China letter reaction

Receiving letters back from the students in Chine has been an amazing, unforgettable experience. I have been emailing a few of them back and forth and getting to know more about them and their culture. When reading their letters, I was expecting to read about how strict their country is and how they don't have any free time and how they make no choices themselves. This, however, was not what I read. China is very strict, but people there do have free time and they can go out and do whatever it is that they need or want to do. They have a huge test, which I did not know about until this project, that determines what they will do with the rest of their lives. This astounds me. School is much more structured, as I assumed it would be, and students care more about their grades than a lot of kids here in the United States. I was surprised that a lot of them had siblings. I had heard about the law stating you could only have one child and I found this was not the case for any of the people I received letters from. They had a lot of questions to ask and many pertained to my many jobs. They didn't know how I have time to do everything I am involved in plus work as well. They had many questions on if I liked my jobs and how I picked them. I also had a lot of questions about hobbies and books. They were curious as to what else I did in my free time. In one of my pictures in my autobiography, my family and I were at Hershey's Chocolate World. They were amazed that my family could travel so easily. Whenever we wanted to take a trip, we could. they never said this, but I'm assuming they can't just travel to far away places at the drop of a hat.

Out of all of my letters, not one person compared me to an actress or a television show. They were all able to basically tell me about myself just from my autobiography. It was amazing how much they could tell about me just from reading it. They don't seem to be very judgmental, which surprised me
slightly because people here tend to judge harshly and quickly. It made me feel so great to see how excited they were to read our papers. It was very humbling to read their responses and to understand some of their thoughts. This has been an amazing experience and I hope to continue talking to them and expanding my knowledge on their culture. Maybe one day I'll go visit them in China.