an over view of China

I spent a grand total of three weeks in China, and loved, every moment if it. From the people to my group to my classes to just everything in general, except maybe the smell, and never having clean clothes. It was the longest shortest three weeks of my life and i cant believe it is over. We toured Beijing, Xian and Shanghai. We traveled to each of these places via train, the first ride was 12 hours and the second was 22 hours. We experianced China sleeping cars. it really makes the travel time fly when you can sleep. you know when you are sure you have learned many life lessons in an area but when you go to write it you just cant put it into words. that is where i am right now. China was an amazing experiance and i would love to be able to say everything that it has taught me but i dont know if i can. i can say it has taught me patience but i don:t know how, and it has taught me that i am stronger than i know, but i cant tell you why. it is really just a jumble in my mind and i can:t get it out. but i want to be able to share what i know and what i have learned. so lets just try and tell some of my expericances that may have contributed.

Beijing was totally amazing i saw and expericanced so much in 10 days i took classes so i learned from the Chinese people what they think that americans should know (they didn:t know that they were talking to a canadian too). we had a tour guide that was a pain in the royal butt. she liked to take us to tourist traps that we couldn:t afford. In the end we ended up with gifts from the travel agency as an apology for having to deal with these situations. I love walking in the rain and got to experiance that a few times in a unfamiliar city it was amazing. i went to lunch with these Chinese girls that wanted to practice their english and make new friends, i didn:t notice the smell as much in Beijing as much as Xian but i am leaning that it is not the smell that makes it different it is the cleanliness that goes with it or lack there of. i found that street vendors make really good breakfast even if you don:t know what you are ordering. Ordering is a completley different thing than North America. we all noticed that as soon as you walk into a restraunt youd better know what you want to eat because they will linger over you until you are ready to order. sometimes pointing is not the best option especially with the drink menu because you can end up with things you don:t want to drink. same with ordering supper though because you will end up with different things that you dont know what are like cows tongue. very chewy. you will sometimes end up with things that you didn:t know that you ever wanted to try and it isn:t too bad. Beijing was a good place for us to start because it offered us some time to get use to the difference in　culture.

by the time we got to Xian we were somewhat used to China, well as use to it as you can get. we were accepting of our tour guide but it also helped that she was like 100 times better than the last, and didn:t sink into her seat and cry every other day, NOTE we didn:t to anything to make her cry. we were so tired that we just wanted to sleep but we had full days of activities that we had to just keep going and not worry about what we really wanted. we went around the city wall on bicycles, we saw the warriors we went to the wild goose pagoda. and to this place that had alot of water things. funny story acutally, we were suppose to be watching this water show where the fountains would dance to the music and well we couldn:t see the water so one of the guys in my group started to do interperative dancing he drew a crowd of 250plus people and this was just the way we deal with things. xian was also alot dirtier than beijing and acutally it was more what i expected to see when i thought of China. it is one of those places you loved and hated all at the same time. from xian　we also went to a farming villiage (not a village) and we stayed with families there. my roommates and i didn:t get to really know our family because of the language barrier but we really enjoyed our stay. we got to go to a school and spend half an hour with the little grade one students, this was by far my favorite part of my trip so far. i think people really started to understand why my major is what it is. and that night we were invited to the villiage dance, where i met Hamama, a seven year old angel. i had so much fun with her. when we got back to xian we sent some mail and picked up our laundry that we had done and well i don:t think the laundry place believed in a dryer so they put our wet clothes in bags and by the time we opened each bag our laundry stunk. so taht was a waste of money booo.

We left for Shaghai, this is the largest city in the world and i feel like i could wander it and not really get lost or if i do i could find where i am fairly quickly. this is the place where everyone started to really get sick. there were a few cases before hand but over all shanghai was the worst to start getting sick. our sponser Ryan ended up getting a feavor that lasted 5 days and he still doesn:t look the greatest. and another guy Skyler, developed a pancreatic attack once we got on the plane to kyoto he is still in the hopsital in kyoto while the rest of us have gone on to toyko. Keep him in your prayers.

All in all i loved China but i am sick of the food and i am glad to be gone. i think that we are just too tired to really respond greatly to china right now but when we look back later it will be an awesome part of our overall trip. i think that i am one of the most optomistic people in the group regarding the overall feel of china. i am glad i went and i want to go back but i think i need to do some exploring of the places myself, i need to really get to know the people, this is what our group really feels was lacking in our time in china, we all would have really liked to be able to communicate with the people and get to know them. i also think i need to see more of the world to fully appreciate what i have seen there. i need to know that every place is different and i need to feel like i have made a difference. i really want to do that. making a difference in one persons life would have been great but if i didn:t get a chance to really talk to any one than how can i make a difference. maybe i can change that in the future and since i know that i want to change that then maybe the rest of my trip will be more fruitful. i would not trade the time i had in china for anything on earth and i think that is why i have become a stronger person i know what i want to get out of the rest of my trip, relationships with the people of the countries i visit. WOW!!! i didn:t know that is what i wanted until i wrote it.