Individual report

• Before this trip I have only been outside of the USA a handful of times. I have visited Italy and Australia visiting both of my sisters while they were studying abroad. I have also been to England twice, once to sightsee and once to visit my sister, who is currently living there. I have also lived in Mexico City, Mexico for a week in Middle School.
• I want to go to China because I have always been interested in Chinese culture and history, and hope to one day live and work in China after college. I think that Chinese companies are going to have better opportunities for the research and development of new technologies than their American counterparts.
• I think that the professional differences between American and Chinese companies are going to be very obvious. I think that the Chinese companies are going to be a lot more organized, efficient and a lot cleaner.
• I think that the cultural differences between Beijing and my hometown of New York City are going to be subtle, but at the same time very out in the open. New York, and every city in the US, can only be, at most a little over a couple hundred years old. Beijing on the other hand has been around for a much, much longer time. Just having been established as a center of a country for that long is going to change the people, even on a unconscious level.
• The political differences are obvious. The United States and PRC have two completely different political systems.  The US is based on a democratic system of checks and balances and the PRC is based upon a single party Socialist Republic, with the leadership being shared between the Communist Party of China and the People’s Government.
•  I think the students I meet in my country are going to be very interesting to meet. Learning about their childhoods and sharing stories about mine is going to be a very eye opening experience about the differences between our countries, but hopefully also find some similar interests and things we did.
• I predict that I will be surprised to find a that Beijing shares a lot of similar qualities with New York. I can see why they would be similar, but I think the differences might just be too many to process at first. But once I get over those I’ll start to see a lot of things that remind me of home.
• I think the major differences in the living conditions are going to be that heating and air conditioning aren’t going to be as readily available. I think that electronics and energy usage is going to also be a lot closer monitored than at home.
• I’m very excited to be in Beijing and I can’t wait to get out there and start learning all about a new culture and meeting new people. I’ve always wanted to go to China and have never had the opportunity to and am so excited to actually be going on a program, rather than on a sightseeing tour