China in a nut shell!

So in China, we visited many temples, villages, markets and tried many things that I couldn't even imagine myself doing. I ate many things that I couldn't even imagine eating (sea horse, scorpion, ox tongue, pigeon, mutton, and god knows what 'meat and vegetables' is equivalent to...). I saw a lot of things that would be completely not be acceptable or would be incredibly unusual here in the states like crowds of bikers everywhere you went, people selling things everywhere you go, people throwing their children at you asking you to take a picture with them like you were a celebrity, people cutting hair on the side of the street (which usually would not be too unusual but they would take the hair and stuff it into the drains from underpasses and well everywhere actually. We spent time at the police station trying to convince them that we were not terrorists invading their country (apparently you are suppose to register with the government when you get there... and apparently there was a sign on our door telling us that... but we don't read Chinese so you can imagine how that went...)

Another thing that was really cool was during the first few weeks we were there the Euro Cup was going on... and granted we were in Asia... there were many European people there so we went to this restaurant with some people we met and watched the Sweden vs. Spain game. It was fun because EVERYONE was decked out in jerseys and colors (well everyone but us) and the group we joined was all rooting for Sweden. They looked at us expecting us to choose sides but assumed we were going to take their side but we all left and confessed we were all for Spain! ha ha.

For the 4th of July some of us girls stayed in Beijing and decided to go to The Hard Rock Cafe! It was a lot of fun and we decked out in red, white and blue and I don't think anyone knew what we were celebrating which was different for me considering I have spent every 4th of July at my cabin for as long as I can remember. We decked ourselves out in red, white and blue before camp it was fun because a lot of the kids that weren't American were asking us what we were celebrating and we got to explain to them what the 4th of July was.

And although there are many wonderful things to do in Beijing... I have to say that one of my favorite memories was a day that I took to myself and ventured out. I woke up early one morning and went to the bike rental place where we always rented our bikes and picked one up. I had a map and picked out all of the places I wanted to see and just took off. I probably road over 30 miles that day but it was an absolutely beautiful day which was completely out of the norm considering I probably saw a total of three sunny days with no clouds. Usually I was fighting to breath in all of the smog. Anyways this day was breath taking and I started out riding in a complete circle around the city checking every book store possible looking for the book New Moon (the second book in the Twilight series) and I probably look at about 6 book stores and every single one had the first book and the third but for some reason all of the stores were sold out of the second one. So I gave up and moved on...
I had missed the trip to see the big pagoda at Bahi Park and so I found that on my map and went to check it out. It was so beautiful and the temples were just glistening in the sun light. The park was a big U shape river with buildings and parks on the outside an the big pagoda was in the center. I went and strolled around enjoying the locals that were playing instruments and dancing in one of the parks and viewed some of the temples and other buildings around the outside. Then I got on a little boat that crossed the river and hiked up the stairs (it always seems that in Asia you have to wake up hundreds if not thousands of stairs to get to your destination) and was able to view the pagoda. The best part was that if you paid an extra 3 Kwai (like 45 cents) you could go to the top of a tower parallel to the pagoda and you could view the whole city. It was absolutely gorgeous!

