If I put the pictures from the camp onto blogger, then it will take up a lot of space. So instead, just go to:
https://picasaweb.google.com/claireandlightning/2011SouthKoreanPeaceCamp
When you go here then you can see all the pictures I took and some captions underneath.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Day 2 at Camp
Sorry to those who read my blog for not posting for a while, but now the VPN on my computer actually works, so now I will not post the second day of camp.
After going to bed late, we had to wake up early again. When the counselor in our room called me to wake up I found that only me and the other Chinese person, Kitty, was still sleeping in our cabin. I tried to get up, but my arms felt so weak I could barely life myself up. When I finally got up, I had to wait in line for the bathroom. Libby, one of the Chinese counselor's daughters, looked very grumpy this morning, which was weird cause Libby is usually very happy and active. After I finally got ready to start the day, I went out of our cabin to walk to the cafeteria. There was a lot of foods that I did not think of as breakfast foods. Like meat, pickled veggies, spicy stuff, so I just had rice, some meat, and sea weed, the sea weed and rice was really good.
After breakfast we gathered in the meeting/classroom again. Today's topic was Culture, but I kind of forget what we did in the Peace Education during that day. Mainly cause the event in the afternoon took up most of my memory.
All day I was fretting about this afternoon's activity, even before the camp actually started I was sort of worried. You see, I am not that good with heights, so the challenge course did not sound too promising. But when we finally got to the challenge course grounds, I got even more freaked out. The course were both made out of wooden logs, and were both very very high off the ground. One of them (the less scary one) was that you had to walk up a log with little step ladder things stuck into them. Then after you had walked up the very high log, you had to walk across another log that was placed horizontally from the log up climbed up and another log that was vertical too. So, you had to walk across the horizontal log, which was about 20-30cm wide while you were attached to a life line sort of thing with a guy on the ground holding it. Lots of people did it, but when people asked if I wanted to do it, I refused. But then my friend, Cherry, or 杨梨蕊 (Yang LiRui) said that she would climb up it if I went up after her. I agreed, so she stood in line the climb up. When it was her turn I watched her climb up. She looked so brave as she walked up the ladder, I knew I could never look like that.
When she finally came down, her legs were trembling, but she was very happy. So after, I had to live up to my promise, so I stood in line to wait my turn to climb up. When I finally got to the front of the line up, I looked up to the top. I was so scared! It was so high up! But I went up anyway. I walked up to the top of the ladder, but when I finally stood up, I was trembling, and I had to stand there for a long time before I could start moving again. While I was walking across, I was holding onto the ropes attaching me to the ground so hard that my hands started getting numb. When I finally got to the end, I closed my eyes and I just jumped off of the side. When I finally got to the bottom, I felt o happy that I had finally gotten over my fear of highs (well, at least sort of) that I started crying in relief. After that was done we all went to have supper.
That evenings activity was Orienteering, but in the dark, so it was a lot more scary. Especially since we were reminded that there were snakes around the camp ground, and the wind was really big so the trees were whipping back and forth.
After we ran around trying to find the clues, we all went to bed. It felt good to go to sleep, even though it was on a floor :P
After going to bed late, we had to wake up early again. When the counselor in our room called me to wake up I found that only me and the other Chinese person, Kitty, was still sleeping in our cabin. I tried to get up, but my arms felt so weak I could barely life myself up. When I finally got up, I had to wait in line for the bathroom. Libby, one of the Chinese counselor's daughters, looked very grumpy this morning, which was weird cause Libby is usually very happy and active. After I finally got ready to start the day, I went out of our cabin to walk to the cafeteria. There was a lot of foods that I did not think of as breakfast foods. Like meat, pickled veggies, spicy stuff, so I just had rice, some meat, and sea weed, the sea weed and rice was really good.
After breakfast we gathered in the meeting/classroom again. Today's topic was Culture, but I kind of forget what we did in the Peace Education during that day. Mainly cause the event in the afternoon took up most of my memory.
All day I was fretting about this afternoon's activity, even before the camp actually started I was sort of worried. You see, I am not that good with heights, so the challenge course did not sound too promising. But when we finally got to the challenge course grounds, I got even more freaked out. The course were both made out of wooden logs, and were both very very high off the ground. One of them (the less scary one) was that you had to walk up a log with little step ladder things stuck into them. Then after you had walked up the very high log, you had to walk across another log that was placed horizontally from the log up climbed up and another log that was vertical too. So, you had to walk across the horizontal log, which was about 20-30cm wide while you were attached to a life line sort of thing with a guy on the ground holding it. Lots of people did it, but when people asked if I wanted to do it, I refused. But then my friend, Cherry, or 杨梨蕊 (Yang LiRui) said that she would climb up it if I went up after her. I agreed, so she stood in line the climb up. When it was her turn I watched her climb up. She looked so brave as she walked up the ladder, I knew I could never look like that.
