Pre-Departure: Week 4

Today, we primarily focused on the volunteer group presentations. My group was one of the first to present, and we were the Chinese Food and Cuisine group. I think I could go on for several more blog posts about food and all the stuff we have to try. (If any other classmates read this post, … Continue reading Pre-Departure: Week 4 →

Pre Departure: Week 3

Each week we get new information that helps me look forward to our trip! This week, we received our first itinerary! Receiving the itinerary not only allows me to more fully picture what our trip will be like, but it's also setting in how exhausted we will all be over the next two weeks. In … Continue reading Pre Departure: Week 3 →

Pre-Departure: Week 2

Going to China is becoming even more real! We finally have our flights which is usually the point where I start becoming more excited for a trip (except for the 13 hour flight). I'm very excited to have the host committees and the volunteer committees. Sharing ideas, research, and tips with each other will prove … Continue reading Pre-Departure: Week 2 →

Pre-Departure: Week 1

Throughout this semester, it has been hard for me to take time to think through the experiences we will be having. With classes, extracurriculars, and general busyness of being a student, I hadn't considered how I wanted to approach this trip or even what I could bring to the team. This first week of class … Continue reading Pre-Departure: Week 1 →

Jake’s Week 6 Pre-Trip Blog

Finally, we got to hear the tech presentation, and it was very interesting. We learned all about setting up a VPN and how unreliable certain aspects of China and its internet are. Anecdotally, I remember a friend telling me of her times visiting China and how the government simply turns off certain websites when it … Continue reading Jake’s Week 6 Pre-Trip Blog →

Jake’s Week 5 Pre-Trip Blog

Today was safety training day. In short, we reviewed a lot of information that was on the application to go abroad, but the program seemed to want us to hear it verbally. We also continued with some more of the presentations. One that was really interesting to me was the Current Events presentation, though because … Continue reading Jake’s Week 5 Pre-Trip Blog →

Jake’s Week 4 Pre-Trip Blog

Today was pretty much just the volunteer committee presentations. It was cool to hear from everyone, especially given how many of us tried to say something in Chinese and having no idea how. There were some particularly interesting groups. I thought it was very interesting to see the statistics and culture surrounding the one-child policy, … Continue reading Jake’s Week 4 Pre-Trip Blog →

Jake’s Week 3 Pre-Trip Blog

Today we got to meet Ulyssia, one of our chaperones. She’s been to China before and has experience in professional development so it’ll be really nice to have her along and hear about her experiences. After she presented, we got a relatively detailed itinerary, detailing where we’re going and when. On it are two cities … Continue reading Jake’s Week 3 Pre-Trip Blog →

Jake’s Week 2 Pre-Trip Blog

This week we got a lot more detailed about the trip and the class. I learned about the different teams that we’ll have for class presentations and they seem both interesting and useful. We started the session by talking about our professional brands and how we’ve been reviewed. It brought me back to last summer, … Continue reading Jake’s Week 2 Pre-Trip Blog →

Jake’s Week 1 Pre-Trip Blog

The most important part of this week was that the trip actually felt real today. It was interesting to hear from everyone all of the different things that we are both excited for and anxious about. For example, there is a good divide of people who hate mornings and are worried about the wear and … Continue reading Jake’s Week 1 Pre-Trip Blog →