Wednesday, May 18, 2011

One Pot. One Pan. Surviving in China

The past week has been amazing at points, devestating at others, bittersweet and so much fun.

Spent the weekend in Guilin and Yangshuo. Yangshuo is one the the most beautiful places I've ever been. The people were so nice, our hostel was amazing, the landscape was incredible and just I LOVED IT! Pictures will be posted soon, but I need to go through them first.

On Monday I found out that my high school, Charter Conservatory for Liberal Arts & Technology, may be shut down due to a ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court. They decided that the legislation approved in 2008 allowing the state to approve charter schools was "unconstitutional" so unless Charter Conservatory can go back to the old charter they won't be able to open in the fall. This is the same for 15 other schools around Georgia. It makes me so angry to think that people thought we were taking money from them when really we were finally just getting the money that we were suppose to get all along. There are also some saying that the reason that some local school boards won't approve charter schools is because they see them as competition. Competition? Since when was education about one school beating another? Yes, students should be encouraged to push their minds and a little healthy competition between students is great, but between schools all it does is bring down the overall education quality. Other schools are simply focused on getting the highest scores on standardized tests. This is just stupid.

Anyways, I'm working to create a facebook page and will be continuing to post updates here on what is going on. Students should be able to have a say in their education. That is what we are trying to save.

Today we had the farewell lunch for all the exchange students. The student union sang some really sweet songs and gave us a souvenir photo of all of us at the Ruins of St. Paul. The whole lunch was so much fun, and tonight we will continue the fun at Ladie's Night! Oh how I'll miss Wednesday nights in Macao.

Jatana and I made dinner tonight and were discussing the fact that for almost four months we have survived with one pan and one pot. We cook together most of the time and have found that we don't need to have a microwave or "instant" meals. It's great.

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