Today was a day of lasts. My last shower in China. My last breakfast at this amazing hotel. My last time with these specific group of people in China, but I also realized that this trip has been a lot of firsts for me too! This was my first time traveling across the globe by…

Today was kind of sad because it is our last full day in China, but I am excited to return home and share all of the things I did here with my family and friends!! This morning, we went to Yu Garden and it was so serene and peaceful. It was really green and “zen”….

Now, you might be wondering, did I get my cards back from the Bank of China this morning? The answer to that question is yes and no. So long story short, I had 2 cards. One was my personal debit card with my name on it and the other card was my dad’s travel card…

Today was our shortest day with the most unstructured free time. This however didn’t stop me from filling up my time today with a bunch of activities!! We got to visit the second largest port in the world! At first I thought this would be extremely boring because who would want to travel for so long…

Traveling on these high speed trains will never get boring. I think it has to do with the thrill of navigating through all the locals trying to get on the train and all the space we get on the train. I can easily fit my laptop on the pull out table in front of us…

Terracotta Warriors and Biking on the City Wall! This morning sucked because I’m a klutz and I hurt my ankle last night which made walking today no bueno. I woke up and thought my ankle was fine, but then I got up from the bed and it hurt SOOOO bad. It’s okay, I’m a trooper…

Today was quite the experience. We got to visit a little bit of everything. We went to the Children’s Village and then we went to the Great Goose Buddhist temple. In the morning, we drove to the Children’s Village and got to spend time with the kids there. This is where kids could live while their…

Today was a traveling day. We finished Beijing and we are in Xi’an now! We used high speed trains to travel from Beijing to Xi’an. The trip was 6 hours, but time actually flew by pretty quickly! I got some work done on the train and it was convenient because they had outlets at every seat!…

We had a very long day filled with cultural visits today. I personally was really exhausted from yesterday so I wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to curl up and take a nap everywhere we went. My highlight of the day was lunch. It was Lazy Susan style, which usually worries me, but it was actually…

Today was so much fun!! We visited Cheetah Mobile in the morning, had lunch at the mall, toured Microsoft in the afternoon, and then tested our bargaining skills at the Market! It was a super long day, but it was totally worth it. In the morning, we went to Cheetah Mobile, an app based company that was…

Today we went to the Central University of Finance and Economics. I thought it was really interesting to step on campus because the campus is enclosed with a gate. We all stepped into a classroom and sat through a lecture and it was extremely similar to lectures back home. Professor Yao was a visiting student…

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA WAS AN UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCE!!! On the way to the Great Wall, we stopped to get lunch and it was a buffet. They serve food on huge Lazy Susan’s and that’s pretty much how the buffet works. There was so much food and I definitely ate too much. This was not a…

14 hours later, we finally landed in China. We got to the hotel in the afternoonish time and got the day to ourselves. Athena and I decided to explore Beijing a little bit and just walked around. We noticed that so many people were definitely staring and taking pictures of us – between her blonde…