Community Service Day

The weekend has come again, this time a lot faster than the previous one. While we are diving deep into our projects with intense dialogue, brainstorming and debates about objectives, findings and initial recommendations in collaboration with our client, we are also bonding with them. This is really what it is all about - relationship and trust. We are eating together  - Thursday for the famous 'hot pot' (which is similar to fondue) and Friday our client came to work with us at our hotel and we had very simple but tasteful noodles. Nothing like food to tie people together.

Hot pot. From left clockwise: Kris (translator), mr Sun, Mrs Ban, 

Mrs Zhong, Mrs Jin, Donna , me

Back to the headline, today was Community Service Day. Through various interactive activities we were offered an in-depth understanding of the Chinese community Chong De Fang's daily life including of course to provide our service to them.

Telling children of the community about Denmark, our Queen, HC Andersen and much more.

The activities varied from language and culture, dancing, career planning to Chinese calligraphy, handwork and creation of dumplings - which we of course ate afterwards.

After the lunch the gift exchange ceremony was conducted.  So glad that I brought extra gifts!
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Seemed so easy when the sweet Chinese showed me how to roll out the dough for the dumplings!

Irena, Marianne and Cecilia dumpling rolling - or trying to is rather the correct words

Our clients Mrs Ban and Mrs Jin had done a great job co-arranging the day with our international partner VSO.

They all really like my red wrapping :-)

 

Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

Chinese sayings and general ways of expression are so much different from the culture I know of.  It is as though everyone is embraced by these wise words of which some  probably has been passed on for generations and some from nowadays.

In the NGO and volunteer society the general idea is to take care of those who are lesser fortunate in life or who is challenged in different ways. So the kindness and appreciation for those who work within this area are doubled. Everywhere my CSC colleagues and I have been here in Xi'an with all the different kind of groups of people we have met, we have been presented with this very deep felt attitude of kindness because we are here to help others. That makes me feel very proud of my company, my CSC colleagues and our international organization who has sent us here!

In the last couple of days we have done more interviews and are starting to have a more and more clear picture of the challenges our client is facing. The data gathering is almost done and we are working on the issues and hypotheses so that we can present our first shot of suggestions for solutions by the end of the week.
I went for a walk today after work and along the roads there are many small shops and restaurants out in the open. The food here is so good, nothing like the Chinese food that is sold in Denmark - much more delicious and very much cheaper. For example today at lunch I had a meal in the street with vegetables, rice and meat for only 10 yuan which is approximately 12 DKK.
The picture below shows what you can also buy in the streets

Anyone for a goat?

Although I think that I have never been photographed so much per day in my entire life, strangely enough I do not have pictures from the last couple of working days, in stead I have added a few from our trip to the Terracotta Warrior museum.
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Abhay trying to catch the noodles with chop sticks - a challenge for nearly all in the team.

The largest exhibition of the terracotta warriors

Well, that's me with some of the warriors

High ranking officer

You cannot use single words to express kindness to other people - it is like water that benefits us but does not need anything back

I cannot believe that we have been here for a week already.

Time is really running fast and as I am getting familiar with Xi'an and the Chinese people I am getting more and more exited about being here.  Although I've tried to prepare from home, it is really very different to be here than I expected. 

The people are really nice and welcoming everywhere I go. We might not always understand each other, but with a little gesticulations and some Chinese and English words I manage. The older people are very much about history and ancestors. For example we had an interview in the office with one of the donators to our organisation Mr Chang, who told us that You cannot use single words to express kindness to other people.It is like water  - it benefits us, but it does not need anything back.

The city is both ancient as well as very modern.8 million people lives here if you include the suburbs - that is almost twice the people as in all Denmark. That was obvious on today's trip to the city. Donna, Cecilia and I rented bikes and rode on the City Wall and then went to the Muslim Quarter and did some shopping. I wish I could send an image that could give you an idea of the atmosphere there - the sounds, the smells, the noise, the heat...
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Biking on Xi'an City Wall - 13 km

Muslim quarter - shopping

First days with our client

After the formal kick-off and initial meeting we drove to visit our client Tuesday morning. The NGO organization works out of a small office in an office building 40 minutes away from our hotel, so we need to be transported there.
We were welcomed by so many very friendly people; our main contact ms Ban , the two permanent staff members ms Jin and ms Zhong, 3 interns, 4 volunteers and 4 persons from local media. Other people (donators, a member from the standing committee, volunteers etc) were coming and going during the day, so the office was totally packed - must admit that the working office back in Denmark seemed suddenly more quite and calm after this experience, although it is usually very crowded and loud too.

After introductions of everybody ms Ban presented the reason why we are there again to everybody, lots of pictures were taken.
It is very clear that Ms Ban is passionate about the organization (which she by the way is working full time  in as a volunteer) in the way she is describing and telling everything to us. Kris (our interpreter) is working very hard to give us as much details as possible when translating for us.

