Nirayama HS Visit

Last week I hosted two students (I have declined to put their names here as I am a little unclear on the privacy situation) from Nirayama High School in Japan. Our first stop after school was the supermarket to buy supplies for dinner. I told them to pick what they wanted to eat, and they slowly became more open about their preferences and opinions if only because they had to make the choices. Conveniently, they picked exactly what I wanted; the first moment of connection. At the end, they were surprised to find Hi-Chew in the checkout aisle, and we had a brief debate over the relative merits of the Strawberry and Green Apple flavors.

Back home, Sami, the students, my parents, and I ate dinner and some ice cream and then we kids went into the hot tub. The students were visibly more relaxed, reflected in their improved speaking or willingness to work around words they did not know. Personally, I enjoy jumping in the cold pool and quickly migrating back to the hot tub. It gives you a lovely tingly feeling and might even be good for you. For Sami and our two students on the other hand, this was not the highlight of the exchange, though perhaps some bonding occurred over the poor decision it was to follow me. I decided to push the envelope a little on the verbal communication front and asked them to tell a story they heard as children in Japan. While the question took a few tries to translate, their response was immediate. They clearly had stories just as culturally ubiquitous as ours.

They told us two stories. The first was about Momotaro or Peach Boy (named for the giant peach inside which he was found), who, along with a dog, a monkey, and a bird, defeated a goblin and claimed its treasure. The second, known as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, was about an old man who cut open some bamboo one day to find a girl inside. She grew up quickly, and one day people from the moon and took her back there. It turned out she was a princess from the moon who was sent to Earth as punishment for a crime she committed, as Earth was considered a "dirty" place. I guess they thought she had done her time, maybe. I was a little unclear on that part, but the narrative made sense; their articulation was an impressive exercise in the expression of complexity simply.

I had a chance to share over dinner, when we talked about the UN, its history, Model UN, and the current crises abroad. They were familiar with the UN and a lot of the vocabulary necessary to have a conversation about world power in Japanese, but not their English equivalents. Here, google translate was a useful tool. Sami and I would listen to a word, learn it, and next time incorporate it into our English sentence. An example would be: "The Kokuren (United Nations) can place seisai (sanctions) on the Isuramu Kokka (Islamic State) but not on Russia because Russia has a kyohi-ken (veto power)." While difficult, that exercise was fun for both parties but also allowed us to talk about more sophisticated things than food and homework (though we talked about those too).

I had talked a lot beforehand about this exchange being an opportunity to really connect with people who on the surface might seem totally distinct from you. When they got here, it became apparent that I had underestimated the sheer depth of understanding and connection that could be squeezed out of a single evening. Too some extent, the feeling is inexplicable, but I find it so meaningful to see myself in others. That is the definition of sympathy. In this sense, last week was quite a roller coaster. On Wednesday, I found my faith in the world lifted by an experience that reinforced my belief in universal commonality. On Friday, I was appalled by just how strongly some feel divides between themselves and their fellow human beings and just how much they will do to further divide the world. But on Saturday, my faith in humanity was reaffirmed by the stories of fareless taxi rides and the #PorteOuverte movement in Paris the evening of the attack. In a sense, I was reassured that the attempts to divide us are futile. Temporarily, we may close ourselves off to the world. Our government might pass laws that limit our freedom in the name of protecting it. We might commit to yet another violent conflict aimed at treating the symptoms of a problem and not its causes. But somewhere deep inside humanity there is an ingrained belief in compassion that can be suppressed but never conquered. And you know what, in a world where nothing seems certain, that's a pretty great thing to be certain about.

Reflection on the LiNK presentation and the RAND Conference

I recently attended an evening hosted by the group Liberty in North Korea (LiNK). The representative detailed LiNK's work in transporting North Korean defectors living illegally in China (where they are not considered refugees and are therefore subject to deportation back to North Korea) to nations in South East Asia. LiNK essentially pay smugglers to get the refugees over the border, at which point LiNK representatives join the refugees and take them to either the US or South Korea to be resettled. After finding homes for the former North Koreans, LiNK representatives continue to monitor and aid refugees in their adjustments to American/South Korean culture, both of which are vastly different from that of North Korea. LiNK performs all of these services at no cost to the refugee and makes no effort to gain from them any monetary "return" on LiNK's "investment."

