China Trip 2024 – Day 1

by Yul Choy

We arrived at RDU airport at 4:00 AM and all individually checked in. Once we got through security, students split up and had breakfast. I personally (Yul), got a Popeyes chicken sandwich. Nothing better than popeyes at 4:00 AM. At the airport we coincidentally ran into current rising seniors as they were leaving for their work experience trips. We boarded the flight and left North Carolina at 6:30.

The second picture is a bird-eye view of Seattle as we passed by. A lot of students slept very well on the 6 hour flight. Once we landed in Seattle we had a short 1 hour layover in which the students split up again and went to get lunch. Unfortunately the McDonalds was still serving the breakfast menu so I settled with food from QDoba (first picture). At 11:16 AM PDT, our group left for China.

Once we arrived in Shanghai Pudong airport after 12 hours of traveling, we quickly went through customs. At this point some of our group member were dying of drowsiness. Others (like me) had slept for nearly half the flight and felt great.

Once we met up with our tour guides Jerry and Christina (really nice people by the way), our group stepped into Chinese soil for the first time and boarded a bus (second photo). Here, we travelled for a good but of time and got acquainted. We were given bottled waters, snacks, and beautiful views like the first picture as we headed to dinner.

Dinner at Hong Ling Restaurant was fantastic and acted as a taste test for the great food to come on this trip. We ate an array of beef, pork, veggies, soup, all with rice and had a feast. My personal favorite was the red pork belly served as a Shanghai special dish. You can see me enjoying the food in the third picture. After dinner we headed to the Camponile hotel. Everyone was super tired by the time we arrived at 7:30. After a quick talk in the lobby, the group, in pairs of two, went up to their rooms and called it a day.has context menu