My first talk on my experience in Xian

On September 22, I think, I will be speaking to the Peoria Section of the American Welding Society, about my time in Xian.  I will talk about welding and the other jobs I was able to watch people do, while I was in China.  I will also talk about life in general, as I observed it.  This will be the first time I will get to talk to a group of people about what I did in China and what I got to see.  I need to go through my pictures and get them on a thumb drive so I can just talk about the pictures.  I did take pictures of people just working and going about their every day lives, and many of those people looked at me like I was nuts.  I will enjoy getting the opportunity to talk about a place that I enjoyed so much.  I even have treats, Chinese cigarettes, hard liquor, and I will put together a Chinese welding helmet, a pair of sunglasses stuck in a piece of card board.  You strike an arc and close your eyes.  The Chinese word for personal protective equipment is Mei you.   Mei you, pronounced, May yo, like in what you spread on a turkey sandwich, means "not have."  I have been posting a lot of pictures on my Q-zone, so my Chinese students and friends can see what I did during my time in China.  It is interesting for me to go back through the pictures and see what I did in China.  I will enjoy added pictures to the different files as I prepare for this talk.
I will give a talk that will be very similar to the final exam that I gave my students.  All my students had to teach me about 5 to 10 new words in Chinese and talk in English for 5 to 10 minutes.  It took a month to get them to actually understand the assignment.  These were college students but I found out that none of them had ever given a speech before, not even in Chinese.  The school system is different from ours, very different.  I told all my students to talk about something you are interested in and to practice you talk  until you are comfortable with it.  That is what I need to do, get my pictures ready and practice.  It will not be difficult to talk about China because I enjoyed the experience so much.  Did I mention I was going to have samples of hard liquor that I brought back from China.  I will have more details after the AWS planning meeting this week and will post the information on the blog and facebook.  I just hope the room will be big enough for everyone.

Q-zone and other things.

I have been busy trying to learn how to post pictures and blog on QQ, a Chinese networking system.  I am trying to share my life in the USA with the students and friends that I met in Xian.   I am starting to adjust to life back in the USA but more important I am busy on other projects and working towards my goal of retirement and moving to Silver City, New Mexico.  That is something I hope to do in June of 2012.  I will add a few things to this blog as time allows and things happen but I will be writing a new blog about a project that I am working on now, a solar coffee bean dryer for Guatemala.  I have been working to get a team of people at Illinois Central College involved with this project and we hope to come up with several models that could work.  What I know about coffee is that I like to drink it.  I hope to learn more about coffee, solar energy, Guatemala and more important meet interesting people that know more about all of the above than I do.  Once I get a name for the new blog and get it started I will let people know.

Link to a show that is similar to what we show at Xian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrUnEKE1hgQ&feature=related



While we were in Xian we show an outdoor show that was visually one of the best shows I have every seen.  They would not let you take any photographs but in the West Lake area they have a show that is similar and visually is very interesting.  I thought I would share this link with you.  The show in Xian was different but still done on the water.  They could raise and lower the floor and the different lights.  It is hard to describe but it was amazing.