The trip to Shennongjia was an unforgettable experience and I thank CAFA and Qiaobao for being able to make it possible.

I learned a lot from this experience. One of the things that I learned was how different the school system was from American schools. In China, each grade has its own class with different teachers going to them to teach different subjects. They also lived on campus during the weekdays and left for their homes on buses on Friday and came back on Sunday. I was able to make many Chinese friends during my trip to Shennongjia and gain knowledge about their lives, which increased my understanding of how Americans were different from the Chinese. I also learned a lot from my teachings and feedback that was given by the teachers of the school who sat through our presentations. I learned to adapt to the different levels of English that the varying grade levels knew. I was also able to understand how difficult teaching can be; making entire 40-minute lessons from scratch took a massive amount of time and effort. I also learned to be more confident when speaking in front of a large crowd and learn what topics are interesting to different grade levels.

Shennongjia is very different from what I am used to, with its beautiful mountains covered in lush forests. The town was shaped like a rectangle with houses on the edges, a river flowing through the middle and roads to either side of the river. On a few occasions, there were neon lights that would light up along the river at night and bridges which I thought was very cool. The food was also very good with my favorites being fried potatoes and spicy beef noodles.

All of the Chinese kids that we met were very nice to us and friendly. They gave us different gifts such as books and food. They were all very excited to have us teaching at our school and were all very attentive in class and everyone participated, which was something that I thought was very nice and amazing. They invited us to play different sports like basketball and ping-pong, which was also cool. We felt like celebrities because after the class we would have kids come up to us and ask for our WeChats.

Each day on this trip was different and fun, which made it very interesting and it made our moods very cheerful and energetic. The trip was a very fun one because we had a lot of time each day after our teachings for the day were over. We ended at around 4 PM and after that, we would just hang out. One time, we found a small playground with a swing with multiple arms and we would all get on and spin the swing at a super fast speed which was extremely dangerous but fun. We would watch horror movies on several occasions at night which I didn’t because I hate horror movies, but I still stayed in the room and did my own thing. After the movies, however, it would leave some of my American peers paranoid, which made it fun when we suddenly scared and pranked each other.

We also learned the life skill of washing clothes by hand, without a washing machine, because there were no washing machines at the hotel we stayed in. Although we did wash them, they were not washed that well and most of our clothes smelled, which is why I think two weeks is a good limit on time since after two weeks we actually are just wearing dirty clothes that were kind of just soaked in soapy water and dried.

During the weekend after our first week in Shennongjia, we went on a short vacation. We went to the beautiful Nine Great Lakes and Shennongding, the highest point in Shennongjia. We also learned to play mahjong, which was quite cool because mahjong tables are everywhere and the game is quite interesting and fun.

To end this off, I want to thank everyone who made my trip to Shennongjia possible. It was very fun to teach the kids there and see the different landscapes, and I will always remember this experience.