The last few days were extremely busy; I traveled from Changsha to Qingdao, Qingdao to Shanghai by way of Hangzhou and am now in the Toronto airport waiting to board a plane for Boston! Before I share the details of my long journey back to the US, I want to tell you about the beautiful city of Qingdao. Qingdao is an incredibly modern city on the coast of China and the city center is filled with new buildings everywhere you look. The architecture in this city is also quite different from other cities; many of the residential areas have apartment buildings that reminded me of condos in Florida. The Olympic sailing events and, I believe, the volleyball competitions were held in Qingdao so the Chinese spent a lot of time sprucing up this beautiful coastal resort town. We had the opportunity to walk around the Olympic Sailing Center when we first arrived. The medal stands were still there so naturally many photos were taken of us standing on the gold medal platform! Qingdao was also my last official stop on our group recruitment tour although my colleagues are continuing on and traveling to four more cities. Our Qingdao recruitment event was held early Saturday morning and, again, we had a full house. During one of my last interviews, I noticed a young woman sitting off to the side watching me and straining to hear the conversation. Thinking that she was waiting to interview, I thought she was trying to get an idea of the types of questions we asked. It turns out this young lady did not have an interview. She introduced herself as Daffney and explained that she read about our event in the paper while eating breakfast and rushed down to the hotel so that she could meet some Americans and practice her English. Daffney recently completed her second year of high school and had not yet begun to make plans for college. She asked us many questions about life in the U.S and told us about her life as a teenager in China. We encouraged Daffney to continue to work hard in school and to improve her English so that she could go to school in the states. What an impressive young woman! I do not know many 15 or 16 year olds who would get up early on a Saturday morning simply to practice their foreign language skills. Daffney’s desire to do well, her curiosity and work ethic will prepare her well for higher education whether she studies in China, Australia, the UK or the US. The characteristics Daffney demonstrated are some of the same characteristics we look for in students who apply to Northeastern: we want hard working, curious students who look for and take advantage of opportunities to learn. In fact, when we review applications we look beyond test scores and grades to garner this information from the supporting documents, such as the essay, activities and resume. Meeting Daffney was a perfect way to end my time in China. As I slowly made my way back to the Unites States – and I do mean slowly as all three of my flights (Qingdao to Shanghai, Shanghai to Toronto and Toronto to Boston) where delayed for hours- I thought about many of the students I met and how I hoped some would choose to apply and enroll at Northeastern. It was an extremely successful trip, I learned a lot about China and look forward to returning again soon. I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip to China. Until next time
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