Now the part you have all been waiting for... The Olympics...
Being in Beijing leading up the the games was an adventure in itself. We made daily trips to the markets and when it got closer to the games, we noticed that as well as the increase in tourists that were coming into the city, the markets tried to be sneaky and bumped up their prices and for a pair of shoes that you could have gotten for 50 Kwai (eeh like $7) you could not get for any less than 100 Kwai! It was horrible and even with the vendors that we went to all the time (the people that knew who we were) wouldn't even hook us up!
The city was expanding and new buildings were shooting up everywhere as well as signs, paintings, souvineers and anything you could imagine. The city was trying to clean up its streets and skys believe it or not. They were actually shooting chemicals up into the sky to force it to rain, which in turn would apparently clear up some of the smog. In reality it simply created thunder storms, lightning and acid rain! It was insane! We had some of the worst storms and the thing was, no one was scared at all. I was terrified to be outside with lightning but no one seemed to be the least bit phased at the sight of it. It would literally start dumping rain, and being from Seattle... I have never seen anything like it before. I am assuming our random sunny days were the result of these storms and it did clear up the sky but it would only last for one day max. All of the chemicals and the Chinese trying to play god actually backfired and the day of the first Olympic event was one of the worst day I saw while I was there.
We were able to have the Friday of opening ceremony off work but we were scheduled to fly out the next morning and had to be at the airport at 5, so we were not able to actually attend any of the games. For opening ceremony we were able to go to The Place (a mall) and stood in line for two hours trying to get tickets to attend this Coca Cola sponsored event with huge screens showing the ceremony. We brought face paint and were painting our faces as well as the locals faces getting ready for the event. After we got the tickets we had to hand out around there for a few hours and being that we had the coolest sun glasses on the face of the planet, we were getting interviews after interviews by people from all over the world including two from Georgia and Minnesota.
So we watched opening ceremony and it was a blast and eventually met up with our bosses at this bar up town which was incredibly expensive and only sold one thing. Grey Goose at about 1400 Kwai a bottle ($200). So needless to say we felt extremely out of place in our work out shorts, college t-shirts and face paint all over.
Even though we were not able to attend the actual games, we were able to experience the atmosphere, represent the states and pretend to be some sort of Olympic athletes (most of the time we were Olympic speed walkers... yah don't ask). The two guys that I was with this summer stayed and were able to attend some of the games and so we got to hear about the different events.

Overall I think that this trip was one of a kind, I would do it again in a heartbeat, although I would go back to South Korea over Beijing any day... but thats a whole different story. I am happy to say that I climbed the Great Wall and saw the Beijing Olympics but really, I have so many more memories that are just as amazing as they were.

I am not planning on going out this summer, I decided that I want to be able to be at home for a summer and spend some time with my new favorite little person in the world, spend some time with my family and to be able to spend some time with Will and Teej before my two people that keep me sane when the world is crazy move back to Pullman without me!! and last but not least... I have to get a real job. HA!

Beijing 2008 Recap

So I have had quite a few people asking me about my trip since I have been back in the states and towards the end of my trip I was extremely busy with both finishing up our days at camp, trying to fit in every last trip we wanted to make and finally the goodbyes that we had to say to both our kids... my favorite little person in the world who still to this day I think of all the time.. and my staff who I am proud to say I still keep in contact with most of them. I currently am starting up the training sessions for Camp Adventure and working with Brady to try to make this year as successful as all of the previous. We didn't have as many people come out this year as we have had in the past but we decided that that was ok due to the economy and the fact that we really did pick up some really qualified students... AND WSU WON THE RECRUITMENT TALLY over UofI so that was a really great thing meaning we will not have to travel to Idaho for training days!!

Well anyways my point of typing up this new blog entry was to recap and reflect on my trip, I realized that I missed a lot of important parts of my trip because usually when I was writing I was reflecting on my weekend or camp activities but I missed a lot of important parts not to mention the OLYMPICS! Which were absolutely amazing!

So here is a short recap.
I left for Beijing China on June 9, 2008. I got to departure with one of my close guy friends from WSU, Brady, and we flew from Seattle directly to Tokyo, Japan where we HAAAAD to track down this little bar that Brady had visited in the airport the previous year... It was not that great but off we were to change into our camp uniforms, which we were suppose to be wearing the entire trip, and then to our gate where we met our staff.

So the first couple weeks went by pretty fast and we grew to become really close with our fellow camp counselors and took on the task of learning some chinese which soon after we gave up due to the fact that it is one of the hardest languages in the world to pick up on... or at least that is what it felt like. We decided to stick to our basic words such as Ni Hao (Hello), Sei Shen (Thank You), Lousher (Teacher, a much easier way to explain why we were in there than a camp counselor), Dwe (Yes), and our soon to be favorite word to use... Boo Yao (NO!!).

