Summer 09 Travel

Well, it looks like it's time to try and put together the first of two extended summer trips. This is one of the situations where my travel agent, Rochelle, just dreads the appearance of an email from me. Essentially, I need to take off in late May for a quick trip through Kuwait, to visit the Gulf University of Science & Technology on Global Module business, and then move on to Dubai to present at a conference. Then from Dubai I fly on to Beijing, China to present at a conference in early June, and then have a little down time for exploring the city before my Faculty Internationalization Initiative funded CIEE trip begins later in the month. Several of us are heading to China this year (last year's Middle East trip was FII funded, and there are several Champlain folks who are headed back to the Middle East for a refresher trip, but I don't think I'll make it back to the Middle East until next Fall at the earliest - I think my late summer trip will probably be to Africa to visit Global Module partner schools, or maybe attend a conference related to a government grant proposal I'm part of), although, typically, everyone else is taking off on a CIEE faculty development tour of southeast China, and I'm the only one headed to central China on a Silk Road trip. Now, to get there I need to fly to Xi'an from Beijing to meet the tour, which will then take off for a couple weeks (more on that later, it sounds very cool). The tour will end in Lanzhou, which will then mean a return trip to Beijing. All of this has to be done seemlessly and quickly (something Rochelle excells at) because I have about one travel day from the end of the tour to get to Bratislava, Slovakia to present at a conference - and then I'll be dragging my sorry, tired body home. Believe me, none of this is as exciting as it sounds. First off, filling out the paperwork for the China visa.