Ahmad's Blog Post

My initial expectations about the Beijing Summer Seminar were mixed with both negative and positive views.  At first, I thought the pollution in China was going to be so bad that I would have an extremely hard time breathing.  I thought that since there is 1.2 billion people in China, that it would be impossible for me to sift my way through all the people when taking the train.  I thought that the 14 hour flight to Beijing was going to be a struggle and I might lose my sanity.  Finally, because I do not take Chinese at BC High, I thought the language barrier between my host Family and I would be very frustrating. However, through all the thoughts that I had initially about China, I came to realize that I was totally wrong.  The pollution has not affected me at all and I personally do not smell or taste a difference between the US aid and China air.  I believe that websites and other people may have steered me wrong about how bad the pollution is in China.  Here in China, I really do not even notice that it is the country of a billion people.  The trains, streets, and busses are not as crowded as I thought because the people are spread out around the city.  In my personal opinion, the busses and trains are way nicer than that of the T back home.  However, the cars and bikes are very sporadic and hap haphazard when driving... to the point that myself along with my group mates have had many close calls with bikes. At any rate, on Tuesday, we took a tour of our host students school and it is the most beautiful institute of education I have ever seen.  Their campus makes BC High and other colleges in the US look like a makeshift campus.  The language barrier between me and my host family has been non existent because my host dad speaks perfect English and my host brother, Geng, has done a wonderful job of translating back and forth for his mother.  And finally, the plane ride to china was not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  There were plenty of movies to watch and I slept for half of the time.  To all the families - we are okay! The whole group, including Ms Maguire, are becoming Chinese connoisseurs.