China November 2017

November 17, 2017 - Post from Celine: This morning I was woken up by the sound of waves crashing onto the shore, good thing I had set my own alarm because a soft knock on the door is not enough for me to actually wake up. As I rushed out of bed, got ready and ate breakfast, in less than 30 minutes I was prepared to start another day at Guan Ming High School. This morning my host student and I, “Mao Mao” or “Black” got to school at around 6:50 thanks to the light traffic. We were the first ones to open the classroom door and sit down, as other shuffled inside placing their wet umbrellas down. Throughout the first period class- Chinese, many students were very fatigued struggling to keep their eyes open. At the end of the period their teacher let everyone have some rest time and CiCi (Chloe’s host) walked us upstairs to meet with everyone for our adventure to the Shanghai museum. Accidentally stepping into large puddles of water, making our way to the museum was an interesting walk.

November 16, 2017 - Post from Cailey Today was yet another busy day of our trip throughout China.  It just so happened to be our first full day with our host families.  Many of us woke up at 5:30 in order to get to school. I️ was lucky so I️ able to wake up at 6 and still got to school with time to spare. We started out the day with our host families in each of their classes. Chloe, Celine, Nicole and I️ all had host sisters in the same class. After checking in with the teacher and handing the phones and homework in, we were able to go upstairs to the auditorium where we got to participate in a welcome ceremony. We introduced ourselves in Chinese and danced to ‘Shake it Off’ by Taylor Swift. All of this embarrassing dancing and speaking in Chinese was broadcasted to all the rooms in the school, on TVs. With my host sister, we had math class, English class, biology, and physics.  Her math teacher was very very strict and she made the kids stand up when they answered a questio

Post from Tes - November 15, 2017 First day with the homestay-   Waking up this morning, I was excited and nervous at the same time. It was the last time we would be staying at the hotel, basically ending the tourist lifestyle. No longer would we be going from hotel to hotel, from city to city each day. We packed our things, ate a good breakfast that was both eastern and western styled, and rehearsed our dance for the welcome ceremony at school the next day. Boarding the bus, we were all feeling the same- nervous yet excited. We talked about what we were looking forward to and how we thought this experience might go. Arriving at the school, everyone was jittery and itching to meet our hosts. We walked in to see many kids playing basketball and badminton on their recess time, and saw some kids point from the hallways at us upstairs. We went to a room to keep our luggage for the day and headed to the cafeteria. Walking in, many heads turned, and we all felt a little awkward, b

    Last night we arrived back in Kunming and stayed in the same hotel we did the first time we were here. This morning, wake up call was at 8:30AM, which was nice because it’s a bit later than our other ones have been. After eating breakfast at the hotel, we left for the stone forest at 10AM.    During the bus ride, we wrote our introductions for tomorrow, since we’ll be arriving at our sister school. We all have to do an introduction of ourselves in front of the school. I think it shouldn’t be too bad; I hope the students like us!    Before arriving at the stone forest, we had an earlier lunch than usual. It was a little different because we all got to sit at one table. Plus, the food was really good, as well. That was also a little different than usual; there were a few different dishes that tasted really good. My favorite was the cabbage, though, even if they had it at almost every meal. But honestly everything tasted really good!   We arrived to the sto

Today was the 9th day of the trip to china and this is what we did today.  We started off the day by waking up at 7:30 and me and my roommate Anna went down to breakfast at 8:00 at breakfast we got noodles and other food but the noodles were the best. After breakfast we got on the bus and went to a Potatso National Park. When we were at the park it was really cold that i couldnt feel my fingers but it was a beautiful view of the river and the different colors of the trees.  Once we left the park we ate lunch at this little restaurant. The food was amazing and the set up was nice. The table was heated so we were warm instead of freezing like we were when we were outside. And then the food came out and we had rice, amazing fries, fired pork, and dumplings along with some tea and Sprite. Once we were done with our food we ended up taking the other tables food because there are 14 of us so we cant all fit at one table so we split up and the other table didnt eat some of their food so we t

Sunday, November 12          We had breakfast in the Lijiang hotel and after that we left the hotel around 9 am. Today we had a 5 and a half hour bus ride to Shangari-la. We visited places on the way though so it didn't seem that long. During the drive we saw beautiful views of mountains and bright blue skys. And we also saw the Yangtze River, the longest river in china, also known as the thrid longest river in the world. After a bumpy bus ride we arrived at The First Bend of the Yangtze River, where a bunch of people came and wanted to take pictures of us and with us. The attraction was in the town Shigu (means stone drum). The river does a complete 180 degrees because of a mountain, which is what makes it a big attraction.          After getting back on the bus, we passed a guy with a big group of goats walking alongside the road. After a while we also saw the Jade Dragon Mountain. We took a bathroom break, and personally I think (and I think everyone else who also went in a