On the afternoon of April 4, 2008 six of my School Year Abroad classmates and I boarded one of two buses headed for the Western Academy of Beijing to participate in the first Asian delegation of the Global Issues Network Conference. I didn’t know that the next three days were to permanently change my life. The First Day “You not only can make a difference, you must make a difference.” -J. F. Rischard After a confusing and loud registration process where we received ‘Earth’s Hope’ T-shirts, bracelets, lime green tote bags, a program, an environmentally friendly water bottle, and a savvy and professional looking name tag, we were broken up in to two groups of almost 200 (there were 300 students attending the conference from, among other places, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Singapore, Guangzhou and Hong
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