Day 15: Shanghai & Hong Kong

The following post features student writing. Today was another travel day. We started with an early morning in Shanghai, waking up at 5:30. From there we took a high speed train to the airport, only taking about 10 minutes of travel. The train, like before,…

Day 12: Final School Visit & The Shanghai Daily

The following post features student writing. Today was our third full day in Shanghai. The first thing we did was visit the students at the Shanghai school for the last time. When we arrived at the school, the students were still in classes, so we…

Day 11: Yichang & Shanghai

The following blog post features student writing. We woke up early this morning to gather our luggage and have our final breakfast on the Victoria Sophia before our departure. After leaving the ship, we set off immediately on a tour bus to see the Three…

Day 10: Shanghai & The Bund

The following blog post features student writing. Today was an amazing day—the first full day in Shanghai! To start the day off, we had a breakfast in the hotel then set out for the subway. instead of using the buses that we used to have,…

Day 8: Ferry Ride & Crew Cabaret

The following blog post features student writing. Today we went on a small ferry ride around the area of the Three Gorges featuring the mountains that surrounded us on all sides. It was a rainy day, and mist lightly shrouded the tips of the mountains,…

Day 6: Bullet Trains & Boats

The following blog post features student writing. Today was pretty much dedicated to travel—after breakfast, we got onto the bus and drove back to Chengdu (specifically the eastern train station). We were about an hour and a half early, so we explored the station and…

Day 5: Multimillennial-Old Engineering and Discovering Daoism

The following blog post features student writing. Hello, everyone! The fifth day of our journey involved learning about some fascinating Chinese engineering and hiking up and down one of China’s most famous Daoist mountains.  The first thing we did was visit the Dujianyan, the ancient irrigation…

Day 4: Pandas!

Today was an awesome day. I picked up panda poop, smashed some bamboo, and was more than a little startled when a terrifying-looking centipede landed on my foot—in addition to pandas, there were a lot of bugs at the Panda Center! We set out on the…

Day Three: Blue Sheep and Yak

The following blog post features student writing. We woke up early this morning to pack up and eat a quick breakfast before heading out of the hotel. After several days of jet lag, it was exciting to see that many of us were finally feeling refreshed…

Day Two: Chengdu

Our second day was exciting. We started the morning by visiting the park at Du Fu’s thatched cottage. A section of the park is devoted to an excavation site, where archeologists have discovered some buildings from the Tang dynasty. The rest of the park is mostly…