There and Back Again: A Tale of "Seven Young Ladies"

Wow, awesome outline Zoë! I think I’ll try and hit a couple points from each day if I can.

Day 1 (Sunday June 1st): We arrived in China. The flight wasn’t bad, at least for me, because a lot of us slept for most of it. Some of us had our first international experience right at the airport when we went to the bathroom and the very last stall had the famous “hole” in the ground rather than the western toilet. This “international experience” as we called it would haunt us throughout the rest of the trip.

We road the subway to find dinner with the help of Tina, one of the choir member’s daughters. That night we were all so tired that we ate at Pizza Hut because our nerves and our stomachs weren’t quite up to trying something new yet. But this was Pizza Hut as none of us had experienced it. It was fancy! Yes, my friends, Pizza Hut over there is a sit down, classy joint. The pizza, in my opinion, is kind of weird because they don’t use much sauce at all, but that may be a skewed memory as I was falling asleep at the table. We were all so very tired.

Day 2 (Monday June 2nd): We were all still getting used to the massive 13 hour jump forward in time, so most of us woke up extremely early and didn’t fall back to sleep. Needless to say, we were all on time to breakfast. And breakfast was unique. Fried rice, veggies, assorted bread like products (one of which was pretty good with jam), fruit salad (also very good when you took out the random cherry tomatoes), hot milk, etc… Everyone but me started using chopsticks at that meal. I never did get the hang of it and constantly hounded the waiters for a fork everywhere we went.

We went to market that morning and learned to haggle. It was hard at first to know how low to go, but some people got very good at it. We all really enjoyed it. Pearls, silk, fans, jewelry, fans, shoes, bags, and various other souvenirs were purchased. We all liked the feeling of being rich over there.

That afternoon we went to the Forbidden City. It was really cool! Our tour guide (who later earned the title of Super June) told us that the emperor who lived there slept in a different room every night from the time he was born until he was twenty-seven years old. Needless to say, we didn’t tour the entire thing. We did, however, pose for a picture together and a guy ran up behind us and declared his love for us before his friend swiftly snapped a picture. It was quite the outing.

Day 3 (Tuesday June 3): Honestly, I can’t really remember what we did that Tuesday. I’m pretty sure there was a lot of rehearsal for the competition. Oh, this was the night we ate at a really really nice restaurant with a big Buda in the front. Of course, every single restaurant we ate at was really nice, but this one had the big Buda. Anyway, after dinner we all went walking around Beijing with Tina. We ate ice cream at McDonalds because it was supposedly better (though I tasted no difference) and we visited this wonderful tea shop where several of us bought tea and pretty little tea sets. Just walking around Beijing was fun though.

Day 4 (Wednesday June 4th): Competition time! This was a pretty hardcore day. Emily, our director, had gotten in Tuesday night, so rehearsals could begin in earnest. Wednesday morning we all put on our shiny dresses and went to the Beijing Music Hall for a dress rehearsal. Then, after the rehearsal on stage, we pretty much practiced the rest of the morning. After a marvelous lunch (all the meals were delectable), we got a break for a couple hours so about five of us went to the pearl market near the hotel and shopped. Then there was more practice followed by the competition itself. Luckily, we had just enough voice left to make it through the songs one last time.

Day 5 (Thursday June 5th): The awesome day! Today was the beginning of days with long bus rides. We rode the bus out to the Great Wall of China which took a couple of hours. But let me tell you, it was all worth the ride. Even though we only got to spend about an hour there, climbing the wall was amazing!! I personally only made it to the first tower, something that inspired me to think about maybe working out more, but even so… It was unlike anything that I had imagined. The steps were very uneven, some as high as your knee.

Every time we would all get together to pose for a picture on the wall, people would come up to us and ask to be in our picture so they could take a picture with us. I think they were fascinated to see such a diverse group of people all together. We even had some people from Iran wanting pictures with us. We never did get a picture with just the seven of us.

After the Great Wall we went to the Olympic facility, but weren’t allowed inside because of some construction problems. We were really disappointed because I think we were all expecting a tour, but we did hang out outside for a little while.

Oh, the good news. We, the choir, were invited to sing in the closing ceremonies of the competition that night. So though we had hoped that we were done with the shiny dresses forever, we had to put them on one more time that night. But on the plus side, e did sing on CCTV. We also won four awards: Best Voice, Best Language, Best Presentation and Best Music. At least, I think those were the ones we got. Either way, we won 2nd place in the competition… but technically 4th as three groups tied for 1st and we tied with six other groups for 2nd. But whatever. We done good.

That night was a huge party with all the choirs. We toasted and were toasted by people from all over the place. We can now toast in three languages (including English). It was a pretty unforgettable night!

Day 6 (Friday June 6th): Our “Cultural tour” begins. We took a bus instead of flying to a place which I can’t spell so somebody can fill you in on the specific names. Oh, something I haven’t mentioned before… those bus drivers have mad skills! They could parallel park a bus! If that’s not the coolest thing ever I don’t know what is. Anyway, we left Beijing and started touring more ruralish areas. After Beijing, all the days start blending together because we saw a lot of similar things so I’m sorry if I get my days mixed up.

