First Time Traveler

The KPMG visit was awesome! Today was a really fun day. In the morning we had our KPMG visit in Tokyo. This is one of the things I was looking forward to the most, and it was great. I was very surprised by how awesome there English was. I really like the presentation all together, especially the first two guys that acted out the business card etiquette. They were funny. The tour around the office was cool because we got to talk different partners, as well as compare the office to the KPMG in Pittsburgh. It was pretty similar surprisingly. I really liked when we got to socialize and talk to the two staff members during lunch. It was so interesting to hear about their everyday life as well as their global experiences. I feel that they were so much more adventurous than me. Risa Sawada and Kenta Nagahama were the two staff members at our table and they were so friendly. Risa said she studied in Los Angeles and in Australia. Kenta said he visited Oregon State University. I thought that...

Adventuring around Tokyo has been so exciting. As a group we are traveling throughout the city by train. This can get very hectic and crazy at times especially during rush hour, but Dr. Peng and Dr. Lin get us where we need to go! Wednesday was another very busy day in Japan. We visited IFRS Asia-Oceania in the morning. It was interesting to learn more about global IFRS, and how it works. It was also cool to listen about taxonomy and XBRL because I learned that in AIS with Dr. Peng. For lunch we were on our own in Yokohama. A few other students and I found a cute cookie shop that also served food. My lunch was delicious. I absolutely hate sandwiches but I got a BLT(I was not feeling very adventurous for lunch haha) and it was honestly amazing. After lunch we met the same adorable tour guide from the day before. He was helping us get to the Nissan plant. Touring the Nissan plant was really cool. We learned a lot of history behind the engines, and how they create the engines at t...

I survived my first flight....well two flights actually! We flew from Pittsburgh to Chicago and then from Chicago to Japan. The first flight was a breeze. The whole process was pretty easy at the airport since it was so early. I had never even been to the airport so I had no idea what to do for anything. The whole flight took about 1 hour and 45 minutes, and the time passed quickly. I just listened to music and tried to relax. After we got to Chicago we had about a 3 hour layover so we ate breakfast and walked around the airport. Then we got on the 2nd plane ready for Japan. The second flight was terrible. I can't believe I honestly survived. 13 hours is way too long for me haha. I could not sleep at all so I got very bored. I watched a lot of movies like Moana, Sing, Passengers,, Toy Story 3 as well as some tv show episodes. I was so uncomfortable and long. I didn't really like the food they served, but I at least tried it. I wasn't too hungry anyway so I didn't re...

Tomorrow we leave for our trip to Japan and Taiwan! I'm so nervous, but also really excited. On Friday we had our last orientation before we leave. We got all the final details, itinerary, and met everyone that is going. Dr. Peng and Lin put together a manual of everything we need to know to prepare us for the trip. It is really detailed and helpful, and made me even more excited to experience the two countries. We also played icebreakers to become more comfortable with each other since there are so many of us going. After ice-breakers we enjoyed a taco bar, it was delicious! While we ate our tacos we then watched a presentation on everything we needed to know for our trip. Dr. Peng and Lin went over our day to day schedules and answered our last minute questions. The party was fun and helpful. I'm glad we had it and am so excited for the trip. I leave for the airport in about 5 hours, so hopefully I will not be too nervous to sleep!

This May I am traveling to Japan and Taiwan for two weeks with a group of classmates from Robert Morris University. I'm extremely excited for this opportunity but also very nervous. The trip is going to be full of new experiences, people and culture. I'm most excited to experience the different cultures. I've never traveled outside of the United States before, or been exposed to a lot of different culture. It will be interesting to see the differences between America, Japan and Taiwan. I'm also very excited to visit KPMG in all three countries(Japan, Taiwan and America). It will be fun to do a project and learn about the differences of the company in each country. Also to network and meet new people. I'm also excited to try the different types of food from both countries, I'm sure that most of the food will be completely new to most of us. Although I'm very excited, I'm also nervous too. I'm nervous to just travel in general. As I said I have nev...