Day 5 : April 20th, 2012

We are still on the train. I woke up at 5:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I read my book.

Hanako just woke up, but everyone else is still sleeping. Just now while I was putting my hair up, I heard a crack, which Hanako heard from her second bunk. That was my neck, and now it hurts if I look right too fast. But it will probably get better soon.

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Surprisingly, I actually recognize some of the songs they are playing over the broadcasting system. Right now they are playing a song from Titanic, which I only know because of the spoof version. Last night they played Yesterday Once More, which I also only know cause of a spoof version our family made up. So now I know, spoofs are useful. Oh, they just changed to Mozart.

Me and Hanako went over to car 16 a while ago, and everyone but Patrick, Yurim, and Zhihe were sleeping. After a while more people started to get up, and then we left.

I feel sorry for anyone taller than me that have to sleep on these bunks. Cause I am already not able to stretch out at all and I cannot even begin to imagine how people taller than me are able to sleep here. Especially Mr. Vernon and Emil, cause they are the tallest people on the trip.

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I think the Titanic song is called My Heart Will Go On.

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There are four hours till our trip is over. This whole day I have basically spent on top of my bunk listening to music.

Day 4 : April 19th, 2012

Now me, Hanako, and Madelyn are waiting to go down to breakfast. There is still about half an hour left.

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Right now we are on the train. After breakfast, we all went to a park to make dragon lanterns. But when we got there, it turned out to be just dragon zucchini puppet things. Me and McKaela made one together. It was supposed to take two hours, but we only actually took about one. It looked really cool, but we didn’t want to bring it back home with us cause we were scared that it would break.

After that we went to a restraint to eat. Then we had quite a while until we had to get to the train station, so we went to a park again, but different one.

We had about an hour there, so me, Anna, ad Yuxuan bought some bubbles to play with. Then everyone else started to buy bubbles too. It was a lot of fun, but we had to leave too son. The bubbles weren’t finished yet, so I gave the rest to a little girl.

Finally we got to the train station, and everyone went to buy KFC. I had to order for three other people because they couldn’t read the menu. Then we waited in the waiting area, but the train was delayed. So then we got on the train when it got there.

The sad thing is that this trip is almost over, which is a sad thing. I learned a lot on this trip, about LuoYang, and also about my classmates. For instance, I didn’t know how much they lived in a little foreign bubble. Every time some Chinese person spits on the ground, or if a baby pees on the floor, or if some guy rolls up his shirt half way up cause it is too hot, they completely freak out. These things are everyday events in China, and for them not to realize that even after they had been here for a while, then they are definitely living in a bubble. A quote from Terry Pratchett would be, “After a long period of time, the unusual become the norm.” I know everyone comes from different countries and they all have different customs, but if they move around the world they way as well get used to the customs here.

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I am lying on my bunk on the top listening to music, plus writing this. Right now I am listening to the “Other” section of songs, but later I am going to listen to Phantom of the Opera.

My fellow bunk mates include McKaela (middle), Hanako (middle), Madelyn (bottom), random Chinese lady (bottom), and McKaela’s mom (also top). In this whole car there are only 11 people from QSI, but in car 16, it is almost all QSI students and teachers. We went over there for a bit a while ago, but it was hot (the air conditioner was broken) and loud, so we left after about 5 minutes.

I had a supper of KFC Mexican Wrap and fries. The fries were cold, but the wrap was still a little warm-ish. So far the trip has been fun, and I am saving my book for tomorrow.

Day 3 : April 18th, 2012

I lost my blue pen yesterday, so now I am using the black one the school gave me.

We are now at 龙门 (Dragon gate) Grottoes.

I heard a Chinese tour guide say that 80% of all the statues here are missing their heads, arms, or broken in some other way. The heads and arms are gone because people used to come here to take them away as gifts. I think that this act is very disrespectful to both the religion and the artists that made them.

Basically, there are lots of holes in the side of the mountain cliff. The holes are full of statues of Buddha. There are probably stories behind every one of them, but I don’t know any. There are statues are made into all different sizes.

These carvings helped them to remember the stories that they had to remember. If I would have known what the statues represent, it might have been more interesting. Seeing these statue are interesting too, I’m just saying that I would have been more interesting.

The peony flowers are very beautiful, even though I have not seen any here yet, the pictures I have seen are really pretty. They have petals that are lightly coloured pink, with a yellow middle. Their petals are fairly spread out, which makes them look bigger.

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I found out that peonies are not just light pink, but all sorts different colours.

After the grottoes, we went to fly kites outside the LuoYang Museum. We got to each decorate our own kite. Mine was stripped dark blue and green with a treble clef in the middle. That was a lot of fun since I hadn’t flown a kite in a long time.

Then we went into the LuoYang Museum, which had everything about the history of LuoYang, which was very interesting. I also bought, at the gift shop, four coasters picturing the Great Wall in four different seasons. I thought that was cool because there are four people in my family.

After that we took the bus to go to an International School. First we listened to a welcome speech from the vice principal, then the teachers and parents from QSI introduced themselves. It was very funny when Mrs. Li introduced herself in Chinese and everyone started clapping, and then right after, Mr. Vernon had to say, “Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese”.

