Life has been crazy busy within the Chinese life of mine lately. I haven't been able to update anyone with what has been going on lately. So here I am :)
I am still doing alive and well.
The last vacation we were able to take was at the beach in Sanya which is considered the "Hawaii" of China. We were able to take a sleeper train there for 14 hours and arrive at a very humid beach in the middle of the night. When we arrived at the train station at 11pm, we were supposed to take another train to get closer to our hostel, but the last train had already left and we would have had to wait for the next train at 5 in the morning. So 16 people decided to pay taxi's to take us 2 1/2 hours away to our hostel.
It was definitely worth it. I would not have wanted to wait all night in the gross train station.
We had these random 4 Chinese taxi men take 16 kids to the beach in the middle of the night. But we had rules going with these random people we didn't know and they didn't know any English. Rule 1: At least 1-2 people in each taxi had to stay awake to make sure nothing bad would happen. Rule 2: 1 taxi had to squeeze in 5 people instead of 4.
You could probably guess who was small enough to go in the small taxi. I had to go. I had to lay on top of 3 other people in the back seat of a taxi in the middle of the night for 2 1/2 hours until we got to the hostel. Let me tell you…it was a long ride. We arrived at the hostel at 4 in the morning, and woke up early the next morning and headed to the beach. We didn't want to waste any daylight with our limited amount of time at the beach. The beach was wonderful. Warm water, the sun shining and tons of Asians everywhere taking pictures of the only white people on the beach. Sounds perfect right?? It was.. no joke. I loved it!
It gets better though, we all had wanted to go scuba diving. We found a cheap Asian place through our hostel that would take us scuba diving. We arrive, get wet suits on and head to the water. My wet suit decided to have a hole in the middle of my bum area so everyone was laughing at me because they saw this hole in my wet suit to where my swim suit was. It was classy, let me tell you.
The Chinese scuba divers told us previously that the visibility of the ocean that day wasn't great. We decided to risk it anyways..we wanted to go see a cool coral reef and fish.
We get to the water and they had these Chinese men in their speedos walk us out to the middle of the ocean where we put a life vest on and a mask with a regulator in our mouths. Another Chinese man had another life vest on and flippers and they "guided" us around the reef. The Chinese men are laughing at me and kept telling me how beautiful I was.. then the "guide" puts the mask on me and points down under water.. he deflates my life vest and we go under water.. there was no coral reef. I saw a bunch of sea weed and a baby fish about an inch big within the 20 minutes I was in the water. The "guide" kept asking how I was doing under water with the okay sign on his hand, then when I wanted to go deeper in the water, he would push my tank and my deflated life vest down under water with his flippers.. So basically I had this random man pushing me under water in different directions with flippers on showing me garbage underwater. It was quite an experience. Then when I was done, he inflated my vest back up and I floated to the top of the water. I wasn't even 7 feet under the surface of the water. It was hilarious. Definitely a "China" moment.
That night we went and grabbed dinner from street vendors in Sanya and sat on the beach and watched the sun go down while eating dinner. It was so beautiful and peaceful. Sanya was a very tourist-ish spot so there was a fun night life where they had a fair type thing going on there with rides… Being 19-21 year olds we decided to go play on the rides..
I told myself a long time ago that I would never ever ever do the catapult ride, only stupid people do that.. The one that has the 2 long poles on the sides and a caged ball in the middle where 2 people risk their lives flying up and down in the air.. Well I had decided that night that I was a stupid person and I did it. :) It was quite fun. I got the thrill of a life time flying through the air.
We were also able to go to this awesome private beach where no one else was. It was wonderful. We took this long bus ride to White Water Bay and went through many small towns that had a crazy lifestyle of living. It was fun to see their way of life, so culturally different from mine.
The Monday we got back to school to teach, we were informed that we were going to try out for "Dream China" which was a TV show kind of like the X-Factor. But if we win a grand prize, we would have a dream of ours go to China to benefit China. Our school told us we needed to learn a dance with our kids by Friday because we were going to perform on national Chinese television by Saturday of that week.
We through a dance together fast and left to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong. We get to the middle of a mall where a stage is with a camera crew and wait 4 hours to perform our dance on stage in front of 3 judges.
The lady who owns our school announced us and told China our dream of allowing children in rural areas of China to learn English. Following that, we performed our dance, got 3 standing ovations from the judges and all 3 yes' without any question. Now we are waiting to hear back from the Dream Show to see when and if we to go Shanghai for the next round.
We were thrilled. All of the hard work definitely paid off. It was quite an opportunity to not only get all 3 yes', but also to be on national Chinese TV.
That same week we had the education bureau of China come into our school. Our school has become number 1 in the Guangdong province. This year they are trying to get the number 1 preschool and kindergarten in all of China. We had a long stressful week. But it was well worth it. The staff members told us that the education board was very impressed with us.