The representative went on to describe how we students and social-media-savvy youth could aid LiNK. I have become a LiNK fundraiser and will be detailing the cause for and soliciting donations from my classmates, family, and friends in the near future. I have to say that the speech made by the rep was a little business-pitchy. It is likely that LiNK reps have some form of script they use to be effective and to promote fundraising, but I think I would have been more emotionally connected to and motivated by the speech had it been a little less structured.

By happy accident, this evening was scheduled around a week before a half-day conference that I attended at the RAND Corporation, a world-renowned think-tank based in Santa Monica. The conference was focused on the feasibility of Korean reunification, which represents the only realistic hope of prosperity for the North Korean populous should the current regime persist (and there is little indication that it will not). The depth and breadth of understanding demonstrated by the panel was as impressive as the titles of its constituents, among them the former Minister of Unification under the current South Korean leadership, a higher-up in the Ministry of Unification, and the Vice Presidents of two major, well-respected South Korean think-tanks (the Asan and Sejong Institutes). Too many fascinating things were discussed for me to try and summarize the conference here, but talk to me, and I will tell you about it in greater detail than you ever wanted. I'll give you a good quotation though. Coordinating the panel was Bruce Bennett, a senior analyst for the RAND Corporation. He posed this question (I am doing my best to quote him, but I suppose it is technically paraphrasing): "People always talk about the cost of unification, but what is the cost of division?"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH, right? Anyway, really cool stuff. Yeah, that's pretty much it for now.

Project Update

Hi all! The dream team composed of Gabi, Ms. Diederich, Ms. Chung, and myself had its first meeting this past Thursday. We discussed the rapidly approaching Nirayama school visit and possible improvements to be made to the protocol by which we structure visits from our sister schools. More specifically, we thought about which groups within the Poly community could be utilized in order to give the Upper School as a whole a better understanding of the daily lives, routines, and customs of our guests. For example, the French club and those in the French program could inform Poly students about our visitors from Saint-Martin. That way, when the students arrive, the whole community would be ready with a remedial comprehension of their culture, making the guests feel more at home and allowing for students to focus their short time with the students on conversations of greater depth. We think the Mandarin students, especially those who went to China with Poly or have been on their own, would be able to serve the community in a similar way when we host students from Beijing in the winter.
We are still a little unclear on exactly how we will go about making improvements to the hosting system, but we have a few thoughts. First, as mentioned above, we believe that getting more Poly students involved and more information disseminated is key. Second, we want to use social media to allow Poly students to contact their counterparts abroad both before and after hosting them. We are also keen on the idea of Poly students creating questions to ask their guests based on the information we provide to them. Such questions would cover a range of topics from breakfast food to politics. There is much to do and to iron out, but we are off to a good start!

Reflection on "The Good Lie" (no underline or italics possible, sorry)

On the evening of September 21, I had the pleasure of attending a GIP event that chronicled and analyzed the fascinating and heart-wrenching story of the Lost Boys and Girls of South Sudan. It began with a screening of The Good Lie, a film that shed light on the difficulties that Lost Boys and Girls had with their adjustment to American culture and society. I won't recap the history of the Sudanese Civil War or the plot of the film here, but I encourage you to google them if you are unfamiliar. I certainly was unfamiliar with their story before the GIP scholars began to study them, and the tragedy of the Lost Boys' and Girls' childhoods was simultaneously shocking and enthralling. Their story reads like a particularly disturbing work of fiction, mostly because it is impossible to imagine that any real human being could subject a person to what they went through, not to mention a child.

