On June 16, 2012, 12 Garrison Forest students and two teachers, Upper School science teacher Reema Khanchandani and Mandarin teacher Crystal Tung, embarked on a journey to China through the 2012 China Odyssey program at GFS. After spending two days in Shanghai, the students will spend the rest of the 20-day trip in Lijiang working with students and teaching English at the Lijiang Ethnic Orphan School. While in China, the students are blogging about their experiences.

The Garrison Forest Confucius Classroom is also sponsoring a China Odyssey Photography Contest. Students and chaperones on the trip are encouraged to submit their ten best photographs; from these, judge Michele Shepherd, GFS art teacher and past Lijiang chaperone, will select images to be enlarged, printed and displayed at school.

About the China Odyssey Program: This summer marks the third, consecutive GFS Global Service and Leadership Program to China—or the “China Odyssey” program. Generously underwritten by Zhen Ping Wang and En Zhang, the parents of Sareen Zhang ’12, and offered through the GFS James Center, the trip combines sight-seeing in Beijing and Shanghai with two weeks spent volunteering at the Lijiang Ethnic Orphan School in rural China. The GFS students teach English reading, writing and speaking and coach sports to the children, many of whom have lost their parents and homes to China’s recent earthquakes. Last fall, a group of girls from the Lijiang School visited Garrison Forest and the U.S.

Read the students' blog about their experiences.