Almost There

Hi everyone, my name is Alex Reany. I’ve been given an extraordinary opportunity to travel to China to study hospitality management and its culture and customs. This opportunity was made possible through Florida International University’s study abroad program at the Tianjin University of Commerce. Krysta DiBenedetto (who will be also blogging on here and already has) and I received a scholarship to chronicle our experiences while abroad in China. There will be eleven of us traveling from FIU to China and I’m looking forward to the experiences that we will all have together.

Getting ready to travel to another country for a substantial amount of time can be a daunting task. Especially when then country’s culture seems so different from my own. Our health while abroad is important and each student was given health insurance through HTH Worldwide Insurance Services. I also visited passporthealth.com to see what health problems exist in the countries I’m going to visit as well as which vaccines I should get before traveling. As far as the visa was concerned the school took care of it almost completely, we just needed to fill out the appropriate paperwork. The other big concern is access to money while abroad. It turns out that Bank of America has a partnership with China Construction Bank (which has an ATM at our school). So I opened an account to avoid fees. Unlike here where people swipe for everything with their cards in China many business still only except paper currency. When it came to scheduling classes and any questions or concerns we had we turned to Dawn Fagnan and I would like to thank Dawn for everything she has done for me in getting everything ready. I feel like I was more then a bit troublesome in the whole process, So thank you Dawn for dealing with all the complications I’ve thrown your way these past couple of months.

Now that I’m about 2 days away from being in China and pretty much all ready to go, minus being completely packed, you think I would be super excited. The truth is it hasn’t registered yet that I am going to be in China. I’m sure it won’t be till I get off the plane that it will hit me that I’m actually there. The funny thing is all I can think about right now is what my first meal is going to be once in China. We are going to be on a plane for thirteen hours and I’m sure I’m going to be starving and jet lagged. Whatever we eat I'm sure it's going to be very memorable for me.

Though I travel a bit this will be the furthest and longest I’ve been away from home and the first time I haven’t gone with family or incredibly close friends. I’ve been calling everyone to say goodbye, (since communication is going to be difficult while over there, Facebook is illegal, and the 12 hour time difference) and it feels odd. It’s going to be hard not to be able to pick up a phone and call someone when I want. So I’ve turned to email and Skype to keep in contact with everyone.

As it stands now I’m 90% packed, but I know that I’m going to miss/forget something that I need/want/could use. I find myself packing things and then taking it out only to put it back in. This is the exact opposite of how I usually am. I typically pack in 5 minutes and call it a day, but this time I feel like I need everything.

I hope you guys enjoy reading this blog and sharing what Krysta, the group and I are going to experience while abroad. Please post comments and email me reanyalex [at] gmail [dot] com