After the film, there was a question and answer session with the screenwriter, Margaret Nagle, and Kuoth Wiel, who played Abital. I was a little worried about it, as such sessions are often dominated by questions from faculty or shallow questions from students or simply silence. Happily, it ran smoothly, and I found it very insightful. Although I was unable to ask anything (granted, my handraising was timid at best), all the questions I wanted asked were asked. There were only a couple questions from the faculty. Students' questions were almost unfailingly useful, and there was a good balance drawn between questions on the movie-making process, Kuoth's life story, and the history and current state of political instability in South Sudan. It even offered opportunity for self-reflection. A question about Kuoth's biggest instance of culture shock upon reaching the US, meant to relieve tension, illicited immediately "The snow!" and subsequently a critique of our society's cult of individualism. "Saint Margaret," the Sudanese-American community's name for Ms. Nagle, recounted the emotional reactions of Lost Boys and Girls brought together to review the script. They talked for hours alone then brought Margaret in to ask her, "How did you know?" Margaret knew the facts because she had done her research, about ten years worth, but that was not what they meant. Facts do not a story make. What struck them and me was the empathy and emotional connection conveyed in the script. The final product is astounding in its ability to affect the audience. We Poly students could not be more culturally or geographically separated from the Lost Boys, yet we all in those two hours felt a connection to them only attributable to universal empathy. Such a powerful connection was encouraging, because that is exactly what is needed if we wish to help the Lost Boys and Girls, South Sudan, or, realistically, anyone.

Ms. Nagle left us with a mission, to examine and to monitor the way we treat people. We must actively cultivate an ability to accept and to celebrate our differences. The vitality of this practice in an environment like South Sudan, recovering from a cultural genocide, is unmistakeable, but it is an issue here as well, a fact that is important to be reminded of occasionally, lest we think we have overcome adversity. And I am eager to start or rather to continue in earnest, an attitude attributable to The Good Lie's rare ability to be at once shocking, thought-provoking, entertaining, and inspiring. I fear this first GIP event has set the bar rather high.

This is a man-made lake that was created when the government put in the dam on the right side. The valley used to be inhabitable, and there used to be several villages in the valley, but the Chinese government wanted to build the dam, so they moved all of the villages out of that area, built the dam, and flooded the valley. This theme of moving people to accommodate national will, obviously something that happens in the US to some extent, seemed to be a common one in China. When we went to see the terra-cotta warriors, we found out that the government had moved all of the villagers out after the discovery and built these big high-rises to accommodate them outside of the excavation zone.

This is a picture of yaks grazing in a high-elevation valley. Quite a few yaks, but most of them were positioned along the roadside as photo opportunities for tourists, so it was a nice change for us to see them in a normal setting rather than staged as moneymaking devices.

This photo was taken at the top of a 4800 m pass through which we travelled during our nine-hour car ride between Lhasa and Xigatse, Tibet's two largest cities. It's of one of the sacred lakes of Tibet. As you descend towards the lake, you see many villages dotting the coast. One would assume that they rely on the lake for fish, and indeed there are many fish in the lake, but, because it's a sacred lake, the villagers are forbidden from fishing in it. We eventually reached an observation point along the edge of the lake, and we saw these Chinese tourists throwing pottery tied in the traditional scarves that are given to travelers upon entry (to say "welcome") and departure (to say "good luck"), and we thought, "Oh that that's kind of a shame, given the lake is so clear, and you can see the stuff everywhere, but maybe it has some significance." So we asked our guide, and he replied, "no, they were just littering." So that was sad. I must say that the tourists there did not always seem concerned with the preservation of natural beauty.

Hi all! My family and I took a trip to China this summer for three weeks. Needless to say, it was incredible! I will be posting photos over the next few days with captions to add context, but to start here are a few big takeaways from the trip.

In Beijing, we met one of my Dad's former graduate students, Yu. Over lunch, he made some interesting points about the Chinese people's attitude towards its government and its economy as he sees it.

He mentioned the fact that, within China, China is not thought of as a major superpower in the global stage, the way the United States and most areas of the world seem to think of it.

He talked about the drawbacks of quick periods of growth such as the one in China that now seems to be drawing to an end: for example, the speed at which many large-scale housing developments were put up, the drawback of which was relatively shoddy construction. They were built to be short-lived, so all of these houses that were put up five or so years ago are going to have to be rebuilt in another 10 years, and maybe that will create a lot of jobs, but it will also be a giant drain on the Chinese economy.

