When I visited the middle school in Dalian the first major thing I remember is how impressed I was by the bravery of a young, middle school girl to stand up and speak in front of her classmates, which is hard enough alone, and the foreign Penn State students (in perfect English by the way). This is just a testament to how hard these kids work in their younger years in China. I always knew this was the case before I had visited this school but I had never expected such an impressive thing as this to happen. The two kids in the picture also had excellent English. I remember when I was in middle school all I could say in Spanish was hola and gracias. I was truly blown away.

In Dalian at this school was where I noticed that virtually everything culturally was different but simultaneously, the people, procedures, and manners are, for the most part, the same. I noticed this during the flag raising ceremony at the school. So many things about the flag raising procedure in this school we visited in China are so similar to how the flag is raised at Penn State every morning. The unison, discipline, and the special song for the procedure all just seemed so universal at that point. This recognition made me think about the Chinese school uniforms and how many private schools in the U.S. have similar rules. Then I thought about how some students at the middle school were dressed up in military attire, separate from their classmates. So similar to many JROTC programs across U.S. high schools. This has really been one of the major themes for me as I went through this whole China program is that all the countries of the world really have a lot in common at their core.