The weekend couldn't have come faster. We were all worn out from the stress, so it was time for some fun. The following Saturday we had gone to a foreigner's Italian restaurant where we were able to have a big plate of pasta and watch ourselves on National Chinese TV from our previous performance.
Our trip to Beijing has come and gone so quickly. It was a week full of traveling, site seeing, riding subways and shopping…Chinese shopping.
Beijing
Day 1: Niki and I set off on our adventures with the bullet train. We had a smooth 9 hour train ride up to Beijing on the fast train. We had arrived at our hostel and found all of our other ILP members who had taken the sleeper train and some of who had taken hard seats for 21 hours. It sounded way too long and painful to sit on a dirty train on a hard seat for 21 hours, so I made things happen with our fast train. It was great.
Day 2: We decided to hit up the Forbidden City, Tienemen Square, Mao Zedong's Muselium and the Temple of Heaven all in one day. They were all awesome attractions. I loved walking through the Forbidden City. It took about 3-4 hours to walk through it. I am pretty sure I didn't even see half of it , but it was cool to know that Emperor's had ruled in this one city of it's own, inside of the city of Beijing. We were able to see Mao Zedong, inside of his coffin, in his museum.. He looked peaceful, calm and pretty content with life. It was crazy to me to see other people go crazy over him. Many had bought flowers and were bowing to him for all that he had done.
A Chinese 19 year old boy (Carmelo) came with us, from our province and he leaned over to me and said that the people were crazy because Mao was a terrible man for all he had done for China, and he said that they shouldn't be worshipping him for it.
- Forbidden City-Dress Up
- Kung Fu-Forbidden City
- Monk at Forbidden City
- Tienemen Square
Day 3: Went shopping at the Pearl Market, and at an outside market. Pretty fun. I saved most of my shopping for the Silk Market. I am so glad I did.
Day 4: Visited the Great Wall of China. So awesome! Being white defiantly has it's perks… I had so many people stop me and take pictures with me. On one part of the wall I had a bunch of people line up waiting for me to take a picture with them. I felt famous. I have it on video to prove it. It was pretty fun! I loved it! We also went to the Olympic Stadium where the Olympics took place in 2008.
- Asian boyfriend Carmelo and I
- Olympic Stadium-Bird's Nest
Day 5: Summer Palace. This place had so much history. It was kind of a massive park that just kept going with pagodas and a huge lake with an island in the middle of it. We sailed on a boat around the lake, had a glass of apple juice, got a free popsicle and got to see so many sweet sights in the Summer Palace. We also visited the Lama Temple where they had a massive statue of Buddha and where people go to burn incense and pray to their Gods.
- Summer Palace Group Shot on the Island
Day 6: Shopping day.. I did a ton of great bargaining. I got myself a super nice North Face jacket for 110 yuan..which is $18 USD. Pretty awesome if you ask me. I knew that walking into the Silk Market, I would have to be stern to get things cheap because I am white. The Chinese there target the white people to get more money out of them.. So the Chinese women would give me a price for like a pair of Tori Burch flip flops for 450 yuan, and I gave them a set price of 50 yuan and they said that was too cheap then I would walk out of their store. They would chase me down the Silk Market and say 70 yuan and I would say 55 yuan and you have a deal. So I got some pretty great deals. That night we went to a market on the street where we were able to try some crazy food... I can now say that I have eaten lamb penis, lamb testicles, silk worm, tarantula, grasshopper, squid, shark, snake, dog, and scorpion.
- Shopping
- Tarantula..yum!
Day 7: We took a sleeper train to Xi'an for the Terra Cotta Warriors
Day 8: Saw the Terra Cotta Warriors. Took a tour from a girl who spoke English, her name was Tiger. She was a sweetheart. We were also able to meet and shake hands with one of the farmers who discovered the Terra Cotta Warriors in 1974. We returned back to Xi'an later that afternoon and went to the Muslim Quarter of Xi'an. It was so fun! We walked up and down these streets filled with Muslim-Chinese people. There were vendors and food everywhere. Everyone got to go into a Mosque, I couldn't because I was wearing shorts. They needed everyone to be modest. But shortly after that we were walking down the street and we start hearing this music. We get closer and closer and realize that it was a DJ trying to sell his music on the street.. Well being a crazy 19 American girl with a bunch of her friends around..we start dancing. It starts off with Chinese people taking a few pictures of us then continued on for a few minutes with a whole crowd around us video taping us. The crowd got so big that cars were stopped, blocking traffic because they wanted to watch some crazy Americans dance. It was great.
- Terra Cotta Warriors
Day 9: We had to get up early and head back to Zhongshan. It is time to start teaching again.
- Headed back to Zhongshan in the Xi'an airport 5:30 in the morning. We were exhausted little travelers.
We realized we only have 6 weeks left in Zhongshan and 4 days in Hong Kong before we head back to the states. That was the most depressing thing to hear.
Well.. those are my adventures for now..there will be more to come. :)
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