Young leaders to China

The adventure comes to an end

Wow, these past five weeks have gone by in a blur. It seems like only a couple of days ago I was at Melbourne airport, thinking about how unreal it was that I was even going to China. I was constantly counting down the weeks, saying 'now there's 10 weeks until China, how crazy is that?'. Now I'm saying 'in two days I'll be home again, how crazy is that?'. I'm saying that because it does seem like this is our life, and that it will never end, but it will end. We won't go back to school and see our friends from Bacchus Marsh and Doncaster everyday, we won't wake up in a dorm room with our friends and we won't speak random bits of Chinese wherever we go. Across this trip my Chinese language has improved so much and I know much more about the Chinese culture and way of life. My highlight of the trip would have to be homestay visits. In the past two Sundays, me, Amy and our Chinese buddy got to go to many exciting sites like old Nanxiang road and the glass museum which I promise you is more exciting than it sounds. On these home visits we also got to eat a whole lot of authentic food like 臭豆腐 (smelly tofu) and homemade 饺子 (dumplings). This trip was certainly a lot of work with having Chinese classes nearly every day, but it was a lot of play too with fun excursions out to the mall and having freshen up Friday where we all used face masks to get ready for the weekend ahead. Now we have only one full day left in China where we are going to the wildlife park to see giant pandas. All we have left to do after that is pack and say our goodbyes. The seemingly never-ending experience has finally come to its end, goodbye China.

Audrey

As our trip comes to an end, I am trying to remember our whole journey. Thinking back to the first flight it feels like an eon ago. Since then our whole group has grown so much and become so close! We started the trip in Beijing at BLCU where our language skills rapidly improve, along with the understanding of Chinese culture that we experienced through excursions to tourist attractions and cultural activities. We then took the train to Shanghai where we got to have more wonderful experiences. One of the highlights in Shanghai was the buddy visits where everyone got to experience the life of a Chinese teenager. Now that we are heading home in a few days we are all realising how thankful we are for this amazing, unique experience and how lucky we are to have had the opportunity to participate.

Lulu

Our time in China is almost over and while preparing for our trip back home, we have had the chance to reflect on our experience here. Doing so has made us realise just how much we have learnt and appreciate the opportunity we have had to improve not just our mandarin skills, but also our knowledge and understanding of Chinese culture and values. Some highlights of the trip have been experiencing life in the campus of a Chinese University, going on excursions to local attractions, participating in cultural activities, and spending time with Chinese buddies. Everyone agrees that while this experience has been challenging at times, we have all gained so much from it and overall it has been extremely rewarding.

Maddie 

Throughout our time in China we have gotten to experience so many new and interesting things such as different types of cultural activities, excursions out to famous attractions, home stays and many more. One of my highlights from this trip was my first home stay, I got to spend the day with a lovely family but most of all I got to do something that I would never have the chance or confidence to do back home. My buddies mum worked at a wedding planning place, so we got to try on some traditional dresses and go out into the streets of shanghai and get our photos taken, it’s a memory I won’t forget along with many others! It’s been incredible how many new things I have gotten to do here, and I hope to come back as it was so much more different to how it was when I last came.

Elyse

A big thank you to Yongzhong Zhu and Rachel Kan for their leadership of the trip.