I did not travel out of the country until I was 15 years old, and my first trip was an incredibly novel one for someone who had never been to a place more exotic than Arizona. I traveled to China before the Olympic Games in 2008 as part of a singing group, and it was an unbelievable, fast-paced experience. I flew into Hong Kong International Airport on Cathay Pacific, my first long flight (if I recall correctly, it was about 16 hours) that landed on a runway that jutted disconcertingly out into the Pacific Ocean. From there we went to Shanghai, a city that was a stunning mix of new skyscrapers and old colonial buildings. Shanghai was a city of disparity between old and new, wealthy and impoverished, and the pace of the metropolis made New York City look slow by comparison. For my teenage friends and I, it was a giddy opportunity to explore between performances. We ran around a teeming open-air market, haggling with vendors, and our three days in Shanghai were exhausting because of our attempts to see as much of the enormous city as possible. From there we went to the main location of our trip: Beijing, which was to host the 2008 Olympics five months later. Because we had a whole week in the city, we could take more time to see more conventional tourist attractions. Traveling to the Great Wall was not only great exercise but an excellent exploration in the history of China. Most vividly, we went to Tiananmen Square, which was gorgeous and also eerie because of the censorship of the tour guides, who pled ignorance of any turmoil in the 1980s. What remains in my mind were two monoliths that would become symbols of the Olympics. We drove by the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube several times during our journey, and they were always eye-catching. Watching the televised Olympics, I got chills every time the camera focused on an overhead shot of the pair of arenas, knowing that I had been there. China was a whirlwind of performances and sightseeing that went by so quickly it was hard to process at the time. I would love to go back and soak it all in over a long time period. — Sean Williams, intern