Five days flew by very quickly! We had our orientation for the program Sunday evening where we got to meet the Chinese and Indian students. Little did I know that I would make amazing friendships during this time. I was a little bummed I didn’t have any UML students on my team, but I was very happy when I met my team mates! I had Indian students Shreya and Sannath and Chinese students Leo and Hannah. We got to introduce ourselves and became good friends by the end of the program!

The days in class were long but flew by very quickly! It is crazy how much we all learned in just a few short weeks. I really enjoyed the group exercises we did. It is amazing what you can come up with when everyone puts their heads together to try to find a solution. It was great to see what all the other groups came up with! My favorite activity was constructing a durable ambulance out of small Lego blocks. Even though we had a short amount of time to do it, my team did a pretty good job!

One of my favorite things about this trip was going out at night in Nanjing. One night all the Indian students and UML students went out accompanied by the Chinese student volunteers. We just went to a mall, shopping, the market but it was so fun. It was a great way to see the city and get to know my classmates better. The volunteers did such a great job taking us around Nanjing and making sure we were safe. A few times we took Didi, which is the Chinese version of Uber and it made it so much easier to get around!

Nanjing at night!

We visited a temple in Nanjing and there was so many people! There were so many steps to get to the top, but the view was so worth it. One of the Chinese volunteers, Max became one of my good friends very quickly. One thing we had in common is we were always seen wearing a camera around our necks. I brought my camera to take as many pictures as I could in China, he had the school’s camera to take pictures of everything we did in class and outside class. I loved going on the tours because we got to see so many beautiful sites and learned a lot about China.

  View from top! So many stairs! Halfway up!

    Max the photographer!