Urban China Global Seminar Blog Series
Going to China was the best thing that CU has ever given me the opportunity to do. China is so beautiful and the fact that I experienced all of it with a group of my fellow CU students made all the difference in the world!! I felt this strong feeling of freedom and happiness throughout the trip. I didn鈥檛 think about anything or plan anything instead I allowed myself to live in the moment and experience every day as truly an unplanned new day! I am so grateful for the Tang Scholarship, for giving me the experience of a lifetime.
Since my freshman year, I dreamed about study abroad but worried that because of my economic circumstances I would never get a chance to. Then upon coming in for an appointment to see if I there are any study abroad opportunities, a study abroad advisor asked me if I had ever heard of the Global Seminar class Discovering Urban China. I love Urban settings from the architecture to the people but had never heard of this before. After discussing it with my advisor I felt my self-become excited and hopeful. But due to the fact that there was an application process I feared that I wouldn鈥檛 get in and held myself back from truly expressing and experiencing the possibility of being able to go.
The day I got accepted to the program was truly one of the happiest days of my life. I remember stopping everything just to scream from excitement. What transpired after that day was something that even now when I think about it feels like a dream. I never knew China was so developed. That the cities, even without knowing Mandarin, where easily navigable and that the Chinese people where so kind and welcoming. The food, I could talk about the food all day, it was amazing! In addition to that, the Cities in China are so green and vibrant. That contrast added to the complexity of the cities in China. Out of the four cities, we went to Xi'an, surprisingly, was my favorite city. Biking on the city was an experience unlike any other. Feeling the ancient remanence of the past, although the material is new, and then looking out to see the skyscrapers was the one moment where the past and the present existed in such a since way. They truly complemented each other.
Study abroad has changed not only my beliefs and understanding about China, which is still really limited, but helped me develop as a person. Having the experience to study abroad was the most transformative experience I have had at CU and I am truly grateful for that.
Web Sight I Created For The Class as Project !!