So in short, we saw so many things while we were there and we were contracted through the US embassy which gave us access to a safe base if something were to go wrong, but even better it gave us Danielle who became our new best friend. Danielle worked for the Embassy and she had been living in China for quite a long time which made her very fluent in speaking Chinese as well as knowing where to go, who to believe, and the ins and outs to their culture... including the shopping tips for the markets. Without her I am positive my parents would have killed me because I would have been calling home for money every week!

Danielle hooked us up with absolutely amazing adventures such as Spa trips, yoga retreats, markets to visit and last but not least our trip to the Great Wall! That was by far my favorite and I have talked about most of these adventures previously so I will not make you read about them again! Ooh and she gave us probably the coolest present EVER! Our Olympic sunglasses which to this day I still wear and Teej constantly makes fun of me and is embarrassed to be seen with me wearing them!

I would like to recap on my camp experience because I feel like a lot of what I have written about previously has been about my travels when really one of my favorite things about China were the kids I worked with. They changed my life and I can only hope that I had half the impact on them as they had on me. Not to say all of my kids were angels, in fact I had my moments with all of them but to see that I could impact a set of twins, Marvin and Sedric, who upon arrival had no intent of talking, participating or listening (in fact they wanted nothing but their mommy the first couple weeks). They were my best friends by the end of the summer and it was amazing how the kids that you hope don't return the next week, are always there and in the end they are really the heart break that you are leaving behind with tears in their eyes. I will never forget those little boys from Singapore...

And of course there was my baby Quinn who brought tears to my eyes on his last day. We have a tradition at camp that at the end of the day we have a closing period where we calm the kids down before they return to their parents. During this period we have a song called Lean On Me (not the version everyone knows but a slower version) where we learn the sign language in training and we teach it to the kids and we play it during closing. Well anyways, Quinn was only 5 I believe but every time we would do the signs to it, he would find me and mimic my moves and have the brightest smile on his face. He actually would sign the whole song even when most of the kids would be talking and not paying attention and he would have his little eyes on me.

And not to ramble on but there was one more little girl, Eliena. She was a little Chinese girl who DID NOT want to speak English in the least bit. She was very fluent and knew exactly what we were saying when we would talk to her but she did not want to listen or talk back. Another thing she DID NOT like was swimming which was something we did every day. So one of the weeks I was her group leader and I decided that she was going to swim and I was going to convince her that it was the coolest thing in the world. So I put a life jacket on (because all of the 4 and 5 year olds pretty much had to wear them) and got it and after about 20 minutes of trying to convince her it was the coolest thing in the world, she finally got up the guts to get in. After that she used to come up to me before swimming whenever I would be swimming with her and grab my hand and smile.

So these four kids were definately my impact children and I will never forget them, the memories they gave me or the tears they brought to my eyes when I had to say goodbye to them.

ANYWAYS!! I have to go take a test and stop procrastinating... but I will continue when I get back.

Last night was a good highlight of my week. Yesterday was Gabe’s 21^st birthday and so we all decided to go out and buy 80s style clothes and go roller skating. We couldn’t find the skating rink so we decided to do the next best thing and go to the bowling ally. It was awesome because earlier yesterday I walked up to the local market after work and bought some crazy neon bracelets, headbands and a necklace along with some amazing nylons that were neon yellow!! Lisa bought some bright green glitter eye shadow and we put that on as thick as possible and I borrowed Julie’s bright green converse and we got all dolled up.

At the bowling ally we had to listen to the same Maroon 5 song about a million times (yet still had it in us each time to blurt it out), and towards the end of our two hour time slot we discovered that you can win prizes for getting specific scores. Brady was shooting for 83 and only needed three pins but ‘accidentally’ bowled a strike and set him over on his 10^th shot which upset him. So he decided to shoot for the 108 score and bowled another strike and we were convinced there was no chance he could get that number and we couldn’t figure out how to calculate it. For those of you who know Brady… well lets just say he is a lot like me when it comes to losing and he got mad, turned around and side shoved the ball down the lane, knocking a random number of pins down and we turn around and the score was exactly 108! He was thrilled and he got his free wash cloth… and apparently it was cool.

