They loved listening to us speak in English, and in my case, I became close friends with a Uyghur college student who had fallen in love with Mexican culture and Spanish by watching the Disney movie Coco. I taught her some Spanish words, and we still talk once in a while over WeChat. In fact, one of my favorite things that I did in Chengdu was participating in the Multicultural Festival, where some of my American counterparts and I represented the United States. We met people from all over the world, and the Chinese students and local communities were ecstatic to see people from so many parts of the world.
My experiences in China taught me that our perspectives, beliefs, and cultures may differ, but that doesn't mean that we don't have things in common or that we can't accept our differences. In reality, all I ever experienced was pure acceptance, community, and a place to be myself.
