For me, that place is China. I want to know more about how the education system works in a country with 35 million students (if you can even imagine that number!) and what its challenges are, and the only way to do that properly is to keep going back. Even when I am in the United States, I keep connected with all of my friends, colleagues and teachers through my SmartPhone, so the distance does not seem as great.
I hope that what I have shared with you this semester has answered a lot of questions about a country that seems very far away and different from our own. I hope the stories have brought to light some of the awesome and shared qualities that I have observed during my travels and life abroad. Most importantly, I hope it has continued to spark questions in all of you. I so look forward to talking with you and answering these questions every time we meet over Zoom, and it gives me great joy to see you as excited as I am when I am learning about China. Keep these questions and this curiosity with you as you move forward and as you take your own journeys to new places and countries. Then you, too, can share with others. I will be looking forward to hearing about these journeys someday, because in Mandarin, goodbye is not translated as something final. Instead, zai jian, 再见 literally means "see you again"!
