Up, Up, & Away

Hello, everyone!  A few time zones ago, I set off on a journey to the other side of the world.  For the next ten days, I will be visiting Taiwan to teach middle school students.  I'll share more of what I'll be teaching in later posts, but there is so much to tell you about our journey today.  By the time you get to the end of this entry, you'll feel like you have a whole reading log entry completed as well as a lesson in mathematics.  Therefore, I have a deal for you.  Each person that reads and comments on every blog post that I write over the next 10 days will receive a week without a reading log during the first week of school.  Stayed tuned at the end for directions on how to comment.

Remember Google Earth?  I am that little plane flying around the globe today.  Before we get there, let me back up a bit.  I was awake bright and early to meet at CUW (Concordia University Wisconsin), my alma mater.  (There's a vocabulary word for you!  Find a dictionary and let me know what it means by posting a comment.)  The sun was just coming up over the horizon as the nine of us left, and we won't see it set for over thirty hours since we're traveling with the sun today.  We had a few rain delays in Chicago, but we finally managed to board the giant 747-Boening jet in Detroit.

How many of you have ever been on an airplane?  This one is like nothing I have ever seen before!  When you first go to walk on the plane, you have to be careful to enter through the correct door.  First class has its own entrance for this large plane.  As you come in, you see a set of stairs leading to a second level.  I headed towards my seat on the main level 64 rows back.  On the way, I passed three banks of bathrooms, three "kitchens" to prepare the three meals we get on the plane, and three projectors for the four movies we are watching in-flight.  If that wasn't enough, there were still another bank of bathrooms behind us.

First-Class Seats

One might wonder why we need over 10 toilets on an airplane.  As I counted the row of seats, I realized that there are 10 seats in each of the 65 rows.  Let's have a little math lesson.  How many people will fit on this place?  10 seats times 65 rows equals 650 people.  650 people divided by 10 toilets equals 65 people per toilet.  To be clear, this plane was not very full, and each bank of bathrooms removed about 15 seats.  I believe there are about 500 people on this plane, but that is still an awful lot!

All this talk of toilets and movies might seem exciting, but my first order of business was sleep.  You see, Taiwan is 15 hours ahead of Arizona.  Look at the clock.  (More math!)  If it is 2:00 PM in Arizona, add three hours.  Now, you should be at 5:00 PM.  Then, add 12 more and you come to 5:00 AM the next morning.  To add a little more confusion, I was three hours ahead of Arizona when I boarded in Detroit.

Are you feeling a little lost in time zones?  Don't worry; I am a bit confused myself.  Here's the bottom line: When I got on the shuttle at 5:30 AM Chicago time to get up for the day, it was 6:30 PM in Taiwan and almost time for bed.  I had to force myself to go to sleep for as long as I could in order to be able to sleep by the time I arrived at 9:00 PM in Taiwan.  When your brain thinks the time is different from where you are, it's called jet lag.

My sleep was a bit interrupted with shuttle rides, plane changes, and meals, but I finally got enough to make it through the next day.  Unfortunately, I still have about 8 more hours of our 13-hour plane ride to sit through.  That is a whole school day of sitting on a plane!  You get a bit stiff, but there is more room to stretch on this giant plane in comparison to the planes we fly in the US.  The ceiling is as high as our classroom, and we could easily fit three classrooms in this plane.

I also keep peaking out the window.  If you get on to Google Earth, start in Detroit and head west towards Alaska.  We flew over all of southern Canada and saw the rich, green forests.  We continued to Alaska's sunny summer season to see the beautiful, flowing rivers and clear, blue lakes.  As we went further west, we found ourselves in Siberia in Russia, which is marked by its snow-covered mountain peaks. Finally, we'll land in Tokyo for a hour stop to refuel and clean the plane before another 3-hour plane ride to Taipei, Taiwan, the country's capitol.  From there, we have a 4-hour shuttle ride south to Tainan, the city we will be working in for the week.

Japan down below.

As I write this, I still have about three more hours on this flight.  It feels like one in the morning and I want to go to sleep, but I need to stay awake.  I'm off to take some pictures of the plane for you, so here's some notes on your assignment.

Each comment must have:

3 Things You Learned

2 Things You Can Use

1 Question That You Have

Here's an example:

I learned about recovering from jet lag, traveling across time zones, and the interior of a 747-Boening airplane.

I can use my information about jet lag to stay awake when I teach this week, and my knowledge of time zones will be helpful as we start our global classroom project this year.

I want to know what is on the top deck of a 747-Boening airplane.

Leave a comment on each entry, and you'll earn one week free from reading logs.  The comments don't have to be made on the same day that I post, but I recommend that you don't try to read them all at once.  There's so much to learn that you'll never remember it all!