Over spring break social studies teacher David Platt took a group of students to China. Junior Mia Waters was among the students that travelled with him. Waters was adopted from China as a young child.

“I really wanted to go back to China because I was born there and it would be my first opportunity to go back to where I was born,” she said.

Traveling back wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be. Getting her visa, which allowed her to enter China, was complicated.

“The visa process was really long,” she said. “And for some reason, because I was born in China, they seemed to trust me even less. They had to send in a bunch of documents with my original Chinese passport and my mom’s passport.”
Platt said he enjoyed the experience becuase many of his students had never been there before.
“My favorite part about the trip was being able to watch the students experience and share their first time experiences in China together,” he said.

Traveling to China was an eye-opening experience for the many.

“I think when people think about China they think about the government,” sophomore Vera Petrovic said. “But when you actually go there you can see that it’s the same as anywhere else in the world, and they are just people at the end of the day.”

When in China, the students were surprised by how friendly the people were. Petrovic said she enjoyed the community the most.

“I loved the people there the most because they were just the kindest and most welcoming and open people,” she said. “They would just run up to me and want to take pictures. They were just really beautiful people, and it was nice to see how warm they all were.”

Waters’ favorite part about the trip was being able to go to the Great Wall and experience that with the group.
“I really liked the Great Wall,” she said. “It was raining when we went walking on it so I thought that helped us bond as a group. The trip made me want to return to my orphanage even more and just to spend more time in China.”
Everyone on the trip enjoyed experiencing a unique opportunity.

“I think every time you get to go to a new place you get to see the world with a little bit of a bigger perspective,” Platt said. “But you also leave knowing that more people are alike than different which is a pretty powerful learning experience.”