Saturday, June 27, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Day 10-Spreading joy in the form of Biotechnology
Day 10
Today was pretty hard to get up. I’ve been trying out the fitness room for the past few days and still feel kind of sore. When I was ready to go to breakfast, I found out I had thirty minutes to eat. I ended up being late, my roommate was also late but it was all good. We arrived at Bodi Boarding School safe and on time. We made it on time because our bus driver is super awesome. When we arrived at the school we were told to go into a room for a rest. Basically we were early and the students in the class were taking a test. After an early morning rest, we were invited to an English class and were asked to sit next to the Chinese students. We then started to watch Kung Fu Panda. The teacher paused the video once in a while for us to talk about what happened in the movie. This was our chance to help the students learn and understand more English. Then we headed over to another classroom in a different building to start our Biotechnology experiments. Today we did the Fruit DNA extraction. The fruit we chose were bananas. It was a success. The Chinese students were amazed to see the DNA. From what the students told me is that they only read about biology and do bookwork. They rarely ever get hands-on experiments that are not mandatory. After the experiment we headed to lunch. The food was good. Anthony ate a lot, but not at his will, he had to keep eating food as to not be rude to the Chinese hospitality. We also celebrated Pedro’s birthday with a birthday cake and a traditional Chinese bowl of noodles that signifies longevity of life. Pedro sadly did not make it through lunch without icing being spread all over his face. Then we went to a Chinese class after lunch. It was a painting class, where we learned how to paint sea animals. It was cool. I drew DNA, a fish, and a smiley face. Then we departed for the hotel then an hour later we headed for dinner. Like what Donny said last time… “A repeated dinner”. After dinner we went swimming and had to use a swimming cap. It is a Chinese law to use a swimming cap in a public pool. Then we fell asleep.
Fernando Otero
Today was pretty hard to get up. I’ve been trying out the fitness room for the past few days and still feel kind of sore. When I was ready to go to breakfast, I found out I had thirty minutes to eat. I ended up being late, my roommate was also late but it was all good. We arrived at Bodi Boarding School safe and on time. We made it on time because our bus driver is super awesome. When we arrived at the school we were told to go into a room for a rest. Basically we were early and the students in the class were taking a test. After an early morning rest, we were invited to an English class and were asked to sit next to the Chinese students. We then started to watch Kung Fu Panda. The teacher paused the video once in a while for us to talk about what happened in the movie. This was our chance to help the students learn and understand more English. Then we headed over to another classroom in a different building to start our Biotechnology experiments. Today we did the Fruit DNA extraction. The fruit we chose were bananas. It was a success. The Chinese students were amazed to see the DNA. From what the students told me is that they only read about biology and do bookwork. They rarely ever get hands-on experiments that are not mandatory. After the experiment we headed to lunch. The food was good. Anthony ate a lot, but not at his will, he had to keep eating food as to not be rude to the Chinese hospitality. We also celebrated Pedro’s birthday with a birthday cake and a traditional Chinese bowl of noodles that signifies longevity of life. Pedro sadly did not make it through lunch without icing being spread all over his face. Then we went to a Chinese class after lunch. It was a painting class, where we learned how to paint sea animals. It was cool. I drew DNA, a fish, and a smiley face. Then we departed for the hotel then an hour later we headed for dinner. Like what Donny said last time… “A repeated dinner”. After dinner we went swimming and had to use a swimming cap. It is a Chinese law to use a swimming cap in a public pool. Then we fell asleep.
Fernando Otero
Day 9- Bodi High School
This morning we woke up super early! After we ate breakfast, we headed off to the Xi’an boarding school. Savanna, Sabrina, and Donny all had presentations to give. Donny and Savanna were really nervous. We finally arrived at the beautiful Bodi School and we were warmly welcomed by the students and faculty. We were ushered into a room where the directors exchanged gifts, and the school held a welcoming ceremony. Afterwards, the Chinese students along with all of us were led into a room where we could do our activity: DNA Bracelets. It was really hard to instruct the students because of the language barriers; however, we managed and we even had some time left to talk to the students. After exchanging e-mails, we then headed to lunch in the school teacher’s dinning lounge. Following lunch, we visited the school’s world class gym for many rounds of table tennis (Ping-Pong). China’s Olympic team and other near by countries go to that gym to train for professional table tennis. Hardly anyone was keeping score, or even playing by the rules. Next, we sat in on a Biology class. The students preformed an experiment, and after that we had a Chinese culture lesson. We learned about shadow puppets, waist drums, and even learned how to say “You are really great!” in Chinese. It was time to depart for today. We did some quick shopping, and then we went to dinner. The dinner was a cook your own food style. It was a super fun dinner. We then headed back to the hotel for free time. Everyone decided to go to Dairy Queen and Wal-mart across the street, and then we came back and fell asleep.