Then when we finished we decided we wanted to go dancing so we went to a club next door and danced the night away, or at least got the dance floor started which was incredibly fun, giving the night a perfect ending, or at least until we experienced the craziest cab driver in Beijing. I swear this guy just discovered power steering or was driving for the first time because he was over turning every chance he got. Good thing we weren’t drinking or just got done eating because it would have made me car sick that’s how bad it was.

Anyways, today Danielle arranged for a lady that works at the pearl market to come to the school that we work at after camp to teach us a pearl stringing lesson. It was awesome and I got to make my pearl bracelet and I even made something for Grandma! I am getting excited to come home and see everyone although after I see everyone I will definitely be ready to turn around and come back!

Tibetin Houtang Trip

(NEW)

This week was full of many CRAZY adventures including our days at camp, nights on our own and the first half of the weekend. On Thursday we took our kids on a field trip to an art exhibit.... that was pretty interesting considering half of the galleries were of condoms (which we told the four year olds that they were balloons), karma sutra, and other very inappropriate things. Shows you how organized our site coordinator/point of contact is. Anyways we drug the kids around that all day and by the end decided that we needed a cold beer and went to our local regge bar and played card games and jenga all night. Anyways yesterday we went to a little huotang street with cute little shops and did that all night.
Today was really the highlight of my week. We woke up and took the subway to a place that we rented bikes. We biked all over Beijing and it was an amazingly beautiful day. We went to a Tibetan huotang which was actually one of my favorite places to go. There were tons of little shops here where you could get anything from jewelry to clothing and the whole street(or little ally) was full of little restaurants/bars that had extremely good food considering the fact that the food in China never failed to make my nose crinkle... The menus here were a little bit more descriptive and told you what kind of meat they were serving in comparison to the other.. well cheaper... restaurants we had previously ate at where the menu would say things like vegetables with meat. Lets just say that when you are in a country where the only things that speak English are the menus which were the only communication we had with the waiters... vegetables with meat is a very scary concept.

Right by the houtang was the Drum and Bell towers which were absolutly beautiful although we didn't want to caugh up the money to climb them when the only thing to see was a view of the city. We simply stayed on our bikes and discovered all the streets and back alleys of Beijing which I have to say was a close second to the Great Wall because they are the things that you don't get to see as a tourist. We must have biked over 20 miles that day, all the way across the city and back and it was about 3 dollars to rent the bike for a day.

