A Message From the Other Side (of the World): Final Reflections

I came back to the U.S. last Saturday (August 2), and I feel a bit odd about my reaction to being home. Two weeks ago, I felt like I was going to be having a really hard time readjusting to being home, since if I did have any form of culture shock, I either didn’t notice it or mistook it for homesickness.

My flight home wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I tried to sleep, but I ended up watching movies, as well as reading books I had originally put on my Kindle to read on the way to Beijing (in case anyone wanted to know, Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly and Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare). However, aside from sleeping until eleven A.M. the morning after I returned, I never had any serious issues with jet lag. Perhaps the reverse culture shock our RAs were talking about before we left will come later.

There are two things I would have done differently when I was in China:

1. I would have gone out more. I focused a lot on my studies when I was there, which severely limited my time to go out and enjoy the city.
2. I wouldn’t have been as afraid to go out by myself. If you use common sense, Beijing is a relatively safe city.  There are some things that I wanted to see in Beijing that only I seemed to want to go to, like both Chinese and foreign-language bookstores for books that I wanted, so I regret not being able to do those things.

If I had to choose, my favorite part of China was going to Zhangjiajie, since I looked at the scenery while I was there and asked if I could live in a place like that forever. Just typing about it now makes me really miss those mountains. I really loved the opportunity that I had to study abroad, and I really hope that I can travel to China again, or anywhere else in the world. Thank you, IES, for allowing me to study in Beijing!