Lei Huang recently spent 28 days biking across the mountains of Western China with a group for his senior project. “This has been a dream of mine since I was younger,” said Lei. “I always loved biking and wanted to do something with it for my senior project.”

He started in the city of Chengdu in Western China and biked 1,000 miles to the city of Lhasa.

“He’s very much an out of the box thinker,” said Senior Project Coordinator Mrs. Louise Geczy. “He is very enthusiastic and ambitious. It is obvious that this is something he is very passionate about and is very important to him.”

Lei said one of the best parts was the scenery and all of the interesting people he met. Lei got to experience the Buddhist culture of a mountainous region of Western China.

“The people there are so peaceful and pure,” Lei recalled. “They were so welcoming to strangers into their villages and homes. Even though we spoke different languages, I learned so much from them.”

Although he encountered some challenges, such as falling several times and breaking his teeth, along the way the satisfaction of overcoming such a big challenge in his life makes it all worth it.

“I feel like now that I’ve overcome this, I can overcome anything in the future,” he said. “This has been a goal of mine for so long that it really does feel like I can do anything now.”