Mike Foley's blog
[Story and photos by Mike Foley, who accompanied the group: Published originally in the BYU-Hawaii “Newsroom” in July 2006]
Eleven BYU-Hawaii students and alumni, accompanied by two International Cultural Studies professors and their respective families, recently returned to campus after spending four weeks studying intensive Mandarin in Shanghai and another week visiting historic sites in Beijing. One of the faculty members called the trip a “life-changing experience.”
Blog entry and photos by Mike Foley
[NOTE: In this previously published blog entry, I describe part of my 2006 trip to Shanghai and Beijing as part of a BYU-Hawaii Study Abroad trip. In Shanghai our group of 11 students, accompanied by Drs. Chad Compton, David and Yi-Fen Beus and members of their families, stayed at the six-story Fudan University Guesthouse [picturted at right], which is located next door to the international student language center.
The guest house is essentially an old hotel (sorta’ like the former Laie Inn). I thought you might be interested in a few details about our lifestyle there: [Read more…]
Blog entry and photos by Mike Foley (containing excerpts from my previously published China journal, July 2009]:
When our BYU-Hawaii study group was there in July 2006, Shanghai — and I understand many of the other major urban areas of China — were (and presumably still are) undergoing a tremendous building boom. There were immense construction projects underway everywhere, some in time for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and others for the World Expo, which is scheduled to take place in Shanghai in 2010. All of this makes for some interesting contrasts. [Read more…]
[Blog and photos by Mike Foley: Originally published July 17, 2009]
Shanghai, 2006, with the Yellow River and Bund in the foreground
In July 2006 a small group of BYU–Hawaii students, professors and family, and I participated in the China Study Abroad program that took us to Shanghai for four weeks of intensive Mandarin and other coursework at Fudan University, followed by a week of touring around Beijing.
Though I have already forgotten most of the Mandarin we learned, the rest of the experience was unforgettable for me. I published quite a few of my impressions in the BYUH Alumni Blog at the time, but those are now well buried . . . and I thought I would reprise some of them here.
[More photo caption: The central commercial district pictured is just a small part of Shanghai’s skyline which, with a population of approximately 17 million when we were there, was said to be punctuated with over 2,000 high-rise buildings.] [Read more…]
In the days I served in Samoa as a Mormon missionary in the mid-1960s, there were still lots of fale or Samoan houses, just like at the Polynesian Cultural Center . . . and falevao or outhouses were everywhere, usually rickety things hanging over a beach. At high tide fish would come under them. Ebb […]
While watching several of our grandkids recently, I recalled something we taught our kids early-on . . . BUT FIRST, I apologize for being away from my blog for a while, just in case anyone out there in the blogosphere wondered if this site is still active. Okay, back to the grandkids: My wife, Sally, […]
I learned one of my most useful skills in life in the late 1950s when I was in the 8th grade at Roosevelt Junior High School in Salt Lake City, Utah — touch typing. For that I must thank a most unusual teacher: Miss Bertha Rappaport. Anybody who took beginning typing from her back in […]
[Story by Mike Foley, originally published online in the BYU-Hawaii Newsroom, March 17, 2005] BYU-Hawaii honored 26 labor missionaries during its Koolauloa Community Service Awards Program on March 17. The twenty-six represented several hundred volunteer laborers and supervisors who built the university campus, additions to the Hawaii Temple and Visitors Center, housing, chapels, and the […]
