I stepped off the plane into the stifling heat of the afternoon, yawning from exhaustion and tense from sitting for 14 hours. Passengers pushed past, telling me “走”, or “walk”. I was in China. I unearthed my cell phone from my tightly packed book bag and updated my Twitter to say, “Welcome to Beijing!”

In January, President Hu Jintao visited my school, Walter Payton College Prep in Chicago. In return he invited a group of twenty students to China to tour their education system and historical landmarks. I immediately applied for the trip, crossed my fingers and hoped I would be accepted. I received my acceptance letter for the cherubs program in April. A week later I received my acceptance letter for the trip. The two programs overlapped. I didn’t want to miss either one of them. I made a plan to return to the cherubs program after the two-week trip to China.

I wanted to stay informed while I was gone, so I opened a Twitter account. I started following The New York Times and The Daily Beast. I got updates from cherubs about their life back in Evanston. It was through Twitter I learned the cherubs had a Chicago boat tour. It was through Twitter that I found out about cherubs’ karaoke night. It was through Twitter that the cherubs knew I climbed the Great Wall of China and made dumplings in Shanghai.

Twitter was my lifeline back to the Western Hemisphere. If I hadn’t temporarily left the cherub program for China, I would have never entered the world of tweeting. Without Twitter the transition back to cherubs would have been difficult. With Twitter, I didn’t miss a beat.