China –Shenzhen - I

I spent 2 weeks in Shenzhen, China as part of the MIT China Development Initiative’s Service Leadership Program.  The objective of the project was to mentor local high school students to give them the skills to develop their own mentorship program for less privileged migrant school children.  Before the intensive 8 day program started, the MIT group planned out the final details of our curriculum as well as had some fun exploring China!

We got massages.  I got an hour long body massage that was the best massage I’ve ever had.  The woman really focused on my left shoulder, my hip, and this point in my back where I used to have a lot of tension.  It was painful, but a good pain.  Toward the end of the massage she grabbed onto the metal bars above the table and jumped onto my back which was surprising and yet satisfactory because she cracked my back.  She then proceeded to yank me backwards several times to stretch my abs out, which was less fun but felt good afterwards.

We went to Karaoke twice during the trip.

We ate a lot of food and Wesley always encouraged us to eat more/was the human garbage can.  I tried a lot of new authentic Chinese food in Shenzhen, and I greatly prefer the flavors in China rather than the Americanized versions we get here.  In the above pic, we are eating dim sum in Hong Kong.

We took a day trip to Hong Kong, and mmm I got a delicious watermelon with jelly drink.  I loved how all the drink places I want to in China put real fruit into their drinks, and wished the bubble tea places here did too.