Jenny: Volunteers, Violin, and Views

This morning, the poster exhibition was open to the public! As middle schoolers and the general public came up to my poster, I explained my idea on using bacteriophages to clean hospital sink drains. I was quite surprised at the number of people who understood what bacteriophages were. There was one point when a group of elementary schoolers surrounded my poster! 

The volunteers have spoiled us with gift; they are incredibly kind. Hong gave us a goodie bag with Beijing snacks, Julia gave bookmarks of Beijing opera characters, and Hao gave cute pencil bags! I gave them big pizza shaped erasers J

I played violin for the closing ceremony! It was a great experience because I got to have a lightning and microphone check for my violin during dress rehearsal. The pieces I decided to perform were Mendelssohn’s violin concerto and Viva la Vida. The audience started to clap along half way through the performance, which made me really happy; sharing music with delegates from all around the world was a feeling I had never before experienced. 

We visited the Forbidden City today! It was much cleaner than the last time I had visited. The college students say it is because Beijing has tried to move its factories into different parts of China. Our awesome tour guide was very passionate about Chinese history, giving us interesting stories of China’s last emperor of the Qing dynasty. The Forbidden city was home to emperors in the last three Chinese dynasties (Yuan, Ming, Qing) after the Mongols established the capital in Beijing. Anotherhighlight of the trip was going on the top of the hill of one of the palaces (where the emperor would go to relax) and seeing the aerial view of the Forbidden city! I had never known the scale of the Forbidden City before going to see the whole view.