This is a story that I am sure most of you, as travelers can relate to in some way or another.

As the airplane took off there were butterflies in my stomach; I was scared. I was not scared of the flight.  Flying, by that point in my life, had become as normal as driving.  I was actually nervous because this was my first day of college.  I had just met the 30 other students, all upper-classmen, that would be joining me on this 13 hour flight and summer in Tianjin, China.  Would they make fun of me for being a "freshman"? Would they think I was weird for spending my first year of college abroad? Should I have just stayed in the US?

All these fears quickly disappeared when someone woke me up to tell me to join the group of students gaping at the sights from window.  Flying only a couple hundred feet away from the frozen tundra we saw the sights of the Arctic! We bonded from the North Pole, through Siberia, and over Mongolia.  Not a single person slept when there were Polar Bears to look for and frozen rivers to see!

After doing some research online, I found out that people pay thousands of dollars for a flight tour over the North Pole, while I just got it included in the cost of my flight to China. Good thing we took advantage of the tour!

Kimberly Jachimek is the Global Learning in College Editor for Wandering Educators