Anyway, after that we got split into groups to go and meet the Chinese students. When we got to the classroom they first asked us questions but then we got to mingle with them for a little bit. I mainly stayed with a group of five girls who were really nice. After a while we had to go back downstairs cause our school was going to play a basketball game against the other school. During that time I heard people complaining about how the Chinese students were asking them stupid questions. I don’t think that’s fair because these students have probably not been outside of LuoYang before, they don’t know how we live, so they don’t know if they are asking silly questions of not.

After we left the school, we went to the night market. Me, Anna (friend), Madelyn, Hanako, and Yuxuan (friend) all went together. First we thought we were lost because we had not seen anyone else from QSI, but then we went back to find someone we knew. We found Mr. Vernon, Mrs. D, and Mrs. Li, and they said we were going the right way. We ended up eating at a noodle kitchen with Mr. Vernon. We had two small bowls of hun dun (wontons) and two small bowls of dao xiao mian (knife cut noodles). They were really good. Over the course of the meal, Mr. Vernon had called us Machiavelli, ad I have not yet figured out why, but I have a couple of hunches. After we finished, we walked to meet everyone at the West gate. Some people got lost, so we had to wait a little longer before going to the hotel.

The rest of the evening I spent reading “The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”.

Day 2 : April 17th, 2012

We are now on top of a small hill waiting for a teacher to come and give us a lesson in Kung Fu. There are lots of those grass things that make noise here, so we are playing with those now.

I am not looking forward to climbing the mountain. We are going up 嵩山 (Song mountain).

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By the way, we are staying at 少林(Shoa Lin) Temple. It seems to me that all the boys are around ages 10-17. If it was me going to train all my life here I would not do it. I just feel so sorry for them, none of them get to have a normal childhood, which is something that you cannot have again.

We just came back from hiking 嵩山 (Song mountain), which is one of the top 5 mountains in China. It was really amazing. The first 10-15 minutes was painful, but after that I started listening to “Sound of Music”. The cool thing was that I could hear the birds and stream in both the music and in reality. And then when I got to the top, “Climb Every Mountain” started playing. The mountain included 2,201 steps, just going up! (This Madelyn counted). After, we had the choice of going to a suspension bridge, but we went after the big group went. “We” included me, McKaela (my other friend), her mom, Mrs. D, and Matthew. Me and McKaela are scared of heights, but I was sort of acting more scared so McKaela wouldn’t feel so bad. Instead of going on the suspension bridge, we walked along a cement cat-walk that was built into the cliff edge! And at some points there were holes that you could see really far down. It was very scary, but worth it.

Today, “I learned how to Kung Fu” (quote from Corner Gas, a Canadian comedy TV show. It is very funny and I am able to take about any situation and find a Corner Gas quote from it).

Day 1 : April 16th, 2012

We just got off the airplane, and are no on the bus, so that is why my writing is sloppy.

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Right now we are in front of a school Kung Fu training ground. There are two schools that these boys are from, with a total of 30,000 students. There are some students now that are running around in a circle which is shown as a darker patch than the cement. I found out by looking at the other people that the track is made by other people throwing buckets of water into a circle. This I think is very cool. The people in front of us are doing spear exercises, but most of them are running. There are also bags of sand hung up on polls that I bet are for punching. Now there are some people doing stretches. I guess they are split into groups and then they rotate in different stations. I see now that only a few people are using the water-made track. There are now people shouting some type of lesson to their teacher. There are some guys that are doing hopping on one leg then jumping over other guys, other the leg though so it is safer. That is all I can see them doing now.

The mountains here are beautiful. They are really tall, and there are lots of trees all over the place. The sad thing is that we have to climb up one tomorrow; this will take 4.5 hours round trip.

There are no girls here at all, but they might be doing other stuff. The spears make a sort of rattling noise when they are moved

There are lots of purple flowers here too. I don’t know what they are, but they are sure petty. They are on trees. Madelyn (my friend) said we have to write a journal for Chinese too, so I will put that at the back of the book.

There are so many boys here, and I wonder what they hope to get out of all of this. Like their jobs and stuff. How will these 30,000 boys get good jobs? They do not have time, at least I don’t think they do, to learn any things such science, math, or any of that stuff.

Now there are people doing cartwheels, like 10-20 in a row. And there are some during the leg stretching on other people’s back thing. There are also push-up-kick things. I just heard that they are doing a show in about 5-10 minutes.

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The performance was really good, the whip thing especially, it sounded like thunder! The fake sword thing wasn’t as loud as I would have hoped, but I guess that it might be because it was outside.

We went through a temple, which was really cool. It helped that I was in the Chinese group and the monk told us the correct history of the things there. I also found out that the purple flower is called zi jing hua. Right now we are waiting to go to the hotel.

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I just lifted some weights. One of them was 40公斤for sure, and the other one felt heavier. 40公斤is, I think, 88 pounds. We are on a bus going to the hotel.

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We are now in the hotel room. It is more like a house with numbered rooms in them. We are in house #29, room 11. Just as I was getting my stuff on my bed and I saw a big spider. I was going to try and squash it, but then it wouldn’t squash, so I put it on my clipboard ad threw it out the door. Madelyn was scared and Hanako (my other friend) was saying how she liked spiders.

Just now we heard music, and Madelyn sat up on the bed to get her phone, but then she fell over off the bed and hit her head. Me and Hanako were laughing really hard, but since Madelyn was talking to her mom we tried to hold it in. So when she got off the phone we were laughing our heads off.

We are now waiting for Mrs. Li to go with us to buy stuff from the store.