The Plan

 Early Sunday morning I will fly from Portland to Vancouver to Beijing to Haikou. In Haikou, someone from Sea Turtles 911will meet me at the airport and we will take a bullet train all the way down the island to Xincun Fishing village where the organization is based on Hainan. As far as I know, my internship will include rehabilitation of sea turtles that have been recovered from poachers, helping plan and lead ecotourism and public education events, and also some research. Ten weeks later, I will go from Haikou to Kunming and start school.

星期天早上我就飞到中国。Portland 到海南没有直接的飞机所以我只好先去Vancouver，然后去北京，然后去海口。。。

I made this blog specifically because there is no facebook in China - a phenomenon that I plan on embracing - and I know my friends and family (that's you) will be hoping for updates. I am also planning on making entries in Chinese as a way to mark my improvement throughout the six months, and keep up my writing and reading during my internship. If you don't speak Chinese, don't worry because my English entries will (probably) cover the same ground and be more coherent. In general I want to post whenever I have something interesting to share, but my goal is to post at least once a week. I want to say a big thank you to my sister Lucy for helping me get started with this, and if you want to read HER blog, it is at:

lucywanders.blogspot.com

She is very cool. 

Goals for my Internship:

1. Improve my spoken Chinese to near fluency. In one month, I hope to feel mastery of all the material I have learned up to this point. I have been studying Chinese for so long that sometimes it takes a while for me to string all my words together and make them sound right. 

2. Gain a deeper understanding of Chinese customs and culture through interactions with locals and tourists where I'm staying.

3. Further my understanding of where conservation fits in modern Chinese society. From what I know now, sea turtles are poached all around China for their shells. Other turtle species around Asia are often sold to China for medicinal value, food, or other products that have traditional significance to Chinese culture. This is  a problem because there is currently no balance between tradition - which is very important - and the future of China's fragile ecosystems. 

4. Visit new places, adjust to the heat and humidity, and have a great time with some new friends yay!

实习的目标：

１。提高我的中文水平。我学中文学了那么长的时间但我还是有时候说不出来。我希望一个月以后能说得很流利。

２。通过跟中国人打交道更了解中国文化和习惯。

３。更了解中国社会与环保的矛盾。据我所知，某些人为了卖海龟的产品就把海龟砸死。还有各种各样的乌龟都被人偷了。这是因为中国的传统文化很重视乌龟的产品。这个现象使很多乌龟面临灭绝。

４。去我没去过的地方，交朋友，享受自己的生活！