We leave today

We are leaving in about 2 hours from now... I've been getting nervous about the trip over the last couple days and I'm going to miss being at home. I think my main concern is that I'm not looking forward to the idea of the really long flight... I've been hoping that something happens similar to the Lost show on tv and we end up on an island or something.

In the last 24 hours, what have you done to prepare for your trip?

I haven't done that much preparing for the trip in the last 24 hrs or so... I'm staying at home for most of this month, and it's the first time I've lived at home for that long in almost 3 years and I don't have a job here so I feel like I'm being very lazy but I'm having a good time. I've ordered more contact lenses for the trip and made a list of things to pack and forced myself to study the language a bit for the first time. The studying chinese thing just isn't going well at all b/c I can't motivate myself to do it yet, which I'm hoping I don't regret. I played around on the faceren last night (it's kind of like facebook, see www.faceren.com) and I'm wondering if it's as popular as the facebook is here. Also, all of us that are going got our Chinese names today. Mine is 蓝聚京 and that means something like "Blue gathers in Beijing".

10 Weeks in China

What are look looking forward to the most?

I'm looking forward to learning a new language. I have heard from friends that you can buy dvd's very cheap there so I'm planning to get a lot of new movies too. This will be the longest time I've ever spent out of the country and I think it will be a cool experience.

What gives you any sense of anxiety at all about going?

I'm not really sure what kind of work I will be doing, and I'm hoping that my advisor lets me do something interesting. My fear (and expectation, really) is that I'll spend a lot of time doing data-entry work and things that are very simple, since it's probably very tough to judge what each of us know how to do going in...

Not everyone who expressed interest ended up applying to go... what was the most compelling aspect of the program that made you DECIDE you wanted to do it?

I like the idea of living in China, and that is something I have wanted to do for awhile. A few of my friends have done study abroad programs in the past, and they all had very good things to say, so I already knew I would like to go to China if I had a chance. I really like the idea of getting to try doing chemistry research in another country. I think it will be cool to see how people at another University run a research group, and I also think this setting will provide a unique set of challenges that should be interesting... I think I will learn a lot and probably have a lot of fun too.