Teaching in China is an adventure. The students are great—sharp as tacks and as optimistic as can be. I have nine women and one shy young man in my class.

I try to adjust my lessons to their interests. For a second day we continued discussion about Maslow’s hierarchy and persuasion. The students worked in small groups to design a persuasive anti-litter campaign. I wish I had several million dollars and some excellent video people to give to them to make their inventive campaigns into reality.

By the way, they told me of an effective ad aimed at ending the trade in ivory. It shows a mother and baby elephant from behind and the baby is saying “Hey, Mom—guess what? I can feel my teeth growing in! Isn’t that great, I am growing up!” and the mother elephant is speechless—because of course growing teeth now makes her baby a potential victim of poachers wanting ivory. Clever strategy to tie the issue to maternal love.

Reworking lesson plans is exhausting. I came with 36 one-hour lesson plans and a few PowerPoint presentations. Each day I scramble to make new PPTs for the next day’s lesson—teach four hours and get ready for the next day.

And then my laptop suddenly had to do 49 updates. Updates to 49 programs all at once? It took a couple of hours. I assume that was when it was infiltrated with whatever computers get when in China—and the reason everyone said bring a laptop with nothing on it but what you need, and wipe it completely when you get home. Anyway, that meant I could not get my PPT done for next week’s trip to Zibo. We three ICMA teachers will travel to Zibo and make one-hour presentations to city leaders there. I was up late finishing it.

When Sunday rolled around, my teaching assistant and a couple of students accompanied me to downtown Beijing. Even in a Sunday, traffic was busy and the lines to get to Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City were very long. This group of dancers was delighted to pose with me!