Glen Goes to China

In the past few years I have made it a point of my education at the University of Missouri St Louis (UMSL) to learn a much as I can about "Globalization". I was not just interested in globalization on the academic level or business level, I was interested on the personnel level of this phenomena. To this end I gotten to know many of my classmates from other countries.

Although I did not plan it this way most of my new "global" friends come from Asia. Perhaps I will delve into the reasons for that in a later post. As for now my Asian friends/classmates have come from China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. I have gotten to one group of students in particular from Nanjing, China. I got to know them at first because when you talk about global business today, it is hard not to mention China (although India is also doing some exciting things globally)

I stayed in contact with the Nanjing student in part because they tended to be older that my other classmates so we related to each other better. But also because several of the students were very interested in learning about the culture of the US and because the more I learned about Chinese culture and language the interested I became. Plus it seemed each person I got to know had some kind of interesting story to tell. (and if they agree may I will tell on this blog)

Ninjing University Friends After UMSL Fall Graduation 2007

So after I graduated in December and started looking for employment opportunities that would help me pay back my loans, I decided that maybe I could find something in China. This idea quickly dissipated when the reality that I only speak "yi dian dian" Chinese and have little international experience, sunk in. So Plan Two emerged and I decided to go to China to visit my new found friends before they forgot who I was.

This blog is about Plan Two.