Jane Goodall has been in Beijing the past couple days. This afternoon she spoke to middle school students during the Roots and Shoots China Summit, and my wife Nancy was fortunate enough to be her interpreter for today’s event (in action, above left). As you can see they didn’t have the heat on at the school, so it was a bit chilly inside. I don’t think they were trying to be overly energy efficient though ... it’s more that no one thought of turning the heat on because it was Sunday and there is never heat on Sunday in a grade school in Beijing.
Roots and Shoots is a program created by the Jane Goodall Institute to help promote environmental education in China and has over 400 chapters throughout the country. Nancy bought a couple of t-shirts and two sets of traveling chopsticks for my nieces back home. She was also able to get a Chinese translation of one of Goodall’s books autographed for her younger brother, which was nice. I was thinking of nabbing one of the t-shirts, but it’s a bit too small for me (damn). Kind of kicking myself for not going along, but it ended up being too late to see if I could butt in.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
