The Roving Reporter

Jet lag preparedness training...

Posted by: Amy Reiter

Sunday, March 4, 2007 3:57 PM

Less than 24 hours and I'm off! The list of un-fun things that had to be done before I left has gotten shorter, and now I'm filling in that time with feeling stomach butterflies over all the challenges I'm expecting in the next few days.

I love getting out of my cultural comfort zone, but it always makes me a bit nervous. What if I break some etiquette rule I had no idea existed and offend people? And Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, so the same word can have four different meanings. I might want to say one nice, normal thing and say something completely ridiculous instead. With the three Chinese lessons I've taken so far, though, I probably won't be able to say much at all, at least not the first few days. My plan is to smile a lot, study my Chinese flash cards, and hopefully listen well enough that I'll get some of it eventually.

I've gotten the same few questions from people in the last few days, so here are some Qs and As:

What's Rotary?
This is the most common question I've heard, by far. I'm not yet a Rotary member, but before I applied to go on the trip, I checked into the organization, which has branches around East Central Illinois and around the world. The main tenets of Rotary are to be ethical in your profession and to help other people both in your community and in the larger world. And they're helping eradicate polio. They're also about helping people of different cultures to better understand and befriend each other - two goals of our trip.

Do I know the other people in my group?
A little. We first met about five weeks ago, when we were selected to go on the trip. Then it felt like every time we planned to meet there was a snowstorm. So we had a few orientation meetings where we talked about what expectations will be for us and what we can expect, and now we're off. I also got to learn about my teammates when I wrote an article about our trip. Go to http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2007/03/02/five_young_professionals_to_spend_a_month_touring_taiwan if you want to check it out.

Beyond that, I'm thinking the 24ish hours between plane rides and layovers should help get us acquainted.

Where's Taiwan?
Head east and keep going. When you get to China, go southeast until you get to a big island. If you hit Australia, you've gone too far.

Have more questions? Send them along and by the time I read them in a couple of days, I might even know the answers.

-Amy

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