Scavenger Hunt at the Shanghai Natural History Museum

你们好！Hello everyone! Today, our Chinese 2 class was delivered some bad news. 金老师不在！她生病了！Our teacher was sick today so 明珠老师 substituted for us! Some of us have also been getting a little sick and have been feeling under the weather lately. This is a good time to remind everyone that especially in the hot weather here in Shanghai, it's important to keep your body healthy and stay hydrated. It's been extremely hot lately and we have been going in and out of air conditioned rooms, so be careful! 
During class, we learned new material that covered geographical terms, and also terms regarding names of major bodies of land and water. The most exciting part of class was *drumroll please* .....learning how to count. The terms that we learned in class were really useful for our trip to the Shanghai Natural History Museum. When we arrived at our destination, I was blown away by how beautiful the scenery was. 风景很优美！Inside the museum was also a beautiful sight to witness. 

At the museum, the Program Leaders and the Teacher Assistants had planned out a scavenger game for us. They divided us into teams, and handed us our task sheets. We explored the museum, took pictures of the many exhibits, and also ran around like we're in a zombie apocalypse trying to find and complete the tasks to win a souvenir prize. Overall, my favorite part of the museum was being able to see the taxidermy of many different animals. The animals looked so realistic. The more I look at them, the more scared I get that one of them would blink back at me. It was so interesting to learn about the history and evolution of animals in the world. There were tons of cool interactive exhibits. One of my favorites was a 360° room, that played a documentary on the evolution of the world. The best part about it was that it was all in 3D. My group enjoyed watching the cool 3D experience, but as for someone like me that wears prescription glasses all day, everyday, 24/7, I didn't enjoy that as much as I wanted to. Most of us just walked around some more but as we were about to leave, we sang Happy Birthday to our birthday boy: Ben! Happy 16th birthday! 

The Natural History Museum is another great memory and experience to add to our Shanghai excursion! The museum itself is already a beautiful sight to witness but the exhibits and displays add the extra spice to our experience here. I've learnt a lot about the geography and also biology of the world, and how much it has changed and evolved. Just like the animals in the exhibits, we have evolved and advanced as ambassadors of America through this Shanghai trip. 不但(Not only) did we evolve in our language abilities, 而且 (also) we have evolved as people who have a broader cultural understanding of another country. On this trip so far, I have gained so much insight on my own culture and ethnicity, and I'm glad that I'm able to have this opportunity to experience a whole new world, live outside of my comfort zone, challenging myself on a daily basis in order to grow as an individual so that I can evolve even further into a wholesome, culturally knowledgeable person.

-Kelsey Zhou 7/26/2017