Ending the 5th weekend on a great note

So today was the the finish of our fifth weekend here, which means I will be on a flight home in less than four weeks. We had a pretty relaxed day yesterday because we went to a day spa and got to experience that as well as a 45 minute traditional Taiwanese full body massage. Let me just tell you that that was one of the weirdest things I have ever experienced. I didn't think they would get that close to you but I was proven wrong. We got there at about 8am yesterday and were slapped across the face by the fact that you were not really expected to wear clothes at all... and otherwise we would be the odd ones out. So Lisa Jacqui and I got some bonding time which was amazing. It was about 75 bucks for four and a half hours of unlimited hot tubbing, showering(which they made us to like every hour), a buffet style breakfast and lunch, saunas and lounges to just relax in, and included in that price was our massage.
So after that we hit the town and thought we were going to do some cultural things but of course being the three girls we are, we ended up back at the silk market and probably spent more money than we should have, again... haha it seems to be a bad habit of ours but it is also very entertaining to convince a chinese market worker to sell you a black jacket that your mom was planning on buying you for $180, and only end up spending 150 kwai which is equal to about $20! aha so I got a feminine jacket that you would appreciate mom!!! anyways then I convinced this lady that I was not spending any more than 80 kwai on this dress, and I walked away and she came back and agreed, and I kept walking and she came down to saying anything in the store for 50 kwai... aka I bought 3 dresses for 20 bucks. So I think I made out pretty well with my bargaining skills!
Last night though I have to say was probably my favorite part of the weekend. Danielle had sent us an e-mail about a week ago with the invitation to a fashion show and clothing/art museum display and we hit her up on that. It was amazing. We got in for free, which we were originally suppose to pay 100 kwai ( let me just define the exchange rate $1 = 7 kwai) to get in but she knew the artist and he wouldn't let us pay. So we went in and saw the display and then walked around this back yard courtyard that was gorgeous!! A company that is going to be opening a business in Beijing soon was there giving samples of their chocolate fondue and so we got a sample of that and it was AMAZING!! We each got a plate full and we told the owner we would go visit his shop when they opened and we are getting really excited.
Then the show started, which was when the fun started (minus the traditional Chinese singers). They had traditional Chinese outfits and just everyday clothing that was absolutely beautiful. After that and the nail screeching Chinese signers that needed to do one more volume check on their sound system, Danielle was asked to come up and she mentioned that her louchers(teachers) were here with her and so after the whole show was over, she was invited back up to dance on the stage and they told us to come up with here. We got to go up on stage and dance with Mr Wang (the owner) and the designers and models! It was awesome and then we took pictures with the group which we are hoping to be able to track down somehow.
So today we went to the Beijing Zoo which was pretty cool but pretty sad as any of those places are. The animals were locked up in small cages and looked sad and depressed so that was sad but it was awesome to see the panda's that were brought in from the Shieswan providence, which is where the earthquakes took place. They were about the only live and happy looking animals in the whole zoo! And just so you know mom I topped your bird pooping on your head story! I got peed on by a monkey!! Now it was not on my head but it barely missed it!!
So we did that and then headed back to the Forbidden City to finish it off, because it is that big! Our taxi driver missed it by a mile though and so we walked the length of it about four times and each way was about 1/2 a mile. It doesn't sound bad but I had THE WORST shoes on that I bought at the market. I wore them the yesterday and at the end of the day decided that they were not walking shoes yet I guess I forgot this morning when I got dressed... It was amazing and we got some good sun!
So on with another week!! Hopefully we get some more amazing kids because we have been pretty lucky so far!!

For our camp program we work 5 days a week and every Thursday is considered our field trip day. Yesterday we decided it would be cool to talk our kids to see World Park which has miniature replicas of world monuments from all over the world. We took the kids and got to talk like we knew everything. We started out at a show where they did a performance of every cultural dance you could possibly think of and just so you all know, Asia represents Americans as Las Vegas strippers and that went over well with our five year olds!!
Anyways we took our kids to the toilets and decided that since we couldn't take the kids on the rides, we would have to make them entertaining in some way and so next to the toilets was where the water splashed over the edge of the water ride where you can stand and watch or get wet. So of course we thought we would make that entertaining by letting the kids watch us torture ourselves with the not so clean Chinese water and get drenched. Luckily that worked out in our favor and the splash was to little and didn't make it over the wall. The we walked over and ate lunch and started through the monuments. Jacqui knew that Stone Henge was 1,593,722 years old!!! HA if only she could repeat it one more time, but the kids believed every word that came out of our mouths.
I realized that I needed to educate myself more on the world monuments and history when we approached the back side of the Vatican and I tried to tell the kids about what Washington D.C. was about. Yah, I know I am cool. We got to take the kids to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy and we took a picture of the kids pushing one side and the three counselors on the other, losing of course. Then we walked and saw the Eiffel Tower, NYC, the Great Wall(which we had to hike for the second time), and some Japanese Village with a waterfall and shade. The best part of my day was when we were walking out and saw an elephant out of the corner of our eyes and decided... hmm this is another good way of torturing ourselves to entertain our kids. So of course we got to sit on the trunk of the elephant and have it lift us about 10 feet up in the air! It made so pretty priceless pictures but it was pretty scary!! I'm proud to say that it was so incredibly hot that day that after getting down from the elephant, my pants were soaking wet and my pants were dry about three minutes later.
By the end of the day we had kids crying because they were tired of walking and then one of our kids, Kosei(who has a British accent), was mad at us because we were not going to walk anymore and he was not tired yet. He was so mad that when we sat down at started to play a game called grEEn glaSS dOOr (where you have to say something that has two of the same letters next to each other to take through the door, hints the name) and we told him that he couldn't go through the door, he told me he was going to take a aLLigator and throw it through the grEEn glaSS dOOr and break it. haha we just laughed at his accent and told him that the aLLigator could go through the grEEn glaSS dOOr so that wouldn't work =) So that was the field trip.
This weekend we are planning on staying in Beijing and going to a day spa to get full body massages, manicures, pedicures, saunas, and all you can eat buffets!! After that we are going to a fashion show and a cocktail party with Danielle and possibly going to see an acrobatic show and the zoo! It should be pretty interesting!!

