Zimmer with First Book this summer and I am fully intending to learn more about how to create social change and make the world a better place. I have already shown this with my actions by volunteering around at least 10 hours a week tutoring students from low income families in West Philadelphia in a variety of subjects and working to get the resources needed for tutoring groups by working with First Book. I have also advocated for the rights of children globally by leading the student UNICEF chapter at my university. My deep passion for public health policy have also lead me to participate in Wharton Politic and Business Association's annual policy cup on health policy for this year's topic and was one of the finalist. (For my proposal, please check out: http://www.whartonpolitics.com/?page_id=97)

My dedication to Global and Public Health have also lead me to help with various nonprofit organizations, one of those that stands out is PowerUpGambia, (http://www.powerupgambia.org/home) where we work to transform health care through raising funds for solar energy panels. As an average college student, I have various social network accounts with Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, LiveJournal, Blogger and have worked with various other social networks through my work with non profit organizations (i.e.Group Members Only and Ammado). (I have over 100 videos on youtube, and for an example that's health related please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YywyNl3gIE)

I can also assure you that due to my extensive experiences working with and leading various diverse executive boards I have the capabilities to carry out tasks on time and successfully. In addition, I have also worked with various non-profit organizations before as I have worked as a partnerships coordinator for Givology and also a volunteer with Perspectives debate. I have also learned a variety of advocacy, communications and leadership skills attending various conferences and workshops such as the Young Advocate Leadership Training held by Children's Defense Fund, Student Service Leaders Conference at Drexel University, and Global Development Initiative Annual Forum at Penn.

In the upcoming semesters, I am also planning on attending the International Honors Program's Health and Community track that would help me to expand my horizons by studying problems related to health in different areas of the world like India, South Africa and China and also visiting the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. (http://www.ihp.edu/programs/hc/) I feel that I am a qualified for this position due to all the skills that I have gained through my experiences here at my college. If you need any additional information, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Linda Xiao Kang

Great Britain Itinerary

So yours truly will be traveling to the wonderful destination of Great Britain and here's my tentative itinerary:

May 17th get into London in the morning at 6:50 am

exchange money at airport

Get into London from airport

Get to Kings cross station

Apply for 16-25 railcard

Find Ashlee house the hostel I will be staying at tonight

Find an internet cafe

Go to Westminster Matin at 10

Go on bike tour at 11 til 3

Go on Thames river cruise at 3

Go to London's eye at 5 and get to Ashlee and rest

May 18th Leave for Cardiff in the morning, get there at around noon (stay in Cardiff for a night with couch host


May 19 Explore Cardiff then onto Manchester in the afternoon and stay in Manchester for the night with friend

May 20 Manchester for Glasgow in the morning

May 21 Get to Edinburgh and explore, stay at hostel with friend

May 22 Edinburgh leave for tour of Scotland

May 23 Isle of Skye tours

May 24 Get back to Edinburgh by night


May 25th Edinburgh to York (7 in the morning, get there by 9 by train) (stay in York with couch host)


May 26th York to Oxford by bus (stay in oxford with friend)

May 27th London depart for Salisbury, Bath and Stonehenge tour

May 28th London tour to Leed castle, Dover and Cantebury tour

May 29th leave for DC from Oxford and catch plane at 9 in the morning from Heathrow airport

http://www.meleterc.com/PageGreatBrit_wk1.html#WEEK

http://gouk.about.com/od/picturegalleries/ig/Top-UK-Sights/

http://www.viator.com/London/d737-ttd?page=0&topx=1-15

viator

Adolescence

So we're currently learning about the development occurring during adolescence years.

Apparently the U.S. has the highest rates of adolescence pregnancy in the world. I question how many are planned and how many are not. Also, how does that affect the demographics of the United States?

Our speaker is apparently from a health outcome center in New Jersey and has interesting things they're during for sexual education for teens. She told us some very interesting stories. I actually like the real stories that she told, it really helps with modeling what we can do if we ran into the same situations. For example, there was a girl who was bulimic and could not tell her parents, so they role played the different ways she could tell her parents and she apparently did that.

China's stimulus plan

I didn't realize that China is also planning a stimulus plan in the wake of the global financial crisis. Apparently this crisis is bigger than I first thought.

clipped from www.china.org.cn clipped from www.china.org.cn China has announced a 4 trillion-yuan (585 billion U.S. dollars) two-year economic stimulus package to boost growth and domestic demand, 1.18 trillion yuan of which will be funded by the central government. The stimulus package plan include four major components, including large-scale government spending, industrial restructuring and rejuvenation, scientific research and social safety net. Other projects, including the 600 billion-yuan tax cut, old-age pension increase for enterprise retirees, salary increase to 12 million teachers, subsidies to farmers as well as an 850 billion-yuan three-year investment in health care reform were not included in the 4 trillion-yuan stimulus package, Wen said. clipped from www.china.org.cn "We will provide housing to 7.5 million low-income Chinese in three years, and provide better shelter for 2.4 million Chinese who still live in shacks," the premier said.

Child malnutrition in India

"Small, sick, listless children have long been India’s scourge — “a national shame,” in the words of its prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.

China, that other Asian economic powerhouse, sharply reduced child malnutrition, and now just 7 percent of its children under 5 are underweight, a critical gauge of malnutrition. In India, by contrast, despite robust growth and good government intentions, the comparable number is 42.5 percent. Malnutrition makes children more prone to illness and stunts physical and intellectual growth for a lifetime."

One does indeed wonder why in the world this is so as India does run a very large feeding program for these kids. "The $1.3 billion Integrated Child Development Services program, India’s primary effort to combat malnutrition, finances a network of soup kitchens in urban slums and villages."

