An introduction is in order: my name is Dina, and I come from beautiful Canada. I lived there with my two sisters and three stepsiblings for the first eleven years of my life, after which my parents opted to sell our house and everything we owned, pulled us out of school and moved us onto a boat in the Caribbean where we lived for the duration of two years. Although the experience was a little traumatic for the young eleven year old girl I was, those two years were definitely the building blocks of my now love and obsession of travelling. 
We started at the top of the Caribbean and worked our way down, island by island, until we found ourselves in the jungles of Venezuela. We lived there for almost a year, and from there sailed back up the Caribbean islands. I guess my parents decided a new adventure was in order, because suddenly I found myself flying off to the strange and cold land of Denmark, which would be the place I would call home for the next 7 years.
The Danes love to drink, so all we pretty much do back home is party, but I’m happiest when I’m on a beach somewhere with a good book. The hotter the weather, the better. I’m really laid back and like to go with the flow, usually my friends and I just hang out, watch movies or go out to get something to eat. I usually travel a lot during my school vacations; I like to get away as often as I can. I have a lot of family in Egypt that I visit yearly, as well as a house in Florida, and then I try to convince my friends to road-trip around Europe with me whenever I can.
In Denmark I am currently doing a double BA in International Communication and Multimedia – a programme I now wish I had done more research on before I enrolled, as I love the Communications, but what I thought would be an exciting Media degree in Web Design, Graphics and Advertising soon became a realization that I would spend the next four years sorely coding and programming. The amazing thing about my programme is that come fourth semester, all students must complete an internship abroad or study abroad to pass the semester. The school offered to help us get into other European schools, of which I was accepted into the university of Milan on a Communications scholarship, but soon after realized that what they were giving us was an amazing opportunity to go abroad, try something new and crazy, and get real life experience. So I did just that – I ditched the semester in Italy and applied for an internship in the farthest away, most exotic and culturally enriching country I could think of: China.
After a gruelling 25 hours of traveling from Copenhagen to Zurich to Hong Kong, I finally arrived in beautiful Zhuhai. The first thing that hit me was the incredible heat and humidity – having straightened my hair before I left Denmark I could suddenly feel my natural curls spring back to life with that first step off the boat. As I’ve only been in China for about a day and a half, I haven’t seen much, but what I have seen thus far is a beautiful and clean city, with extremely friendly people and exciting things all around. My first day was amazing, the weather was beautiful, blue sky, sun shining, and I got to meet the Zhuhai team and was taken out for a fantastic welcome lunch at a local restaurant just down the street from the office. I was able to go home after lunch and have the rest of the day off, to which I had planned to walk around and get my bearings, however having slept for two hours the night before I went up to the apartment to leave my laptop and instead fell asleep almost instantly. From then I had the pleasure of going to dinner with ten other interns and was able to enjoy my first dinner in China with a room full of enthusiastic and interesting interns with similar life experiences. Although I’ve regularly been to other third world countries before and consider myself a seasoned traveler with all the little tricks, I still have so many things to learn here in China; how to use chopsticks without feeling like a fool, for example. I’m really excited for my future adventure in China.
by Dina
Meet Dina in Zhuhai and share your travelling experiences with her! Send us an email or apply directly through our website! We hope to see you soon!