Kayla Waters

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Kayla Waters

Currently studying abroad in China for 5 weeks. I plan to update as often as I can, hopefully daily.



Asia » China » Dongbei » Dalian May 21st 2015

Today was our second day of class. We only had one class today, which was Chinese Business. The class was very insightful. There are several aspects to Chinese business that I didn’t really think about before, but I don’t have time to go into much detail at the moment. The class was pretty interesting, many students had questions throughout the lecture. After class we took a trip to visit the Dalian Software Park. It had many companies on premises, including several big name companies. I was surprised just how many different companies were housed within the Dalian Software Park. I only expected the park to be 2-3 buildings, but it was way more than that. The buildings spanned quite a bit of land as well. The park really took me by surprise, and I would like ... read more

Asia » China » Dongbei » Dalian May 20th 2015

Today was our first day of class. First we had language class, which was interesting. The Chinese teacher thought that we know a LOT more Chinese than we did. We had to tell him that most of the class had literally no experience with Chinese so far. Only two students in the class are semi-fluent in Chinese, and I have taken Chinese for one semester 3 years ago. The teacher seemed somewhat frustrated that we didn’t know any Chinese, even though he had been told several times by our faculty advisor. After language class, we had culture class. Nothing really stood out to me in this lecture, mostly because Chinese class was a little exhausting. The rest of the day was free time and I went out with Dajung to see if we could find some ... read more

Asia » China » Dongbei » Dalian May 19th 2015

Today was our first full day in Dalian. We met with a faculty member from DUFE that would be assisting us during our stay. She took us to an area to meet up with 2 students from English Club to tour us around campus. The campus was a lot larger than I expected, but some of the buildings were older than I expected them to be. Overall though, the campus was very beautiful. The campus even had a garden area with a pond and small waterfall. There were many trees throughout campus, for some reason I did not expect there to be many trees there. After the campus tour, we went to the International Canteen for a welcome lunch. We were given many different dishes to try, but some were not as good as the others. ... read more

Asia » China » Shaanxi » Xi'an May 18th 2015

Today there isn't really much to write about. It is just a day of travel from Xi'an to Dalian. Around 10 AM we took a bus to the airport to make sure that we had time to drive to the airport, eat lunch, and then proceed through security. Security was something interesting, that's for sure... Many of the students got stopped by what was in their luggage, myself included. My luggage got flagged twice. The first time was for a pack of razors, they weren't sure what it was on the x-ray. The second time was for an external battery pack, which they didn't catch on the first x-ray. I'm not sure why they had a problem with it, since it was fine on our flight from Shanghai to Xi'an, but whatever. I guess they wanted ... read more

Asia » China » Shaanxi » Xi'an May 17th 2015

I found out the hard way that the sun rises very early in China. Early as in 4-4:30 AM EVERY morning… So that definitely threw off my sense of time in the morning. I woke up and thought I had slept through my alarm, but luckily I didn’t. It’s really starting to set in now that I’m in China and that I’ll be here for 5 weeks. It is definitely a crazy thought! The first thing we did today was go to a government owned/run terracotta factory. The quality of the work there is amazing. They use the same methods that were used before to harden the clay, but instead of stacking slabs of clay by hand and then carving, they use molds. They make all different sizes of terracotta warriors from full-size to only 4-6 ... read more

Asia » China May 16th 2015

This journal begins on the 16th, since the 15th was lost to travel. We went to hot pot for lunch. It was surprisingly similar to hot pot restaurants that I’ve been to in America. Same meats, same vegetables, same seasonings, etc. It was very delicious, but I was still feeling a little sick so I did not eat that much. After hot pot we went to a museum. There were many interesting and ancient pieces, I took many pictures. Unfortunately, I do not have an SD to USB adapter and there isn’t built-in one on my laptop. I will upload pictures as soon as I am able. I really enjoyed the museum because in America there aren’t really any museums with items that are as old as the ones in China. I was approached in the ... read more
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Asia » China » Shaanxi » Xi'an May 14th 2015

Hi everyone, This post will just be about traveling to China, it was a crazy experience for me. I woke up around 5 AM to get ready and make sure everything I needed was packed. I left for the airport around 6 AM with Kevin. The drive didn't take as long as we expected since we beat most of the morning traffic. We got to the airport around 6:50 am. Kevin and I said goodbye and then I was alone in the airport. I'd never been in an airport alone before, it was a little scary. I met up with some of my classmates around 7:15 or 7:25 am. We waited for others for a little while and then decided to get food. Our flight was set to leave at 9:50 am to go to JFK ... read more




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