My name is Yangqingqing Hu but people call me Chloe. I was born and raised in Beijing. Two years ago, I went to the United States for college, studying Culture and Politics at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Attending college in the U.S. has been the biggest turning point in my life. Before that, life was pretty simple.

Being an only child, I grew up with full attention from my parents, grandparents and everyone else in my family. In the first 18 years of my life, I was never away from home for more than a month. But after visiting the U.S. for the first time in high school, I started to think about studying abroad.

As you can imagine, my parents were skeptical at first. After all, I grew up believing that I should go to Peking or Tsinghua University because my mom always said they were the best.

We decided to try to take the tests. It was quite a painful process. I had to study for the TOEFL and SAT while continuing my schoolwork. Faced with all the English books and practice tests, I would be lying if I said I never thought about giving up. But in the end I made it through and my dream came true when I opened my inbox and saw the acceptance letter from Georgetown, my dream school.

Although it was hard, choosing to study abroad turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life. So far I have studied in the States for two awesome years. I have learned new things, been to different places and met wonderful people.

Everybody I meet seems to have some connection to or interest in China. People always ask me a lot of questions when they hear that I am from China. Perhaps this is because China has been growing so rapidly and they are aware of the growing potential of China. I am really proud of my country. No matter where I am, I want to do things that can contribute to China. That is why I joined Project Pengyou this summer.

The U.S.-China relationship is important in many ways, and what Project Pengyou is doing—cultural exchange among college students—is especially valuable. Margaret Mead said in Culture and Commitment that the world suffers largely because of the lack of understanding among people and nations. Project Pengyou aims to eliminate that lack of understanding by actually getting young Americans to experience Chinese culture first-hand. To me, this is a very meaningful program and I want to be part of it.

I also hope to gain more knowledge about the non-profit and non-governmental sectors in China and their relationship with the Chinese government during my internship with Project Pengyou. I am currently helping with the development of Project Pengyou’s new pilot project with the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and designing promotional materials.

It has been great and I look forward to the rest of the summer!