So I'm done with orientation in D,C! Most of it was pretty cut and dry stuff, a lot of information sessions and such. But we did take a walk to the White House (our hotel was at Embassy Suites and we spent the day at the American Councils Office so we were walking distance) where we took some typical tourist pictures. Anyways, the people so far are awesome- I've met 19 other kids who are all going to Shanghai with me, and then 20 other kids who are going to ZhangZhou. Everyone is super friendly, and my new friend and I walked to Walgreens where we bought cat food for some homeless guy's cat. We stopped and talked to the guy for a while, he did a lot of artwork that was pretty cool. Tomorrow I wake up at 3 am and the bus leaves the hotel at 4 30 am...so there goes any chance of getting a good night's sleep. My flight departs at 8:30 for Chicago, where I'll have a connecting flight to Shanghai. If I have time, I'll try to put up pictures of my hotel suite and the White House later, but chances are I won't have computer access again for a while until I get settled in to Shanghai. I meet my host family Saturday, so wish me luck!

So I've never done a blog in my life, but this is the only way to keep some of you in my life for the next six weeks or so, so here goes! Tomorrow begins three days of orientation of Washington D.C before I fly out to Shanghai with 19 other people I've never met before. I'm not actually nervous because this still hasn't sunk in, I feel like tomorrow's just going to be another typical summer lazy day...except it's not. No texting, phone, or facebook while I'm there (facebook's banned in China), so I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get my hands on skype or email once I'm there. Still, I'm officially done packing, and it's off to the airport tomorrow morning!