We thought we had living in China down until the travel week. Carrying luggage through mile long train stations, riding in old trains and being gawked at gave us new challenges. But the trains gave us opportunity to converse with police academy students, power plant workers, teachers and children. We also got to know each other better: talking, napping and playing riddles while spectacular beauty passed our windows. Highlights included riding by the famed Yellow River and through the flat grasslands of Inner Mongolia. The sites of Xi’an, Inner Mongolia and Datong showed us ancient China while those cities and its people showed us Rural China.

-Rona Luo, Stuyvesant HS