Wuxi Adventures
Hello, all!
Last weekend I was unable to post due to a business trip, but now I'm back and ready to get into the groove of things once again!
For those of you who don't know, I'm the Marketing Administrator at an American-style international school in Wuhan, China. Most of my job involves making marketing strategies, researching, meetings (oh, so many meetings!), and even some graphic design, but last weekend I had the opportunity to try something new.
I became a sports photographer.
There are seven international schools in China that are run by the same organization (including the one I work at), and every year they have a variety of inter-school tournaments, fairs, and even Model United Nations. Last weekend was the High School Basketball Tournament in Wuxi, and I got the go-ahead to tag along and take pictures for marketing purposes.
And I was pretty nervous.
See, I'm not a professional photographer. I've never even taken a single photography class. Basically everything I know about cameras and shot composition comes from my film background, which is similar but not exactly the same thing. But I'm of the opinion that life needs to be lived courageously, so armed with my school's Nikon D3300, two SD cards, and a couple articles' worth of tips on sports photography I took the high speed train to Wuxi for the tournament.
High speed trains are one of my favorite forms of transportation in China, but that's a topic that deserves its own post. For now I'll leave it at none of us missed our stop and we adult chaperones didn't lose a single one of our 20+ High School students throughout the whole trip. If that's not a success, then I don't know what is.
Now for Wuxi:
Wuxi (pronounced "woo-shee") is a city about five hours north east of Wuhan (where I live) by high speed train. Some people also refer to it as a suburb of Shanghai, though Shanghai itself is probably forty minutes from Wuxi. It's also pretty close to Changzhou, a city in which I spend 10 days in July 2016. It's a bit smaller than Wuhan (7 million people as opposed to Wuhan's 11 million), but still pretty bustling. Due to the tournament games being an all-day affair, though, we never got an opportunity to get out and explore the city. Most of the landscape/cityscape pictures I got of Wuxi were through the windows of buses and high speed trains, but hopefully some day I'll be able to go back and take better photos.
And how did our teams do? Very well. Our boys team won third place overall, and our girls team took home second place in the final game versus Tianjin International School. As for me, I ended up taking almost 4,000 pictures of both of my school's teams over the course of two days. And let me tell you, going through all of those and getting it down to even 400 took a very, very long time.
Overall, though, it was a fabulous experience! I got to know some of the kids better (which is great since my job doesn't exactly involve a lot of interaction with any of our students), befriended more of my coworkers, got some valuable work experience, and was able to travel to a place I'd never been to before. Here's to hoping I get to go to the next tournament in Qingdao!
If you'd like to see some of the pictures I took in Wuxi, head over to the Photos tab and click on the link titled "Wuxi." There aren't a whole lot since, as I mentioned earlier, most of my time was spent in a gym taking pictures of basketball games, but they're still fun and give an interesting look into the different parts of China.
Or at least the part you can see from a high speed train.
See you next weekend!
Last weekend I was unable to post due to a business trip, but now I'm back and ready to get into the groove of things once again!
 |
| Girls Team at pre-game warm-ups (shot on my phone) |
For those of you who don't know, I'm the Marketing Administrator at an American-style international school in Wuhan, China. Most of my job involves making marketing strategies, researching, meetings (oh, so many meetings!), and even some graphic design, but last weekend I had the opportunity to try something new.
I became a sports photographer.
There are seven international schools in China that are run by the same organization (including the one I work at), and every year they have a variety of inter-school tournaments, fairs, and even Model United Nations. Last weekend was the High School Basketball Tournament in Wuxi, and I got the go-ahead to tag along and take pictures for marketing purposes.
And I was pretty nervous.
See, I'm not a professional photographer. I've never even taken a single photography class. Basically everything I know about cameras and shot composition comes from my film background, which is similar but not exactly the same thing. But I'm of the opinion that life needs to be lived courageously, so armed with my school's Nikon D3300, two SD cards, and a couple articles' worth of tips on sports photography I took the high speed train to Wuxi for the tournament.
High speed trains are one of my favorite forms of transportation in China, but that's a topic that deserves its own post. For now I'll leave it at none of us missed our stop and we adult chaperones didn't lose a single one of our 20+ High School students throughout the whole trip. If that's not a success, then I don't know what is.
Now for Wuxi:
Wuxi (pronounced "woo-shee") is a city about five hours north east of Wuhan (where I live) by high speed train. Some people also refer to it as a suburb of Shanghai, though Shanghai itself is probably forty minutes from Wuxi. It's also pretty close to Changzhou, a city in which I spend 10 days in July 2016. It's a bit smaller than Wuhan (7 million people as opposed to Wuhan's 11 million), but still pretty bustling. Due to the tournament games being an all-day affair, though, we never got an opportunity to get out and explore the city. Most of the landscape/cityscape pictures I got of Wuxi were through the windows of buses and high speed trains, but hopefully some day I'll be able to go back and take better photos.
And how did our teams do? Very well. Our boys team won third place overall, and our girls team took home second place in the final game versus Tianjin International School. As for me, I ended up taking almost 4,000 pictures of both of my school's teams over the course of two days. And let me tell you, going through all of those and getting it down to even 400 took a very, very long time.
Overall, though, it was a fabulous experience! I got to know some of the kids better (which is great since my job doesn't exactly involve a lot of interaction with any of our students), befriended more of my coworkers, got some valuable work experience, and was able to travel to a place I'd never been to before. Here's to hoping I get to go to the next tournament in Qingdao!
If you'd like to see some of the pictures I took in Wuxi, head over to the Photos tab and click on the link titled "Wuxi." There aren't a whole lot since, as I mentioned earlier, most of my time was spent in a gym taking pictures of basketball games, but they're still fun and give an interesting look into the different parts of China.
Or at least the part you can see from a high speed train.
See you next weekend!
Soli Deo Gloria!
- Chrisi -
Comments
Post a Comment