Over the coming period of time we are interviewing different stakeholders from their internal and external environment as well as staff, students and volunteers to learn more about their challenges. Today we interviewed 4 interns who all have worked for a period of 1-5 months in the organization, they gave us a lot of useful information.

There is a lot of research for us to do over the coming period, and I feel somewhat insecure still about scope, timeline etc. Will we ever make it, I wonder? It seems that the two other sub teams already nailed a lot more than us.. or maybe I am just imaging things.
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In the office - this is late afternoon so most of the people have gone again

Nice little cake shop just outside our office

Anybody that knows me and my passion about cakes will not find this picture out of the ordinary :-)

Down to work and first impressions

After the relaxing weekend where the IBM CSC team, the fantastic interpreters and the VSO team got to know each other we are really getting into our different projects.

The official kick off was held Monday  - everybody was unrecognizable in their dresses, suits and ties after the shorts and t-shirts we wore during the weekend. 

Looking at pictures from previous CSC teams kickoffs I guess ours was pretty 'normal', but since neither of us have ever tried this before I do think that I was not the only one feeling a bit overwhelmed.

We started with IBM and VSO (our NGO partner) presentations, then each of the IBM CSC team members presented ourselves including the motivation for having applied into the program. Last  but certainly not least our 3 different organizations presented themselves and gave a short introduction into the challenges they see and would like us to help them with.

At lunch we had the first chance to be in direct talk with the organization that we will be working with for the next month. Fantastic people, especially the spokesperson who has a very eager and colorful personality. We had the chance to ask some of our many questions and we had a fantastic first day.  
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Our team listening and debating

Our organization going through their organizational structure - Kris translating

It's supposed to show a flower - that opens up (working together)

Touristic view of Xi'an

As I told you Saturday was the day for a small sightseeing in Xi'an. I was very anxious to get out of the hotel to see more of the town. This is actually what I really like the best when visiting new places, new cultures - go out and explore!


For those of you who are not familiar with this part of China (including myself - but I am doing my best to learn) Xi'an actually has the most complete city wall that has survived in China, as well as being one of the largest ancient military defensive systems in the world.
It is truly amazing to walk on top of the city wall, trying to picture what it must have been like as a soldier defensing the city from the enemies.
Read more here http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shaanxi/xian/citywall.htm

From the left: James, Donna, Cecilia, Marianne, Wagner, Lugia, Irena, Vince, Junpeng, Abhay

Big Wild Goose Pagoda was first built in the year 652 in the Tang Dynasty. Xuanzang, a prominent Buddhist scholar of the time, planned to have a huge stone pagoda built to house the Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures he had brought back from India. 
The Da Ci'en temple in front of the Pagoda is a holy place and still used by monks. We were lucky enough to witness a meditation session there.

One of the Buddahs from the temple

 My name written in Chinese calligraphic. The artist asked my how I am pronouncing my name and from the sound of it he drew a horse, a leaf and a female sign. I also learned that my Chinese zodiac is the dragon - a very powerful animal in traditional Chinese history.

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Finnaly arrived!

After many hours of traveling I finally arrived in Xi'an airport where Kris were there to receive me.

We drove to the hotel where we checked in, I am staying at the 15th floor - unfortunately it was already dark, so hard to really see the view, a lot of lights  though and traffic noise - it is Friday evening!

Just a short while ago we greeted Vince, Irena and Wagner who were the last to arrive from their airport  - now everybody from the China30 CSC team has arrived safely. Great to see everybody including all interpreters, Poul and Shen Shuo 'live' in stead of just hearing their voices on the phone.

Tomorrow will be a sightseeing day in Xi'an - looking forward to that.

Good night!


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Less than a week to go.....

So the time for take off is getting very close now.

Everybody on the IBM CSC team is very exited and looking so much forward to be traveling to our working adventure in Xi'an.

Currently we have received the actual assignments including which organization that we will be working with during the 4 weeks. We have been split up in 3 sub teams and will work independently of each other with each our 'own' organization.
I am so fortunate to be teaming up with Donna from IBM Atlanta and Andy from IBM Australia. Fantastic people with various competences that will prove to be very useful for both our project as well as for my own continuous learning. The dream team :-) 

Other than continuing to get prepared with the rest of the team and VSO (the independent international development organization who has arranged the assignments together with IBM Corporate Service Corps.   I have spent the last couple of week  trying to get the logistics ready. There are so many things that I need to take with me to China, yet it is literally impossible to pack everything that I would like to bring with me, so I must settle for the basics (and you know what that means for a woman!)

As the time for my departure approaches a lot of things are going through my mind - how to best hand over my 'day job' to my colleagues, how my family will do without me (they will of course!), how will I do without them, how will I manage such a big change in everyday life with such a large difference in culture, ways of working and so forth. Basically I am there where I cannot prepare more mentally - it  is time to go!


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