When she finally came down, her legs were trembling, but she was very happy. So after, I had to live up to my promise, so I stood in line to wait my turn to climb up. When I finally got to the front of the line up, I looked up to the top. I was so scared! It was so high up! But I went up anyway. I walked up to the top of the ladder, but when I finally stood up, I was trembling, and I had to stand there for a long time before I could start moving again. While I was walking across, I was holding onto the ropes attaching me to the ground so hard that my hands started getting numb. When I finally got to the end, I closed my eyes and I just jumped off of the side. When I finally got to the bottom, I felt o happy that I had finally gotten over my fear of highs (well, at least sort of) that I started crying in relief. After that was done we all went to have supper.
That evenings activity was Orienteering, but in the dark, so it was a lot more scary. Especially since we were reminded that there were snakes around the camp ground, and the wind was really big so the trees were whipping back and forth.
After we ran around trying to find the clues, we all went to bed. It felt good to go to sleep, even though it was on a floor :P
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Day 1 at Camp
On the first day we all had to wake up at 7:30 and go for breakfast at 8:30. At breakfast there was coffee so I had some to stay awake cause it was going to be a very long day and it would not be good to fall asleep during the camp.
After breakfast we went to our first Peace Education session, this mornings topic was "What does peace mean to you?" We did a lot of fun activities. One of them was we saw a slide show of different pictures of different circumstances and we had to try and figure out what Peace meant to the people or animals in the picture. The first few were rhinoceros chasing a man and a lion standing outside a man's tent. The first ones were just for fun, but after a while there was more serious ones, like what was peace for two little children standing beside soldiers with guns. We thought peace for them was no more war and maybe some food. And we also made collage about what we thought peace was out of pictures or words from magazines. And we also had to draw and write on a separate piece of paper we thought peace was.Some people's pictures were very nice and had deep meanings.
After the Peace Education was over, we went to have lunch. We had a short break after lunch and then meet outside our cabins for a afternoon game called Orienteering. The point of the game is to find little flag post things with with hole punches beside them. Each team of two got a score card, a map, and a compass. We got about three hours to walk around the campsite and try and find the flag posts. My partner was from Korea but she had lived in China or 3 years so she could speak Chinese, so we used Chinese to communicate. When we had found all of them, we ran as fast as we could to the classroom that we were using to see if we had gotten all of the hole punches right, but we had gotten 3 mixed up. So we quickly went back out to correct them. When we finally got back our legs were all covered in little cuts because of the grass in the bushes that we had to climb through to get to the flag posts. After the three hours were up, we found out that we had successfully found all the flag posts, we were very happy.
After everyone had gotten back from the Orienteering, we went back to our cabins to have a good shower, but the cuts on my legs stung a lot. After my shower, since I was still very tired from the late nights, I had a very short nap while we were waiting for supper.
When supper was over, we had our evening activity which was playing the drums. There were 4 different types of drums, there were the wooden plates, a car hubcap (or at least I think that is what it was), an empty soy sauce jug, and an empty jug. I was one of the people playing the water jug. We learned a few simple beats, and it was a lot of fun. I found out that I am better at drums than I thought I was. When that was finished, it was almost 10:30, but we still had to have a country reflection time, which is where we had to split into our country groups and talk about what we learned that day. Then finally at 11 we got to go to bed. It was a fun day. My favourite activity was the the drums, and the Orienteering was fun too.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
South Korean Peace Camp
Just came back from South Korean Peace Camp yesterday at 12 in the morning. It was a lot of fun. Since I did not have a computer at camp, I will update what happened at camp now.
Last Saturday we left from ChengDu at 12 in the morning and got to South Korea at around 4. We had some trouble at the border, so when we went to get our bags at the baggage thing we could not find them. So we walked all around the baggage claim areas, but we still couldn't find them. So we went back to the first baggage claim and found all of our bags piled in a neat little pile.
We got on a mini van and drove to a office and everyone but me went to one of the public baths. I stayed at the office and read a book I had found in their library. I also slept for 2 hours on a couch they had there, so in total I slept for 3 hours that night.
