Seven Academics In Asia (AIA) teachers will be Live Blogging as they travel around Asia during this long 7-week Winter Break. The Chinese academic school calendar is based on the Gregorian Calendar for the start of the Fall Semester and based on the Lunar Calendar for the start of the Spring Semester. The Year of the Sheep starts Feb 19th; giving Chinese schools an extra late start to the Spring Semester. May this long Spring Break create space for epic adventures that draw you to join our team this Fall.

Follow via Twitter Hash Tags

We’ve asked the teachers to highlight their travels into these four categories:

1) TasteCulture: these posts will highlight the food, clothes, language and culture of their travel. #TasteCulture will sort all the posts in Twitter into one nice feed.

2) TravelAsia: will be changed to AICountry to help us track where in Asia our Academic Teachers are In during the AIA Travel Adventure. #AIChina, #AIThailand, #AILaos, #AICambodia.

3) TeachAcademics: these posts will highlight moments when the teachers see schools to teach at in Asia or when they themselves teach in a camp or tutor students during the holiday. Keep an eye on #TeachAcademics for how to make an extra income or keep teaching during holidays.

4) TouchLives: these posts are impromptu moments when lives are being touched during the AIA Travel Adventures. There may also be NGOs that #TouchLives or moments when an AIA teacher is impacted and #TouchLives is on the receiving end.

Live Mapping

Follow each teacher visually as they blog and report updates from around the world via Pinterest:

How you can Jump In.

1) Facebook.com/AcademicsInAsia. Comment, like, share!

2) Twitter.com/AcademicsInAsia. Reply, Retweet, favorite and Share via Direct Message or Email to a friend.

3) Instagram.com/AcademicsInAsia. Comment and like.

4) Youtube.com/user/AcademicsInAsia. Subscribe, Comment and Share on FB, Twitter and LinkedIn 🙂

Behind the Scenes

App of Choice

You may be thinking, “How are they doing this?!” Most of our AIA WeChat teachers have smart phones (iPhones and Android). And, most of our teachers are using WeChat for instant messaging. This application is very popular in Mainland China. It is similar to Line and WhatsApp. For many Chinese students it acts as their Facebook Page as well. I receive instant messages with their photos, videos and updates and then I repost them.

As our students would say, “Give it a try.” Learn more at WeChat.com/en/ and once you have a user ID share it with me. Mine is avorbau.

Where is Aaron?

I am in the US through March. Follow me on my personal Instagram @AaronRachael. I will travel to different parts of the US to speak at Universities and attend various conferences. We finish hiring new teachers for Fall for Sias University in April, so make sure to apply soon if you are interested in teaching this Fall.

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