I'm heading back to the US on Saturday, which means my study abroad experience is almost officially over. I was talking with another CIEE student and it is really weird to think that it is almost over...

Mandarin is the first oral language I have studied. In high school, I took four years of Latin, but we rarely read aloud, as Latin is a dead language and impossibly difficult to converse in (Latin grammar...

This past week was the CIEE Weeklong Excursion and I went to Yunnan Province with 30 other students and 3 teachers. We were traveling along the Ancient Tea and Horse Road (茶马古道) and...

Many people told me I would experience culture shock when I came to Shanghai, but I did not take any of their comments seriously. Last summer, I lived on the Thailand/Burma border doing volunteer work...