CHINA: Day 12

Monday May 28, 2012

Today we did a lot of the International Business part of this trip.  We took the hotel vans to a more industrial part of town about an hour and a half away from the hotel.  There we met with the managers of Melaleuca and Nu Skin at their respective buildings.  Both talked to us about their business and how things were run.  Then we were given a tour of the factory to see how their products were produced. 

The meetings and tours were very interesting, and it was fun to learn about how businesses are run in China as opposed to in the states.  Unfortunately, I was pretty exhausted so my attention span struggled a little bit.  The biggest thing that I took away from this was that I should keep going to school so that I don’t have to be a factory worker.  Can you imagine standing and placing plastic bottles on an assembly line all day every day?  All of those jobs looked absolutely awful!  And, in China, they are working for such low wages that it doesn’t even seem worth it.  But, those people can feed their families with the money that they make and are very grateful to have a job at all.  That thought definitely makes me even more grateful to live where I do and to have the lifestyle that I have.  My life is so good.

By the time we got back to the hotel, our day was pretty much gone.  The boys had made some friends at English Corner yesterday that they had agreed to go on a little group date with tonight.  If we are being honest, I was a little nervous about them going out with some girls that they didn’t know in a huge city in a foreign country.  Seemed a little sketch to me.  But, they are big boys who can handle themselves so no one really thought anything of it.  The funny thing is that if the tables had been turned at it was the girls that were going out on a date, not only would our chaperones not have let us go, but neither would those boys.  Double standard? Well yes, but that’s probably okay. 

Joe and Sharlet had dinner plans with some of their former students and some of the boys had dates, so the rest of us got stuck with McDonald’s for dinner.  Nice.  Luckily, I wasn’t too hungry so an oreo McFlurry and some French fries were just perfect for me.  After dinner we went back to the hotel and while some played cards in the lobby, Kenzy, Shannon, Zach, and I watched Mulan in our room.  Watching Mulan while in China definitely had to happen.  That was pretty fun.

Eventually Branden and Avery showed up and told us that their dates never showed up.  So, they went on a little man-date instead.  Also, Dallas was supposed to meet them somewhere with his date, but he didn’t.  They ended up coming back without him and hoping that he wouldn’t get himself into trouble.  Dallas showed up a little while later and told us about what a great time he had had on his date.  We gave him a hard time about leaving the other boys and going out with a prostitute (He didn’t really but there were lots of things said and done that made it look that way).  Once everyone was back, we put in Branden’s new movie, Red Tails, which is about the Tuskegee airmen.  It seemed like a good show, but I fell asleep about 20 minutes into it and ended up just going back to my room and going to sleep.  This China stuff is exhausting!!