Always a friendly face

I felt so welcome in China. Ever since we arrived we were greeted with friendly faces. People on the streets would want to practice their English with us and we would always reply with a “Nihao” (hello) and “Zaijian” (goodbye). When we were walking on the streets we were taking as much pictures of the area as people were taking pictures of us.
One of the neatest experiences I had with communication was at Zhejiang Forestry University. Here we met with a small group of students and they took us around their campus. On the way we stopped at there library and looked through a plant book. The language barrier was interesting because in the “plant world” the Latin name of plants should be universal. We ran into some trouble here because Latin is a hard language for the students to learn. It surprised me though because with descriptions we could talk about the same plant but just call it by something else.
To be honest I had more culture shock entering back into the US. We were greeted in the Chicago airport with somber faces, and a flight cancelation. Just stopping for a second and looking around at the hurry, and frenzy people were in made me instantly miss the comforting and welcoming country we just left.