Another thing that came up pretty often was the multifaceted nature of the Chinese government. We tend to think of governments' actions as black-and-white, right or wrong, but there is always a trade-off that occurs, even with the invasion of Tibet, which many outside China regard as purely bad.

Our guide, a Tibetan, despite what he could and couldn't say is a state-controlled tour guide, clearly did not view the Chinese government completely favorably, yet was still able to see the value in the contributions that it had made. For instance, he claimed that rural Tibetan farmers used to bathe approximately once every year before the Chinese invasion and that now it's around once or twice a month. In the sanitation department, that's still not amazing, but it's a clear sign of improvement and is also representative of the giant growth in infrastructure since the beginning of the Chinese occupation. Tibet is covered in new roadways, bridges, tunnels, hotels, housing systems, and schools that owe their existence to the Central Government. But we also learned that, after a large protest in Lhasa over the Chinese government's treatment of Tibetans in 2008, The government confiscated all Tibetans' passports. Many temples, though they appeared old, were actually built in the 1980s and 1990s, or rather they were rebuilt after being destroyed in 1959 during the Cultural Revolution and the invasion of Tibet. On the other hand, their reconstruction was state-funded.

My conclusion is that the Chinese government was very good for China as a developing nation. In Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck comments on the trade-off between the large scale corruption and greed within the railroad building companies and the fact they built the railroads, I think that's a very good analogy for the Chinese government. They were necessary when China was still developing, and it is still developing (but not nearly as much), so now they've been forced to change. They will continue to be forced to change because there's no longer an end so vital that it can fully justify the means. So the people are calling for change, an end to corruption, a greater amount of freedom and the upholding of their civil liberties. China just isn't doing enough good for its people anymore to justify the bad.

I also found myself thinking about the Chinese economy, and I was very fascinated by the government's artificial stabilization of the RMB. For those unfamiliar with macro economics, like myself, I offer my self-concocted, little-researched, somewhat unsubstantial explanation:

Countries' economies, in theory and according to international economic guidelines, work kind of like a sine curve. When their currency is valued relatively low, they're attractive exporters, so more people buy from them, but, as more people buy from them, their exchange rate increases, so they're not as attractive anymore, so less people buy from them, so their currency falls, and then they're attractive again.

What China has done is essentially break the rules. They keep their currency valued low so that they remain attractive exporters, so, instead of a sine curve, their economy grows as a linear function.

And, while many countries protest because China is essentially cheating, other countries keep buying from China because at the end of the day it's cheaper.

So it remains attractive because it exports basic goods for low prices and gains wealth. But as it gains wealth, it moves from a developing country to a developed country, and developed countries are expected to treat their workers better, and treating their workers better means paying them more, which creates national standards that raise prices, which means it's less attractive to foreign markets. For that reason and since they haven't specialized their industries, IE producing things in a unique way rather than just a cheaper way, foreign markets will just move to other nations once China becomes too expensive. China's function is no longer linear, but sloping worryingly toward m=0. In other words, if China does not specialize, its economy might fail. So just specialize, right? Easier said than done.

According to Yu, the slow in Chinese growth, not a recession but a move toward stasis, has caused a lot of panic among Chinese people. That fear, combined with the average middle to upper class Chinese person's purported lack of involvement in the stock market in comparison to the average middle class American's (many have 401k's or some interest-earning investment system), means that, while there exists a perceived need for specialization, for China to find its economic niche, there is little time and even less capital with which to do so. This looming issue, plus the housing problem, means that China's economy, thought by the average American to be strong and getting stronger, may actually be fairly precariously perched.

The following is my application essay for the Global Initiatives Program:

I have been blessed throughout my life to be able to travel with such variety and frequency. From Switzerland to Cambodia, from Japan to Australia, it seems that everywhere I turn there is a new miracle waiting for me. It is this mind set, not merely a sense of adventure but an undying curiosity, that I have been fortunate enough to cultivate over my childhood. The joy I feel when traveling, born out of the beauty of the unknown, manifests itself in every part of my life, effecting my love of learning, connecting, exploring regions close by, and dreaming of regions far away.

