Life in the Fast Lane

Hong Kong Airport (re-posted by request May 20, 2009)

This is going to be a short one as I only have a few minutes until I need to catch my flight to Seoul. It has been a busy two days here in East Asia. Monday I visited four schools in Singapore and did just about every kind of school visit there is at about every different kind of school. First off I attended a College Fair with about 40 other schools at Singapore American School. Singapore American is the largest international school in the world! I met a lot of nice kids, but didn't really have much time to interact with them as the entire junior and senior class participated in the fair. Then it was off to Anglo Chinese Junior College, where I did my least favorite kind of visit: the table outside the cafeteria where students pop by and ask questions. It's great for the students who already know about Oberlin, but it is hard to interest students who may be less familiar. Still, we always appreciate the opportunities that schools afford us. We know that there are lots of demands on the schools and their students, and sometimes this is all that works. My third visit was my favorite kind. At the United World College of SE Asia, I had the chance to do a presentation to about 15 interested kids, and then had a little bit of time to conduct mini interviews with some of the most interested ones. I was shocked that one of the students was actually the daughter of someone I met once in Indonesia; it really is a small world! My final visit of the day was at Raffles Junior College where I just had time to squeeze in a brief presentation to a dozen or so students before racing to the airport to catch my flight to Hong Kong.

After navigating the airport express into Kowloon and a taxi to my hotel it was after 1:00 am before I got to sleep. But duty called and at 7:30 I was out of my hotel and off to a meeting at a local university. Fourteen hours later I had visited four more schools and was back on the train to the airport where I'm writing this. No college fair today, but I had two "table in the hallway" visits and one of each of the other kinds. Well, I really have to go get on a plane again. It's almost midnight and I'll be sleeping through my flight to Seoul where I start all over tomorrow. I bet you didn't know the lengths we go to to help students learn about Oberlin. Hopefully if I haven't dropped from exhaustion, I'll write more tomorrow!