{"id":1048,"date":"2019-03-24T14:08:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T14:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2019-03-24T14:09:18","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T14:09:18","slug":"emily-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/?p=1048","title":{"rendered":"Emily: Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thursday, March 21 – Friday, March 22<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Our adventure began this morning at 7:30 am in<\/g> the RDU airport! After a quick flight to Detroit, we boarded the 13 hour<\/g> plane ride to Beijing. During the flight, I watched two movies (Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean\u2019s 8, which I both highly recommend!), finished a summer program application and managed to get a few hours of sleep. I felt surprisingly refreshed when we landed, although it was nearly 4:30 am back home. By the time we got through immigration customs and picked up our luggage, it was nearly 6 pm. We met two of our super friendly translators, Julia and Cong, who took us to our bus. The ride to UCAS took nearly two hours due to unexpected traffic, so it was after 8:00 pm when we arrived. The convention center hotel lobby is super nice, although very cold due to a lack of heating. We received our badges upon check-in and a super nice backpack; afterwards<\/g>, we headed to the dining room for a light meal of vegetable noodles and meat dumplings. It was delicious and very comforting after a long period of traveling! We finally reached our rooms after 9 pm \u2013 Jenny and I were delighted by how spacious our suite was! We each have our own room inside the suite, which is awesome so that we won\u2019t disturb each other in the morning when we wake up. After taking a much needed hot shower and unpacking, I crashed in the very firm (but surprisingly comfortable!) bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday<\/strong><\/g> March 23<\/strong> 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I woke up naturally at 6:00 am in the morning due to jet lag, although I felt quite refreshed. After getting ready, Jenny and I headed to the dining room to grab breakfast. We were thrilled by how much yummy looking food there was! It was all very authentic and delicious \u2013 my favorites were the fried youtiao, pork buns and sweet potato porridge. Afterwards<\/g>, we headed to the gymnasium where the judging occurs to set up our posters together. My project is in the CS category, which is relatively small. I can\u2019t wait to learn about all the other projects in my category! After setting up, we walked to the auditorium to rehearse for the opening ceremony. We had to come up with a unique gesture to do after we walked across the stage \u2013 we choose to take a selfie as part of ours because it seems like an \u201cAmerican\u201d thing to do. We had to rehearse walking across the stage<\/g> four or five times, which took a while. Lunch was just as delicious as breakfast was \u2013 I\u2019ll have a hard time readjusting to cafeteria food when I get back to school!  I managed to squeeze in a short nap after my food coma from lunch before heading to the Opening Ceremony. It was very high energy, with flashing lights and exciting performances. I loved watching each delegation\u2019s video as they walked on stage. It\u2019s incredible how many different countries are represented in the competition, from Australia to Ukraine! The audience seemed to think our selfie was funny, and we ended up with a really cool picture! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hit up the nearby market after the ceremony, where I purchased some matcha cookies and grape gummies to try. The UCAS campus is expansive but very beautiful, and we were blessed with mainly blue skies and light air pollution while we\u2019re here. The Chinese are definitely dedicating a lot of resources to turn the campus into a global hub for research and innovation! Dinner was delicious – it\u2019s interesting how watermelon seems to be served at every meal. We had a great time trying the pack of different snacks our translators gifted us for dessert; my favorite one was the Hawthorn gummy. I am currently super exhausted, so I\u2019ll likely go to bed early for the long day of judging tomorrow. I can\u2019t wait to find out what\u2019s in store for the rest of the trip!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday, March 21 – Friday, March 22 Our adventure began this morning at 7:30 am in the RDU airport! After a quick flight to Detroit, we boarded the 13 hour plane ride to Beijing. During the flight, I watched two movies (Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean\u2019s 8, which I both …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[138,145],"class_list":["post-1048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beijing-2019","tag-beijing-2019","tag-emily","column","threecol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1053,"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions\/1053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ncsciencecompetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}