My love of traveling is linked in no small part to my passion for seeing the world through another’s eyes. This idea sounds rather cliché, I know, but I thoroughly believe in its vitality.  As a teenager, I am watching the state of the world through the eyes of someone old enough to see its faults but young enough to hope for its improvement. I find that we suffer from a collective lack of sympathy. Sure, around Christmas when donations soar, one could say we are at least empathetic, but we give as much for our own need to feel charitable as we do for the needs of the African family to which we give half a goat or maybe 37 cents a day. When we hear of problems in the news, a hurricane or a terrorist attack or the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls, they are grave problems, we feel empathy, but they are not our problems.

            I have a different take on the matter. In Senegal, I made a seashell silhouette of Seth Calvin with a throng of small girls. They could not understand my words, but they saw in my actions a kindred spirit. I often reflect on the simple beauty of that moment. We started out on our separate seashell projects, but one by one, each girl began to unite, filling in Seth’s outline in the sand. Soon we ran out of shells in the yard, and Sophie, our kind host, pointed us in the direction of a stash outside the house. Walking back from the shell pile with an improvised pouch in my shirt, I looked down to see that one of the girls (probably around seven years old) had discreetly taken my hand and was looking at me with the indescribable joy of youth. It is difficult to vocalize the connection I felt in that moment, but it was a complete one. How could I see her or anyone else as separate from me when our connections were so clearly recognizable? Usually all one can expect is a smile or maybe just a particularly meaningful stare, but these instances of connection are as common as they are meaningful, and I treasure them as they remind me of my place as a part of something larger than myself.

An understanding of the world as my world is what I offer the Global Initiatives Program. Ironically, the reason I want to join the program is that what I offer is already there. The Program prides itself on building members of a global community, global citizens, which is why I think that the “global scholar” certificate might be a misnomer. After all, it seems to me that the goal of the program is not to separate oneself from the world to study it; the objective is to become as close as possible to the world around you. That focus is what I love about the Program, the opportunity to integrate myself into someone else’s world, through a talk or a movie or a performance, without ever leaving my own. I value the Program because I desperately want build understanding of my world, not a school or a city or a nation but everything and everywhere. The Global Initiatives Program to me represents a desire to learn and to experience, the chance to find myself in others, the chance to find the world and maybe, in some small way, change it.

My Profile

Hello Readers!

I'm Sean, a current junior at Polytechnic School and a rising Global Scholar. I have studied French for six years, and I am proficient and reasonably close to fluent in the language. The GIP classes I have taken so far or plan to take before graduation at Poly are as follows: World Cultures: Middle East, Film History and Application, French IV Honors, International Relations, and AP French. My drive to complete this program stems from my love of connection with different cultures, a passion that has played out in my work in Model UN and, in a limited way, through my thus far rather unimpressive work as French Club co-president.

I have also cultivated this yearn for understanding through my trips abroad throughout my life, especially through my time in Senegal last summer and a Poly exchange program in Paris two years ago. On both trips, I found that my understanding of French allowed me to attain a more nuanced and complete understanding of the similarities and differences that existed between my culture and those of my host families. Being able to speak the language facilitated not only my efforts to get to know a new culture but also my families' efforts to get to know mine. In short, it removed a barrier and allowed for an exchange.

I have personally enjoyed exploring this theme, the idea that exchange is not a one-way street, and I look forward to sharing this idea through my GIP project. Rather than simply comparing and contrasting our environment with someone else's, I would be eager to provide an opportunity for students to give as well as to receive insight into global culture. A project in a similar vein would be Kelly P's. I would like to expand that vision by including the Mandarin, French, and Spanish classes in an exchange with sister schools across the globe. This concept is a large and quite possibly unreachable goal, but I look forward to its development and my own over the coming year!

For more on Poly's exchange with the global community, visit http://globalpanthers.ning.com

Credits for my background image go to http://www.flytag.co/images/i-mainbg03.jpg