Donny and Norman
Donny and Norman
Monday, June 22, 2009
Pictures,Pictures,pictures
welcome back weary travelers. I have spent several hours editing and cleaning up over 9000 pictures that were taken on the trip. Mrs Simonson should have dvd copies of all this week. Out of those 9000 pictures i have been able to narrow them down to just over a 1000 EXCELLENT PHOTOGRAPHS! It was cool seeing everyones view of the trip.
Mr. Simonson
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Day 8 - Biking the Wall
This morning we went out to the buffet breakfast, meeting up at 7:55am and eating at 8:00am. It’s a western style breakfast buffet. (It has food for vegans!) It’s odd at breakfast because the people that clean up stare at you like vultures waiting for you to finish the last crumb so they can clean it up. It’s so hard to eat with them staring so intensely! We went to our rooms again to prepare for the day, brushing our teeth, etc. Tatiana and I brushed our teeth while watching a movie on HBO. No idea what the name was, but it was a movie that had hockey in it. A fire Marshall went to save his hostage daughter, who was being kept with the Vice President of the U.S. He was being threatened for the whole treasury. Crazy stuff! We met up again at 8:45 to head off to visit Xi’an’s ancient city wall. The wall was built when it was the capital 600years ago. Only the Imperial family was allowed to reside within the walls, along with the Unix servants and concubines. (As well as officials). Four hundred years ago the wall was rebuilt, when the capital was moved. The reason for the move was that there was a new emperor, who was the son in a peasant family. He came to power by leading a revolt and winning. However, in ancient China it was said that to be an emperor, you had to have a dragon spirit, which only those of royal blood possessed. The peasant emperor did not have royal blood, and feared the spirits of the past emperors would make his rule short. To keep this from happening, he rebuilt the city wall to trap the spirits, and moved the capital of his empire to Beijing.
We rode bikes on this wall, the rent of a bike costing 20 RMB. We had a blast, though a few accidents revolving around one person. Fernando not only fell, a big crash and burn, he lost a bike peddle as well. It was kind of comical in a way. The wall was a nice ride, but was riddled with holes, bumps, and inclines. It was very tiring! I originally rode solo, but switched bikes with Savanna, who learned how to ride a bike on an ancient city wall in the middle of China. It was also the first time some of us rode tandem. Savanna switched from tandem with Antonio to my solo bike, and I rode tandem on the back for the first time ever, along with Antonio and many of the teachers, and other students. Very tempted to sing out “Daisy, Daisy”, but I was out of breath. The air here is very humid and thick!
After the wall, we visited the Forest of Steles, or the Stone Tablet Museum. It was ancient scriptures, carved into stone, hanging from ancient scriptures, carved into stone, hanging from ancient Chinese characters, to the more modern ones. In one room alone, there were 114 double sided tablets that contained over 600,000 Chinese characters. In the third room there were turtle like creatures holding up the tablets. These were the “Sons of the Dragon”. If you rubbed his head, you would have good luck. If you rubbed him from head to tail, you would have life long good luck.
Many of the tablets contained Confucius’s teachings. His disciples wrote them into a book on the stone tablets, which were huge, taller than me, a 5 foot 2 inch girl, and wide. They were filled from top to bottom with writing. Confucianism was originally just teachings to live by, not a religion. Many of his lessons are still followed today. Thank goodness we don’t still follow his view on women though! In ancient times, women were meant to serve and obey their husbands.
The tablets also combined governing information, which government official hopefuls had to copy down on rice paper with ink, word for word, and memorize it all. There was a fancy fountain at the entrance that they washed their brushes in. The entrance also had three gates. Originally, the middle door, the largest, was for the emperor, the right gate for his concubines, and the left for his officials. This changed, the middle gate becoming one that good spirits passed through, and the side gates were for evil spirits. After the museum, we went to lunch at a local restaurant. It did not look like much on the outside, but on the inside it was extremely fancy! I felt so underdressed! The place had the nicest bathrooms we have seen the whole trip. Very pretty sinks, and the soap used was dispensed from an actual tea pot.
After lunch, we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which was a large Buddhist temple. It is called the Wild Goose Pagoda, because there had been a meat famine going on, and the monks were hungry, so they brayed to Buddha. Afterwards, a flock of geese flew overhead, and the leader of the flock suddenly dropped dead and landed in front of the monks. It was a gift of food from Buddha. (The vegan term of Chinese Buddhism is the Maha Yama sect by the way.) The temple was very beautiful, plenty of old buildings and plants. There were many different types of statues of Buddha in the temple grounds, each from a different sect of the religion (which are in many different groups). Sadly, we didn’t see any monks.
After visiting the temple, we went to the night market, which is basically a huge maze of streets, venders, and shops packed in an enclosed space. It was crazy and crowded! The people on scooters kept beeping and driving past at a crazy speed, and they seemed a bit reckless for some. I nearly got ran over a few times. It was cool, but you had to protect your belongings. The vendors were very stubborn too, and would walk away from you!
