China and Australia

The past few weeks I traveled for work to China. In Beijing we participated in the APAIE, the Asia Pacific Association of International Education. The location of the conference was next to the "Birds Nest", the main Olympic Stadium of the Games hosted by Beijing in 2012.

At the conference many countries promote their education systems and many existing and new partnerships are discussed and presented. Here are a few of the country booths: a splashing one from the Australians (who will host the APAIE in 2016), the modest booth of Canada, even my small country of Holland was there, and the Catalonians assumed people know they are part of Spain and Europe (even though their booth design was one of the most eye-catching)...

Beijing had nice clear skies this time (compared to the horrible smog I experienced in October last year). On the Sunday I had some time to walk around near our hotel and hereby a few shots:

The rest of the days were filled with meetings at several of our partner institutions in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Some impressions of the campuses, the meetings and the very nice welcome signs they always put up:

On the way to China I flew via Brisbane in Australia to do a short two day evaluation visit of the Peace & Conflict Resolution Master degree program offered at Queensland University to 10 fellows sponsored by the Rotary International Foundation each year (same as I did in January at Uppsala University in Sweden). It was such a busy few days that I forgot to make photos other than these two of the river which flows through the city and one of the fun little restaurants I was hosted in...

 Talking about food, I have to show a few of the photos I took in Beijing when we walked past the daily famous food market: all sort of things there including cooked scorpions....

The hosting in China was again superb and we had a variety of work lunches and dinners where the food "just kept coming" on the typical traditional moving round plate in the middle of the table:

Now back for a while again in Niagara at home and in Toronto at work. Lots of projects, partnerships and student recruitment work to oversee and coordinate. Seneca is an exciting and happening place!

Never a boring moment...

Sleeping is not on the list of suggested activities, but student life is exhausting as we all know.
A day in the life of the corridors of the Seneca campus buildings.

Recently we hosted visitors who got to see the flight simulators for one of the aviation programs at Seneca. Brought back memories from my six years of work at Fokker Aircraft in Amsterdam and the travels for that company in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Spain (1983-1988).

The simulated landing was at the island airport in downtown of Toronto. You can see the CN Tower on the simulated screen. Our visitor landed well (with some help) but then stopped paying attention and drove off the runway. Some good laughs resulted. Fun thing to do with visitors.

I had lunch with James Orbinski at Massey College (University of Toronto) where he is a Senior Fellow and teaches on international health & politics. Was great to see him again. And despite the fact that he hangs out every now and then with highly ranked folks (see this photo of 2006), he told me that he makes every morning breakfast for his wife and three kids. Next meeting at his house!

Off to Australia and China the coming two weeks...

Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and St Lucia

Today we met with Tanzanian colleagues about a potential project. Yesterday I was hosting a Chilean representative of the Ministry of Education, and Tuesday I was busy with two visitors from Denmark. And a few days before that we were "stuck" for a day during a snow-storm in Istanbul.....

That was on the way back from a week of work in Kyrgyzstan with the University of Central Asia, an initiative of the world wide Aga Khan Foundation which is very active in educational development projects. In the Central Asian region they undertake a wide variety of projects and programs.

 We met with the senior management team of UCA in the company of the Canadian Ambassador who is based in Kazakhstan while overseeing Canadian funded initiatives in the region. We visited a number of high schools in the region to assess what the needs would be for a new Foundation Year at the UCA for students from rural areas who will need an upgrade in English, Math and Science. We might get the contract to develop the curriculum for such a Foundation Program.

In between meetings we did get a chance to see some of the sites of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and we took this team photo in front of Lenin...

The week before I was in St Lucia in the Caribbean for project coordination. Seneca's Early Childhood Education program team is delivering a project there with a local college.

Presentations and meeting and project planning filled the week quickly...

We gave an update to the national Minister of Education about our work together (for context: St Lucia has a population of about 170,000). But still....

The team worked hard during the day and during the evenings had fun together.

We enjoyed the many types of fruits the island offers as well as a few hours on the beach here and there. And we almost boarded one of the many cruise ships stopping every day at the island....