After they came back from the public bath we went out for lunch. Then when the Korean participants got to the office we set out for the 4 hour bus ride to the campsite in the mountains. My cousin and her husband also meet us there. When we got there we split into our cabins and rested for a bit. Then we went to the camp restaurant for supper. after that we had a orientation sort of thing and the Japanese participants also came so then the Chinese, Japanese, and the Korean participants were there. When the orientation was done, we went back to the cabins and split up the rooms and made up our beds on the floor. By the time we finally got to sleep it was already 12 again.
That was the first evening, so tomorrow sometime I will put up the first day. If you have any questions please post a comment and ask.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Better Than Da Shan!
You are probably thinking, "Who is Da Shan?" Well, I will tell you a little about him. Da Shan is a Canadian that was born in Ottawa, Ontario that started learning Chinese at the University of Toronto. His English name is Mark Henry Rowswell. His first Chinese language teacher gave him the Chinese name Lu Shiwei. Anyway, his Chinese was so good that he then went to Peking University. Then he came to China to learn more Chinese. Eventually, he became fluent in Mandarin and did a commercial in Cantonese. He was made very famous in China by a famous comedian that took Mark Roswell on as a student. Then his cross-talk comedy acts with the really famous guy, commercials, TV broadcasting all made him super famous in China. So now you see him face and hear him talking in Mandarin all over the place. But now he is older so you do not see him as much. Everyone still knows about Da Shan in China, and his name means Big Mountain. In the 2008 Olympics, Da Shan walked in with the Canadian Olympic team, and that earned a big applause from the Chinese crowd. So, now that you know a little about Da Shan, I will tell you how I am better than him.
At the beginning of July, our family went to our small hometown called NanChong. There we went to church, but my sister and I got bored because we could not understand that much of the sermon so we went outside to walk around. I saw an older woman also walking around. She saw us and then began talking to us in Mardarin, but since I knew she could speak the SiChuan dialect of Chinese, I replied to her in that. She was very happy that I could speak SiChuan dialect, so we talked for a long time. In the middle of our conversation, an elder man also walked up to us and started listening into our conversation. I did not mind cause it is not every day that he would be able to see a foreigner talking almost fluently in SiChuan dialect. There was a short pause in the conversation and the elder man looked at me and said, "Your Chinese is better than Da Shan!" At that I felt very happy, since Da Shan is famous and I am just a foreigner that lives in China. My mom said he only said that cause I was speaking in SiChuan dialect and that was the older man's home language. But maybe I am better than Da Shan, who knows. :)
At the beginning of July, our family went to our small hometown called NanChong. There we went to church, but my sister and I got bored because we could not understand that much of the sermon so we went outside to walk around. I saw an older woman also walking around. She saw us and then began talking to us in Mardarin, but since I knew she could speak the SiChuan dialect of Chinese, I replied to her in that. She was very happy that I could speak SiChuan dialect, so we talked for a long time. In the middle of our conversation, an elder man also walked up to us and started listening into our conversation. I did not mind cause it is not every day that he would be able to see a foreigner talking almost fluently in SiChuan dialect. There was a short pause in the conversation and the elder man looked at me and said, "Your Chinese is better than Da Shan!" At that I felt very happy, since Da Shan is famous and I am just a foreigner that lives in China. My mom said he only said that cause I was speaking in SiChuan dialect and that was the older man's home language. But maybe I am better than Da Shan, who knows. :)
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Cinnamon Rolls
Since it is not summer holidays, I have a lot of time on my hands. We got a new toaster oven, so I wanted to try and make something in it. So I went onto the internet and found a good recipe for Cinnamon Rolls (or Cinnamon Buns). It was really fun making them, and I could not wait to try them. So I kneaded the dough for a long time until I could touch it and then it bounced back. I 
rolled them up and then put cinnamon and sugar on them. Then I put them in the over. The first time I took them out and tasted them, they were still not entirely baked, so I put them back in for a little while. When I took them out the second time, they were fully baked. Then I took some icing and spread it on top of the Cinnamon Rolls. Then we all ate them. They were good, but not the best. So I am going to practice making them a lot because it is summer holidays.
rolled them up and then put cinnamon and sugar on them. Then I put them in the over. The first time I took them out and tasted them, they were still not entirely baked, so I put them back in for a little while. When I took them out the second time, they were fully baked. Then I took some icing and spread it on top of the Cinnamon Rolls. Then we all ate them. They were good, but not the best. So I am going to practice making them a lot because it is summer holidays.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
The Son of Neptune
For those of you who are Percy Jackson fans, this picture will affect you the way it did to me. This picture reminded me that there is still a long time till this book comes out. 6 more months to be exact. I usually want books to come out, but since the last book was a cliff hanger, this picture just makes me mad. Anyway, I am going to be counting the days until it comes out!
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