After the market, we went to the hotel to freshen up, and then headed out to dinner. It was dinner and a show. The Tang Dynasty Palace gave a show of the Tang Dynasty dance and music. It was very colorful, and some of the dances were pretty, others cool. The third song played during the performance was written by an emperor, who was better at art, calligraphy, and music than he was at governing. That was the Tang Emperor GaoZong.
Following dinner, we went back to the hotel for sleep. The students helped Savanna with her next day’s speech and we all prepared for our Biotechnology experiments.
This was a compilation of Tatiana’s and Taryn’s experience for today.
We rode bikes on this wall, the rent of a bike costing 20 RMB. We had a blast, though a few accidents revolving around one person. Fernando not only fell, a big crash and burn, he lost a bike peddle as well. It was kind of comical in a way. The wall was a nice ride, but was riddled with holes, bumps, and inclines. It was very tiring! I originally rode solo, but switched bikes with Savanna, who learned how to ride a bike on an ancient city wall in the middle of China. It was also the first time some of us rode tandem. Savanna switched from tandem with Antonio to my solo bike, and I rode tandem on the back for the first time ever, along with Antonio and many of the teachers, and other students. Very tempted to sing out “Daisy, Daisy”, but I was out of breath. The air here is very humid and thick!
After the wall, we visited the Forest of Steles, or the Stone Tablet Museum. It was ancient scriptures, carved into stone, hanging from ancient scriptures, carved into stone, hanging from ancient Chinese characters, to the more modern ones. In one room alone, there were 114 double sided tablets that contained over 600,000 Chinese characters. In the third room there were turtle like creatures holding up the tablets. These were the “Sons of the Dragon”. If you rubbed his head, you would have good luck. If you rubbed him from head to tail, you would have life long good luck.
Many of the tablets contained Confucius’s teachings. His disciples wrote them into a book on the stone tablets, which were huge, taller than me, a 5 foot 2 inch girl, and wide. They were filled from top to bottom with writing. Confucianism was originally just teachings to live by, not a religion. Many of his lessons are still followed today. Thank goodness we don’t still follow his view on women though! In ancient times, women were meant to serve and obey their husbands.
The tablets also combined governing information, which government official hopefuls had to copy down on rice paper with ink, word for word, and memorize it all. There was a fancy fountain at the entrance that they washed their brushes in. The entrance also had three gates. Originally, the middle door, the largest, was for the emperor, the right gate for his concubines, and the left for his officials. This changed, the middle gate becoming one that good spirits passed through, and the side gates were for evil spirits. After the museum, we went to lunch at a local restaurant. It did not look like much on the outside, but on the inside it was extremely fancy! I felt so underdressed! The place had the nicest bathrooms we have seen the whole trip. Very pretty sinks, and the soap used was dispensed from an actual tea pot.
After lunch, we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which was a large Buddhist temple. It is called the Wild Goose Pagoda, because there had been a meat famine going on, and the monks were hungry, so they brayed to Buddha. Afterwards, a flock of geese flew overhead, and the leader of the flock suddenly dropped dead and landed in front of the monks. It was a gift of food from Buddha. (The vegan term of Chinese Buddhism is the Maha Yama sect by the way.) The temple was very beautiful, plenty of old buildings and plants. There were many different types of statues of Buddha in the temple grounds, each from a different sect of the religion (which are in many different groups). Sadly, we didn’t see any monks.
After visiting the temple, we went to the night market, which is basically a huge maze of streets, venders, and shops packed in an enclosed space. It was crazy and crowded! The people on scooters kept beeping and driving past at a crazy speed, and they seemed a bit reckless for some. I nearly got ran over a few times. It was cool, but you had to protect your belongings. The vendors were very stubborn too, and would walk away from you!
After the market, we went to the hotel to freshen up, and then headed out to dinner. It was dinner and a show. The Tang Dynasty Palace gave a show of the Tang Dynasty dance and music. It was very colorful, and some of the dances were pretty, others cool. The third song played during the performance was written by an emperor, who was better at art, calligraphy, and music than he was at governing. That was the Tang Emperor GaoZong.
Following dinner, we went back to the hotel for sleep. The students helped Savanna with her next day’s speech and we all prepared for our Biotechnology experiments.
This was a compilation of Tatiana’s and Taryn’s experience for today.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Day 7 - Warrior Mania
Sunday, June 14, 2009 in
We woke up to Bruce knocking on the train cabin door of our room. It was bright and early, we were almost to Xi’an. We were pleasantly surprised to find that none of the bathroom horror stories were true. We originally thought that the bathroom was a giant rust ball with a huge hole in the floor, with no modern toilet, that lead straight to the tracks. Fortunately, the bathrooms were western style, but the toilet excrement did lead strait to the tracks! Where are the health codes???
