{"id":1963,"date":"2014-09-02T15:42:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T08:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=1963"},"modified":"2014-09-02T15:50:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T08:50:10","slug":"opening-day-9114","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=1963","title":{"rendered":"Opening Day, 9\/1\/14"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is an early morning for me. There haven\u2019t been too many days I\u2019ve left the house before Judy, but today is one of them. It\u2019s the first day of school for all the Chinese schools. Beijing #4 is having opening ceremonies at the main campus. They\u2019ve asked us to arrive at 7:30, so I leave the apartment at 6:45. I get a taxi and off we go. The traffic is really bad. Later in the day, on the CCTV news, there is lots of discussion about how bad the traffic is around China on the first day of school. I would believe it. We were in the middle of lots of \u201cstop and go\u201d traffic, mostly \u201cstop.\u201d<\/p>\n

I finally arrive at the main campus around 7:45. The rehearsal for the student groups is still going on. The ceremony begins on time at 8:00. It begins with a performance by the incoming male students. They\u2019ve been doing military training for the last two weeks, and they demonstrate some of their martial arts training and marching skills. It\u2019s followed by a flag presentation and flag-raising by student groups and singing the Chinese National Anthem and the Beijing #4 School Song. Next are a series of speakers, including a student, former faculty, current faculty, and the principal. The ceremony finishes around 9:00 am.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1723\"<\/a>

Pictures from the opening ceremonies. The faculty was seated nearest the camera. The students fill up the rest of the field. Parents are at the very back.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"IMG_1722\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"IMG_1717\"<\/a>

Students demonstrating martial arts training<\/p><\/div>\n

\"IMG_1716\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Classes at my campus start after lunch. I don\u2019t have a class until Thursday,, so I\u2019m homeward bound. It takes a while to find a taxi, and I finally get home around 10:00 am. I spend the rest of the day working on plans for my classes. I\u2019ve got a lot of material from last year, and I saved everything, but I need to formulate a better plan to present it. We\u2019ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is an early morning for me. There haven\u2019t been too many days I\u2019ve left the house before Judy, but today is one of them. It\u2019s the first day of school for all the Chinese schools. Beijing #4 is having … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1963"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1968,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions\/1968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}