China Part 1: The Build Up.

When it came to registration time in the fall, I wasn't sure which China classes I should be taking. Then my friend Sarah Prak told me about Mojo. At first I was skeptical about it; what could I do in China? I ended up signing up for the class not knowing that it would change my outlook on the entire country. The first time the class met I remember wondering who I was going to know other than Sarah and George, who Sarah also convinced to join. I didn't want to be traveling to the other side of the world with a bunch of people I didn't know. Once everyone filed in my mind was put at ease as I started to see some familiar faces walk through the door. Then there was Rob... I had never taken class with Rob so the only things I knew about him were what people had told me, and that was he is full of energy and he is a yak farmer. Now that I think about it, that's definitely Rob. Once class started to really get under way, we started getting into the details of what we were going to be doing and I just wanted to go right away. The classes kept on going and we kept learning about this country that is just so different from our own. We had one class where we were supposed to be learning some Mandarin. Little did we know that we would just be saying words that we had no idea what they meant. The whole class seemed very confused as to what was going on as we tentatively butchered the phrases she was teaching us. I was actually hoping to get to learn more Chinese before we went but in the build up to it all I think I just ran out of time. The next thing I knew it was 4:00AM and I'm sitting in Burlington airport waiting to go on the trip of my life.