I think this was the day we saw the Gratos, which are a bunch of caves which were… devoted to Buddha? Yeah, I think that’s right. Anyway, they were very cool. You could probably learn more from looking at our pictures than from reading anything that I could write.

That night we stayed in our first five star hotel. In Beijing our hotel had been a little less than perfect, but as soon as the tour began, it was high class living from then on!! I now think that that is the only way to travel. That night we all got massages. It was a memorable experience.

Day 7 (Saturday June 7): Mt. Wutai (spelling?) The bus ride was crazy scary but we totally made it through that mountain. We visited the Hanging Monastery which Kelly dubbed the obstacle course of death for the blind. It was a monastery built by monks that was hanging off of a cliff. Yeah… very cool but also very scary to experience. We also visited a lot of temples that day. This entire trip involved a lot of climbing up and down. Again, on these parts, pictures would tell a lot more than me.

The hotel was again magnificent!

Day 8 (Sunday June 8th) and day 9 (Monday June 9th): We went to Taiyuan. In Chinese, “Taiyuan” means “too far”. I can’t remember what we did here or around here on specific days because we spent two days in this area, so I’m going to combine them.

We probably visited temples, but I can’t remember. We went to a lot of temples.

We saw an old rich family’s court yard. They don’t live there now, of course. It’s a tourist place. But it was cool.

We visited the place/city where vinegar was invented. It reeked to high Heaven there. They gave us a tour of where they make it and some of us couldn’t handle the smell and had to step out. People over there drink vinegar straight with their meals. They say it is good for all sorts of things… “your beauty”, your stomach, your skin, your mind… maybe its true, but its not good for my gag reflex.

We saw an old town. I’m not sure what it was really, but there were the first banks in China there. There were also places that showed old Chinese torture devices and methods. Pretty interesting stuff…

We all stood in front of and took pictures by a three thousand year old tree.

Our hotel there has become my very favorite place in the entire world. They had massages that were fabulous (and fabulously cheap… about $20 US for 80 minutes of Heaven), great rooms, and best of all, Western food at breakfast. When we saw the omelets and hash browns at breakfast I think we all fell in love. Not that we didn’t all love the Chinese food we’d had because it was truly great, but sometimes a good hash brown is just what you need.

Day 10 (Tuesday June 10th): Extremely long bus ride back to Beijing. During the ride, our tour guide ran miles on the highway just to fetch us McDonalds for lunch. It was pretty sweet! When we finally got to Beijing, we checked into the hotel and went right to the market to do some last minute shopping.

Day 11 (Wednesday June 11th): We flew home. It was sad to leave. They gave us watermelon in our fruit cup on the flight so I knew it was really over… (We had a saying that the meals weren’t over until the watermelon came).

So I know that there were a zillion and three more little stories that could be told. I’ve told the main stuff best I could remember. Feel free to just add little stories and stuff please guys.

Jet-lagged and bored.

I wish we would have had a computer of some sort while we were there. There is too much to remember and I am already forgetting it as the minutes go by. There are some moments that I'm sure we will never forget, and I'm going to start an outline so others can possibly add on to it.

-We performed on CCTV, China's major news station, singing Thien Dung (or however all of the rest of you phonetically spelled it).
-We discovered what haggling was and that most of us are quite good at it.
-We toasted and were toasted by an entire room of people who then began singing to us the only English songs they knew (kind of) which were Happy Birthday and For Auld Lang Syne.
-I'm positive each of us had at least one near-death experience while walking along the street or trying to cross it.
-Some of us learned how to use a "hole."
-Some of us learned how very long we can wait for an actual toilet to use.
-We had our pictures taken at least once a day that we knew of, and some days it was more than ten.
-We drove through the Wutai Mountains on a tour bus barely short enough to make the precarious turns and bends of the mountains.
-We fell in love with a really old man who surrounded his life with calligraphy and his foreign friends.
-We experienced "smog" in Taiyuan.
-We were a noodle-making spectacle.
-We had Super and Amazing tour guides, capable of appearing at a moments notice or running miles to get us McDonald's.
-We ate things we were unable to identify.
-Some of us learned how to count to ten in Chinese!

Add more people, and specific stories would be awesome.

Did Somebody Forget a Laptop?

So we all went to China and it was probably the most amazing experience of my entire life! Unfortunately, none of us took a laptop with us to keep anyone updated on our adventures so we will have to do so in the very near future. But as for now, I personally am suffering from severe sleepiness and need for real American food so I will write in this blog before the day ends tomorrow.

Seriously...

We leave for China tomorrow. How cool is that? :)

I'm all packed because I'm flying into Dallas this afternoon, and I am so excited!

So..

Apparently I have three other blogger names, all under the same email account and it took me an hour to tell them all to change their passwords so I couldget on THIS blog... BUT I MADE IT!

Chiggedy-Check?

Ho da la or no da la, we are a go!

How do we change the caption?

Last time I checked, I wasn't a neuroscience major...

Just Checking In...

We leave in eight days!!

Testing, testing, 123...

Hello! =)