Week 1 Reflection

The first week consisted of our classmates revealing our strengths and weaknesses in regards to traveling abroad. I considered myself an experienced traveler after spending my Spring 2018 semester studying abroad in Vienna, Austria and visiting 25 cities in Europe. However, I believe traveling to China will be a much different and more immersive experience. My weakness is that I can be indecisive in terms of deciding what to do, where to eat, or a plan for the day. I like to be the planner of the group, but I like validation from other people that they are interested in what I suggest and I want to make sure everyone is doing and seeing what they’d like to do. I think this could become challenging in China due to the language barrier. I often like asking locals what their favorite places are and talked with students from my school in Vienna to figure out good restaurants or things to do around the city. With the language barrier in China, I think this could prove difficult. My strength is that I love documenting my trips through digital media including videos and photos. While I studied abroad, I made a compilation video with videos I took from my GoPro of all of the fun things we did. I love posting photos on social media, and I plan to take a lot of photos and videos in China and potentially make a compilation video. I know Nathan mentioned he’d be interested in doing this as well, so I may collaborate with him to make an awesome recap video for the entire class.