The second and third rounds were really great experiences. Second round: As an international student, I worried that I wouldn't be able to do anything for my team, but my team was very inviting and was genuinely excited to meet me. International students as a whole were very valuable to our teams because of our unique mindsets and values. Third round: This round really emphasized flexibility and critical thinking, skills that are necessary for leaders.

Having us high school students complete a leadership project with a rubric takes away the whole point of leadership. When you add a rubric to a "leadership" project, students instinctively use the rubric as a guideline for their projects. This means that much of their project isn't based on their own interests and goals, but are more centered toward meeting the requirements of the rubric. Additionally, many of my Chinese teammates told me that their projects were assigned by their schools. So basically, their projects were not leadership projects, they were assignments. As a result, almost 90 percent of all the projects followed the exact same format. Any projects that were different were not considered leadership projects.

We learned that the Chinese students' have great presentational skills and incredible work ethics. We also got to experience presenting in front of a huge crowd.

I think the first part of our tour was completely unnecessary, we barely had time to take pictures. Indigo was cool, the beds were lame. However, free time was very fun and we were able to view beautiful works of art and eat good food. Happy birthday Nathan and Hailey