We are gearing up for the fall semester here in Urbana.  As I prepare for what is lying ahead and what kinds of advice I'll have for this year's group of ACE students, I ran across this blog of one of our students, reminding me that growing and stretching yourself as a student is the best part of going to college.  And she learned this lesson on an ACE trip -- the International Business Immersion Program, IBIP -- www.ibip.illinois.edu.

As many of us are preparing to return to the United States this morning, we are exhausted and ready for a little time at home.  Lucy left our group last night so that she can spend her summer in her home town of Shanghai.  Veronica and Katie were continuing their summers in China with internships in Beijing @ the US Embassy and Henan Province @ OSI.  Luckily our morning didn’t have to start early.  American Airlines flight 288 wasn’t scheduled to take off until 4:10pm from Shanghai international airport; therefore we didn’t leave the hotel until 11:30am, a much appreciat

Today was a great last day of both sightseeing and company visits in China! We started off the day early and traveled 2 hours on the bus to Suzhou. In Suzhou we visited Mondelez International, the sister company of Kraft Foods. We went to their Research and Development center as well as a factory with another group of U of I students studying food science and human nutrition. We heard from a U of I alum as well as the principal scientist at the facility, Ken Tham, who shared some interesting facts about the company and the work they do. 

It was a nice early start today with the group departing our hotel at 7:30am. We started our day with a visit to the McDonalds Shanghai Hamburger University. Jacquelyn Howard, the VP of Supply Chain Management for McDonalds China/Hong Kong, spoke with us about McDonald’s supply chain and the safety measures that they implement for their products from “Farm to Fork”. It was really interesting to hear about the differences between the Chinese market and the US market and how McDonald’s has adapted to this new environment.

“Ring Ring,” its 7am and the wake up call never fails to come too soon.  Many of us are lacking on sleep at this point in time, but we always make sure to catch a nap on the bus.  Uni-President was our first stop of the day of the two beverage companies that we were headed to visit.  Uni-President manufactures beverages and packaged noodle bowls, comparable to ramen noodles in the US.  As we were touring different production lines, we learned that their beverages were all produced in house.  All the way from the bottle manufacturing, bottling the product, to labelin

Today we started off by going to the famous French Concession neighborhood, where there were bars, restaurants, and shops. Like usual we all stopped at Starbucks to enjoy a cup of coffee and then walked around to enjoy the view. After this we walked the Bund which is a riverwalk of the Huangpu River  where you can view both the new “Pudong” section of Shanghai as well as the older more historic neighborhoods.   Pudong is home to the financial district of Shanghai which we will visit later this day.

On Monday, May 26, we checked out of Zhejiang University International Dorm on the Yuquan Campus at 9am. After an hour and a half, we arrived at Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., which is known as the largest beverage producer in China. Public Relations Director, Summer Cheng, gave us a tour of one of their production line facilities and explained the entire process from producing a bottle, to inserting a beverage inside, to shipping the finished product.

Sunday seemed like a day of recovery considering we arrived at our Zhejiang University dorm rooms at 2am Saturday night. Upon arrival we were just a bit surprised. Until this point we had been spoiled with fancy hotels, but the dorm rooms essentially had the bare necessities to go about life: bed, bathroom, and a roof. After a short rest we woke up at 9 a.m.

Nǐ hǎo! We arrive at the halfway point of our journey with this blog post. We have learned so much and have developed great friendships during our travels thus far, and we are excited for what the last half of the trip will bring for us.

Our last day in Beijing began with an early start at 6 am by saying goodbye to Carl- the last thing we wanted to do.  We all loaded the bus and headed for the train station in Beijing to depart for Henan province and the city of Luohe.  This train station did not compare to Union Station, Amtrak, or anything in the United States.  The high-speed bullet rail train of China is more comfortable than many of us expected and included larger seats, more legroom, and speeds of 300 km/h.   After spending a few hours of much needed rest on the train, we arrived in Luohe (pro