Culture

My freshman year I was lucky enough to be apart of the All-American Marching Band when they traveled to Beijing, China. We were able to go visit a lot of sites and perform at several places including at the Great Wall of China. It was such a fun experience considering I had not traveled outside of the United States other than to Canada. It was very interesting to see the differences in our cultures. My group's tour guide tried to tell us different things we should know while we were visiting and she tried to learn different things from us. As we talked about in class, our tour guide gave everyone on our bus a little gift to welcome us. The gift giving was also present when we did a concert with a local high school band. When I went into a McDonald's there, they automatically assumed I didn't speak any Chinese (I don't)  and pulled out a menu for me to point at the items I wanted. I also found that when I was at the market bargaining for my purchases they would change the amount they were offering depending on what currency I told them I was going to pay with. One of the coolest things that I saw on that trip was that even though we were from completely different cultures and couldn't communicate all that well to each other, when a piece of music was put in front of us we could all read the notes and were able to communicate through the music. It was a very fun experience. I would love to go back and experience more of the culture and the trip also makes me want to visit other countries as well.

-Matt