Orient Yourself: Online Catalog of Study Abroad Opportunities in East Asia

The National East Asian Languages Resource Center (NEALRC), sponsored by the United States Department of Education, is pleased to launch "Orient Yourself: Online Catalog of Study Abroad Opportunities in East Asia." The purpose of the website is to promote the learning of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The website address (URL) is http://flc.osu.edu/studyinEastAsia. This database provides information for students seeking study abroad opportunities in East Asia. All the information posted on the website has been screened and selected. The search engine is user-friendly and supports multi-layer sorting and searching in English. The information will be continually updated. Suggestions and comments are most welcome. Please feel free to write eastasia@osu.edu with inquiries or comments.

Washington and Lee University is proud to announce the completion of a unique "classroom" in a gallery of the university museum known as the Reeves Center. Mr. Seiji Suzuki, a third-generation Japanese carpenter and practitioner of the Urasenke school of tea, designed and constructed a six-mat tearoom in the shoin style. Complete with tokonoma and chigaidana, the tearoom also includes elements that evoke the modest mountain hut. The Japanese tearoom serves as a classroom for a "cultural lab" on food and tea in Japan taught by Janet Ikeda. A Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership grant for a project known as "Tea in a Box" helped initiate a pilot outreach program that allows university students to share their knowledge of chanoyu with the community. This past year W&L students gave demonstrations and talks to public school and community groups. More information: http://tearoom.wlu.edu.