Crazy Foods!!

So I decided to stop being so picky this summer and try some new and interesting cuisines this summer and that we have done. I still have a few things I want to track down but for now I am pretty impressed. I definitely passed up last summers live octopus on the first weekend after we got here. We went down to Snack Street which had some of the craziest things I have ever seen. Brady, Gabe and I started off by eating scorpion and that was pretty interesting. It pretty much tasted just like an extra greasy french fry with more oil on it that potato. That was followed by bargaining for a sheep penis but I was not diggin' that idea and so good thing the guy wanted 50 kwai for it and the guys decided that was too much... whew! it looked like a thick spaghetti noodle that was about 12 inches long. Anyways we moved further down the strip and found sea horse, and even though it was fifty kwai, me and Gabe decided it would be a good thing for the record books and a good investment. That is one of those things I am proud to say I did but it was absolutely AWFUL!!! It just tasted like a mouthful of fish scales.
Since then we have ordered a bunch of random appetizers and things at dinners we go to. I tried duck for the first time which was pretty incredible I must say. Just the other night we went out to a restaurant where you walked to a room which had samples of what each dish looked like along with all of the fresh seafood, which half of it was still alive in tanks, and we decided to try something new. We looked through all the isles finding things like shark fin, pig snouts, fried milk (?), and turtle and then we came across our mission. We ordered pigeon and discovered that they are not very appetizing or pleasant beings. they chopped it up and left the head on the platter which we later took home in a little baggy for Monica (who is a vegetarian) and she freaked out. hehe
Last night was pretty cool too. Since both Brady and I were in South Korea last summer we decided that going out for Korean sounded fun so we took the crew along with Alice and Andrew, who are our program coordinators and directors, and we tried it out. It was a little different than I remembered but still amazing! We tried some interesting things at this dinner as well. I tried lamb, or mutton for the first time and it was good but not amazing.... and then the cooks put down this extremely red meat and I thought it looked to red to be normal and I was correct in assuming that. Oh it was Ox tongue so I can now cross that off my list of things never to eat. It was not bad at all but just the thought made me kind of nauseous and probably took away from the taste but it was not bad. I got my seafood (and yes I mean seafood) soup that had tofu in it which was one of my favorite things last summer, so that made me pretty happy.
Anyways I am on a new mission for trying new things and that is cricket. Here in China they have traditional cricket wars and if you go watch them they have stands where you can go and eat them after. I know it sounds awful but it should be awesome! Pretty much everything here tops silk worms and live octopus in Korea... It is pretty crazy to walk through the markets and see the things they eat. They claim that due to the lack of food and all the starvation they were forced to eat more of each animal and that they do. You see just about every body part sold in the markets here from the intestines and brain all the way down to the private parts that no one should ever ingest... haha