The ride was smooth, but a bit foreign. Once the train stopped, we were on our way to meet our new tour guide, Cathy, and her assistant Melody. We found our new bus driver named, Master Jong (pronounced master “Juan”), and rode to our new hotel for breakfast and check-in. The hotel is marvelous! Our new hotel is sublime in every way, shape, and form! The staff, the room, and the entry hall are glorious and expert quality in every way. After eating breakfast and dropping off our stuff in the rooms we went straight to the Terracotta factory where they assembled life size figures to mini Terracotta warriors, wooden furniture with intricate inlays, and many other things.
Terracotta warriors were made during the Qin dynasty, when the Emperor ordered the construction of 6 foot tall clay soldiers to protect him during his afterlife. The Emperor was originally going to execute 6,000 of his strongest warriors so they would protect him during the afterlife, but a medicine man said the clay soldiers would suffice. Overtime, those clay soldiers have been damaged and buried under the earth. Recently, as in the 1970’s, a farmer was digging and found the remnants of the soldiers. The area was excavated and 1,500 of those clay Terracotta warriors are on display in a museum. However, there are still 5,000 more Terracotta warriors still buried under the earth… this is because once the warriors are extracted from the earth, the majestic colors they are said to have, diminish due to oxidation of the paint.
After visiting the factory where the Terracotta warrior models are made, we were able to actually visit the Terracotta Warrior museum. We saw the actual excavation site and we saw Mr. Young, the farmer who accidentally discovered the warriors. We also saw the warriors themselves, and watched a short informational video on the history. We did the site seeing plus more in the blazing heat and extreme humidity. After a quick, light lunch near the museum, we came back to the hotel and took much needed showers, along with a rest. At
This was a compilation of Sabrina’s and Savanna’s outlook on the day’s events.
Day 6- Recuperation, then a train to Xi'an
Today we actually slept in late; we didn’t have to wake up until 7:30am. Breakfast started at 8:30am and we had a debriefing about the last day’s events. It was just a discussion about our flaws and how we can improve as a group to improve those flaws. We gained much encouragement for the next presentations we have to give. After the debriefing, the students packed their belongings and played sand volleyball, while some adults talked with a Chinese teacher.
We enjoyed our short free time while we had it to recuperate from the week’s activities. Then it was time to say good-bye to Jeanie our Qinhuangdao tour guide. We presented her with a gift and departed for a 4 hour bus ride back to Beijing. It was a long, eventless bus ride. It was just us, our tour guide Bruce, and our Master driver. There was so much traffic that we couldn’t believe it.
Once we finally arrived in Beijing, we had an American dinner at KFC. It was really good and it was great to have something besides traditional Chinese food for at least 1 meal. I’m not saying that traditional Chinese food is bad, but it felt really good to have the Colonel’s secret recipe slam my taste buds for a change. After we left KFC, Master TG (our driver) took us to the rail road station in central Beijing. There we departed from our bus driver of a week, Master TG. He was awesome because once you can drive in Beijing you can drive anywhere because the traffic is so bad. Anyway, we gave Master TG a gift and we headed to the busy train station.
When we finally made it through the train station security, we were sent to a remote section of a waiting room by a Chinese official for some odd reason… or if you have been following us on this trip, because of the H1N1 virus scare. Without the seclusion getting in our way we boarded the overnight train to Xi’an (pronounced She-on). We each had our own bed on the train and it was a really awesome experience although those beds were really small and stiff.
We enjoyed our short free time while we had it to recuperate from the week’s activities. Then it was time to say good-bye to Jeanie our Qinhuangdao tour guide. We presented her with a gift and departed for a 4 hour bus ride back to Beijing. It was a long, eventless bus ride. It was just us, our tour guide Bruce, and our Master driver. There was so much traffic that we couldn’t believe it.
Once we finally arrived in Beijing, we had an American dinner at KFC. It was really good and it was great to have something besides traditional Chinese food for at least 1 meal. I’m not saying that traditional Chinese food is bad, but it felt really good to have the Colonel’s secret recipe slam my taste buds for a change. After we left KFC, Master TG (our driver) took us to the rail road station in central Beijing. There we departed from our bus driver of a week, Master TG. He was awesome because once you can drive in Beijing you can drive anywhere because the traffic is so bad. Anyway, we gave Master TG a gift and we headed to the busy train station.
When we finally made it through the train station security, we were sent to a remote section of a waiting room by a Chinese official for some odd reason… or if you have been following us on this trip, because of the H1N1 virus scare. Without the seclusion getting in our way we boarded the overnight train to Xi’an (pronounced She-on). We each had our own bed on the train and it was a really awesome experience although those beds were really small and stiff.
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