This morning I slept through my alarm and, luckily, woke up with enough time to get ready for our commpany visits. The first stop today was at Huawei, who had one of the nicest buildings I have ever seen. We walked in to 20 foot celings with elegant glass chandeleers and polished marble floors. The parts of the floor that weren’t marble were cushonedd red carpet. As we toured the facilites and saw the different tecknology they were working on I found it amazing just how far ahead of apple, and other large companies, they were. They are truly on the cutting edge working on developing 16k screens and light weight 5g infrastructure. They then allowed us to look around at all the facial recognition applications, such as subway or building access, they are working on as well as the AI and smart technology they plan to use to revolutionalize nearly every element of society. I felt like a kid in a candys store looking at their new phones that were equip with a 50x zoom and many other unique features that I have never seen successfully done before. After the tour we listened to a presentation of a more in depth analysis of the company and had the honor to listen to said presentation in a hall that has held prim ministers and worldd leaders in the past. If that was not enough to make me feel like royalty the bathrooms sent this place over the top. The toilets they had were amazing to say the least. They were equip with motion activated seat, heated seats, and AI smart sensors to now when to flush. This was a truly amazing experience that I hope to have the opprotunity to do more with the company in the future.

The second stop for today was at VIPkid, a company that focuses on providing engligh education to pre-K through 6^th graders. Though they do offer their services to students all the way up to 12^th great early childhood is thei primary focus. They are a relativly new company, being founded in 2013 yet are suprisingly large given their recent founding. They have since developed a program teat worked the other way, teaching chinese to american chil;dren of the same age. I love this company’s idea and watch the videos of the  children and teachers having fun learning really resonated with me!

This brings us to this evening, when we went to a nice restaurant in the hotel where we all had dumplings for dinner before heading to the olympic park. The olympic park was amazing. We had the opprotunity to experience the Beijing subway system to get to the park. The olympic park was a sight to be held as they transition from the set up that they had in the past for their recent summer olympics to the new additions for the upcomming winter olympics. We explored every where from “the nest” where most of the main events are heald to the cube where Michael Phelps set a world record. We fratenized with a local college student with whom we compared the social difference between a US college campus and that of one in China. Over all today was a busy day, and I cant wait to see the forbidden city and tienamen square tomorrow!