In our first pre-departure meeting, I distinctly remember Dr Li going around the room asking each of us to describe China with three words.  I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I know with certainty it doesn’t match how I answered the same question when asked on the last day of the trip.  Now,…

I woke up this morning with mixed emotions; today is our last day.  Part of me is sad to see the trip of a lifetime come to an end, but there is also part of me very excited get home and be with my friends, family, and dog.  Even though today is the day we…

Today was the earliest day we had to wake up yet.  I woke up at seven and barely managed to get ready on time.  I grabbed a yogurt from the breakfast area of the hotel and on the bus we went.  Joining us on the trip was a guest speaker, Sarah.  She was a Pitt…

I woke up today knowing it would be a busy day.  It was our last day in Beijing, and we were making the most of it.  We had a lot of tourism to get through!  First up was Tiananmen Square, the famed center square of Beijing.  Here, more history has gone down than most other…

I woke up this morning well rested and ready for the day ahead of me.  For the first time in almost a week, we were back in business casual attire.  Today, we were vising the American Chamber of Commerce and Horiba.  I got ready and headed downstairs for another breakfast.  Once again, the doughnuts and…

Why no blog from day eight? You guessed it! yesterday was another travel day, this time from Xi’an to Shanghai. We spent roughly the same time on the bullet train as our last trip, and saw many of the same sights. The first thing I noticed when I got off the train in Shanghai was…

This morning started out a bit hectic- Krish and I both slept through our alarms despite turning in relatively early.  Luckily, we woke up with around fifteen minutes to get ready, so we made the bus on time but couldn’t get breakfast.  Our first stop of the day was the Terracotta Warriors.  They were discovered…

Yesterday was a day of travel from Beijing to Xi’an the bullet train.  This was my first time using a train for travel, let alone an engineering marvel that doesn’t exist in the United States.  Speeding by the Chinese countryside at almost 200 miles per hour offered a view of China that we didn’t see…

I woke up to my alarm this morning, a sign that I had hopefully overcome jetlag.  Today was a big day! We were visiting Huawei and VIPkid, our first two company visits.  I was particularly excited to visit Huawei, as they have rapidly improved their technology over the past few years and now are rivaling…

Jetlag hit me even harder today than yesterday, waking me up at 4:30 am and rendering me unable to fall back asleep.  It was okay with me though because the twelve-hour time difference meant all of my friends in the States were up, so I could talk to them for longer than a few minutes. …

Thanks to jetlag, I woke up bright and early this morning before my alarm for probably the first time ever. Luckily, I went to bed early last night after what was literally the longest day of my life (over thirty hours between getting out of bed and turning in for the night), so I felt…