Unfortunately, most of these operating centers are not up to par and the report details further that either the people who it intends to benefit are not showing up or that the center themselves lack the resources to adequately measure the progress of the mother and the kids they are feeding.

"A World Food Program report last month noted that India remained home to more than a fourth of the world’s hungry, 230 million people in all. It also found anemia to be on the rise among rural women of childbearing age in eight states across India. Indian women are often the last to eat in their homes and often unlikely to eat well or rest during pregnancy. Ms. Menon’s institute, based in Washington, recently ranked India below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on its Global Hunger Index."

As the World Food Program has been rather successful in this area of feeding kids I am wondering why the government does not hand it over to them?

"Childhood anemia, a barometer of poor nutrition in a lactating mother’s breast milk, is three times higher in India than in China, according to a 2007 research paper from the institute.

The latest Global Hunger Index described hunger in Madhya Pradesh, a destitute state in central India, as “extremely alarming,” ranking the state somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia.

More surprising, though, it found that “serious” rates of hunger persisted across Indian states that had posted enviable rates of economic growth in recent years, including Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Here in the capital, which has the highest per-capita income in the country, 42.2 percent of children under 5 are stunted, or too short for their age, and 26 percent are underweight. A few blocks from the Indian Parliament, tiny, ill-fed children turn somersaults for spare change at traffic signals.

Back in Jahangirpuri, a dead rat lay in the courtyard in front of Ms. Bala’s nursery. The narrow lanes were lined with scum from the drains. Malaria and respiratory illness, which can be crippling for weak, undernourished children, were rampant. Neighborhood shops carried small bags of potato chips and soda, evidence that its residents were far from destitute.

In another alley, Ms. Menon met a young mother named Jannu, a migrant from the northern town of Lucknow. Jannu said she found it difficult to produce enough milk for the baby in her arms, around 6 months old. His green, watery waste dripped down his mother’s arms. He often has diarrhea, Jannu said, casually rinsing her arm with a tumbler of water.

Ms. Menon could not help but notice how small Jannu was, like so many of Jahangirpuri’s mothers. At 5 feet 2 inches tall, Ms. Menon towered over them. Children who were roughly the same age as her own daughter were easily a foot shorter. Stunted children are so prevalent here, she observed, it makes malnutrition invisible.

“I see a system failing,” Ms. Menon said. “It is doing something, but it is not solving the problem.”

Source

Within the ivory towers

So after you worked so hard to get into the ivory tower of elite educational institutions, what happens?

Fend off the sharks by yourself of course. I'm hopefully kidding, in actuality, most people have quite pleasant experiences in college if they managed to choose the right college for themselves or managed to secure their niche in the wrong colleges.

What your experience is like is all up to you. Usually, these steps will help you to survive college whether you're in the right one or not:

1. Find a circle of good friends
-Most likely they will be people who you live with Freshmen year
-Try as many club as you're interested in during Freshmen year and then shave off the ones you really don't feel like doing
-For those who are religious, finding a good fellowship is crucial to your experience or else you might find yourself adrift in this period of life where there are no rules or guidance from the adults around you

2. Ask the people who have done it before
-Most upper-freshmen do not eat freshmen for lunch or torment them for sport, most people will happily answer questions like which class did you happen to like your freshmen year? or which Professor would you recommend?

3. Talk to your Professor
-If you are paying such a large amount of money for tuition and whatever else, the least you could do is to reap from the benefits of the money that you have spent. Granted, there are Professor who are too busy to give you a second glance, but most will be more than happy to accommodate questions you have about their field of work as long as you're there for their office hours or send emails.

4. Take advantage of the on-campus events
-Especially the big name speakers, most clubs will work their behind off to bring these well known speakers to the campus and you better believe that some of your tuition money goes into making that possible, so if you don't have classes, GO!

5. Do attend classes
-again, why pay when you don't even attend?

6. Subscribe to as many listserv emails as you can
- If your school does not have a campus wide calendar, then your best bet of hearing about world-renowned speakers is through this listservs, plus, if you've signed up for listservs that pertains to your interest, you'll actually hear about events that you're interested in

My Human Anatomy Class on March 3, 2009

So quite a few interesting things happened in my life today. I love it when I can say it.

For our Human development class, we had moral development lectures given by a high school teacher from St. Joe's prep, which is apparently an all boys school which this teacher recounts how after he got his Ph.D for Human sexuality at Penn's graduate school, the boys there gave him the nickname of "sex master" which definitely raised my eyebrows, but I think this men was trying too hard to cater to college students. He said this was to illustrate the people have moral development by ceasing to call teachers nicknames. Okay.

So we did go through the 10 commandments of the old testament, technically 7 of them, it did sadden me to know that many of the nursing students don't know it. I am beginning to believe in the myth that highly educated people are atheists and their children are too. It also saddened me to see the majority side on that suicide is fine for old people and that abortions are fine too. It reminds me of that one line from the Great debaters, peace through desolation where a roman general say he brought peace to the nations he subjugated when he really just killed off everyone. I wonder about Jonathan Swift's proposed solution to eat babies. It's ironic that the people who say everyone should have their own choice in when to end their life also say that is is fine for someone to decide another person's fate too. There seems to be a majority that it is okay to kill people who can't make decisions.

The class we learned:
How we judge a decision to be moral:
1. consequences
2. intention
3. action itself
4. circumstances
5. law
6. conscience

restrictions on traveling

kinda bitter and extremely disappointed that I don't get to go on my study abroad program due to the fact that switzerland now requires all who are not citizens of particular countries to get visas.  This is after I got my visa from India and South Africa.