The day started off bright and early. It was our final, full day in China! In the morning, we boarded the bus to visit Yu Garden. WOW! This garden was absolutely beautiful, with its traditional architecture and koi ponds. Its really fascinating when you think about how China has been able to preserve and maintain such traditional and ancient places. This garden is well over four hundred years old. It’s quite astounding.
After our visit and tour of Yu Garden, which lasted for about forty minutes, we were given the opportunity to shop and wander around the market, located right outside the Yu Garden exit. I shopped around with Chloe and helped her make some pretty good bargains. Sellers would toss low prices at us when it became pretty clear that we were threatening to leave just because so many other sellers sold identical products, and it would be easy for us to give our business to someone else. I wanted to buy some gifts for my family and friends back home, but I couldn’t find anything that I think they would like!
Afterwards, we traveled back to the hotel and were given free time to do whatever we wished. My group decided to be productive and work on our presentations. After about an hour or so, we finally finished! Chloe and I met up with our other friends to go out for lunch, however we ended up just going to a convenience store, buying ramen and a variety of snacks to bring back to the hotel. We didn’t have much time to eat because we also wanted to practice our final presentation a couple more times.
Finally, it was time for us to head over to a local conference room to present our final projects. My group, which consisted of Kieran, Kevin, Chloe, and me, applied what we learn from this trip to create a product called Freestyle. This product is an app that users can use to bargain and haggle for products from local vendors. I think if this app were created, it would have the potential to become very popular!
For our farewell dinner, we went to a Xinjiang restaurant called The Silk Road. This was such a fancy restaurant! The food, again, we SOOO good. It was upsetting that this was our last dinner together in China. I had such a great time, and this experience is definitely something I will never forget. I really hope I have the chance to come back to China in the future!!