Thursday, April 9, 2009

New Destinations

This summer's first trip is going to be different because I will be making my first visit to four countries: Kuwait, China, Slovakia and Ireland - and even in Spain I'll be visiting a new city in Barcelona. Except, even here it won't be all that bad because I have contacts in every one of the countries. It's not like my first visits to places like Kenya or Egypt where I didn't know a soul. Now that Rochelle has put together the itinerary I can buy guidebooks and begin looking around for hotels. Luckily China is already organized, and so is the UAE and the conference folks in Slovakia are taking care of everything because I'm speaking. I won't jinx the trip quite yet by pointing out that it is starting to come together (doh!).

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Summer Travel Redux

OK, it looks like the summer trip is coming together, although, as my poor, long-suffering travel agent can attest, these things are never easy.

26 May - Burlington to Kuwait to visit one of our newest Global Module partners, the Gulf University of Science & Technology (GUST). This will be my first visit to Kuwait. It should be really interesting. We ran our first GM with them this semester. The school segregates their classes by sex and we agreed to separate out the Champlain students as well - a great learning experience.

29 May - Kuwait to Dubai, where I'll be presenting at a Globalization conference and visiting our GM partner Zayed University.

1 June - Dubai to Beijing, where I'll be presenting at a Humanities conference and talking to some Chinese universities about the GMs. This will be my first trip to China.

11 June - Beijing to Xi'an, where I'll begin a CIEE Silk Road faculty development program - that's a whole other adventure and I'll post the itinerary for that later on.

23 June - Lanzhou, China t0 Bratislava, Slovakia (by way of Frankfurt and Prague) to present at an Ambiguity Conference and talk to the good folks at Catholic University of Ruzemberok about the GMs. Then there will be a little travel around Slovakia provided by the conference folks. This will be my first trip to Slovakia. From there will be taking the train to visit GM partner schools in Austria and Hungary.

5 July - Bratislava to Barcelona, Spain to present at a conference a visit one or two Spanish universities. I've been to Madrid a couple times and a side trip to Toledo, but this will be my first trip to Barcelona.

10 July - Barcelona to Dublin, Ireland. This is one of those odd trips that came together simply because of the peculiarities of travel. I had a layover in Dublin, so I decided to stretch it out a couple days and visit one or two Irish universities I've been talking to on GM business and take the opportunity to see Champlain's Dublin campus. I've never been to Dublin before.

14 July - Dublin to Burlington - and total collapse.