And So here I am... About to leave China

As my trip is quickly closing I made a list of the things that I will miss from China.

Foreign Friends

Public Transport

Poor Chinese Translations into English

The food such as Gongbao Jiding(Kung Pow Chicken), Baozi (steamed meat buns), Jiaozi (dumplings/pot stickers), Chao fan (fried Rice), and Jingjiang Rousi (Shredded meat in a Beijing sauce)

Cheap Clothing and Movies

Walking more

The Ice Cream man and his homemade Ice Cream

The Chicken Sandwich man and his food

The Shack where we got our Baozi, Jiaozi and Chao fan

Sichuan restaurant for the Kung Pow Chicken

Having the chance to speak Chinese everyday

Laughing inside at the men who pull their shirts over their stomachs on hot days

Most of all I will miss the experiences that I have been able to have, the people that I have had a chance to meet and the friendships that I have been able to make.  Sister Shen came to my room Thursday evening and asked if would be the travel leader for our group to the airport, Brandon, Kayli, and Jessica.  The directions that I received were very simple but rather interesting.  She said that all I had to do was make sure everyone was ready, check out at 6:30am and wait for the driver to come at 8:30am.

“He will be in a yellow van… Well it might not yellow… and it might not be a bus…”

It actually was a Tan Bus…Thank you Sister Shen for that specific detail to what kind of vehicle we were getting picked up by.  I don’t blame her for not knowing what kind of transportation we were getting because the school doesn’t seem that organized with those kinds of things. 

This brings me to the point that I am now at. Finally caught up with myself not a moment too soon; sitting in the airport awaiting my plane to come home. 

My checked bag had been a little too heavy so I took out 2 statues and my dictionary and put them in my carryon which was actually 3kilos so that made a huge difference.  Kayli had been dropped off earlier so now it was just Brandon, Jessica and I sitting waiting for their plane watching Ratatouille. We ran into Brett and spent the last little bit of time with them before all three of them had to leave to board their plane.

I now am sitting, writing this last blog of my adventures in China, spending a total of 9 hours in the airport.  China has been a great chapter in my life, but I know that it is time to move on, to continue on.  I will miss it more than I can express and even more than I realize.  It’s a little sad that I’m leaving but not everything lasts forever.  I have a feeling I will be back here again in the future and I welcome it when it comes.  I love China.

I cannot think of a better way to end a perfect study abroad full of interesting experiences than to say that if anyone has a chance to study abroad, to take that leap of faith, go, have fun, and Don’t give up.  This trip has been hard, but it was well worth it.  If I could do it all over again, I would change nothing.

Happiness is Relative

This past Wednesday we had our closing lunch.  It was at a restaurant that was across from Wumei and it has a lot of really good recipes.  This closing lunch didn’t have very much in terms of information or anything, but more it was Sister Shen wanting to treat us to lunch so that people could meet her if they hadn’t and to congratulate us on our semester (the next day I was late to class when she was attending because I was getting my scholarship.  When I explained why she was excited that I had gotten a scholarship and so was my teacher).  We took a group picture and Adam Josh and I went to go to a cake place to pick up a cake that Josh had ordered for getting scholarships. When got to the shop, we looked at the cake.  It was originally supposed to have a Buddha on it but instead has 4 flowers and said “Congrats on Scholarships” on it.  We asked to add our names on the top and after he finished we proceeded to tip him for a job well done.  He exclaimed “NoooOOOOOOoooo!!!” and tried to give us our money back but we ran from the shop before he could get around the glass fast enough to give it to us.  The cake was pretty delicious and looked pretty good.  The night before I had pulled my mattress into Josh and Adams room and slept in there.  It was a lot warmer than in my room which never gets over 17 degrees Celsius (I believe that is in the 50-60’s). We had some good pillow talk over those two nights and it was a lot of fun, even though I felt bad that Drew slept in our room alone.

This Friday was the last day of class.  I sat through Kouyu class not really paying attention because it was the last day and could not concentrate and when Hanyu came around we took yet another class picture which would end up being around the 5 one we have taken in the past few weeks.  Josh joined our class this time because he had my Hanyu teacher for his Tingli class and we had given her a Christmas card and wanted to see her reaction.  After this picture our teacher said to us that if we had things that we needed to do we could leave.  Amber stopped us right there.  She wanted to give our teacher the gift from us.  We had pitched in some money to print off some pictures from class and our class parties in a photo book and a large picture of our class in a picture frame.  While doing so they also passed some cards for the four of us that were leaving.  The things that they wrote about us were super kind and it made me miss my classmates a lot even though I hadn’t even left yet.  When I looked back up at Yu Laoshi she was crying.  She told us that it had been a long time since she has received a gift like this in a long time and that she was going to miss us all.  She had to turn away from us to wipe her tears from her eyes.  When she turned back around I ran up to give her a hug and a few others followed suit.  I turned to the rest of the class and told them that I wanted a hug from all of them as well and so everyone filed in line for a hug.

At that point Josh and I left the class and headed to the Pearl Market because he, Adam and I were got to make our way to Tianjin that day and I needed to buy pearls for Jordan.  Adam went to buy the tickets while we bargained for pearls.  Jordan sent me $80 to get as many pearls as I could.  I’d say that his is a job well done! We had bargained for nearly an hour when finally she agreed to 4 Excellent quality single strand white necklaces, 1 mid quality single strand pink/purple necklace, 1 good quality triple strand pink/purple necklace, and 4 Good quality bracelets.  I picked out the clasps and they were making the stuff for us right there in front of us.  Adam had come earlier and explained to us that we only had about 45 minutes until we had to be at the train station and they had just started making them.  Explaining our situation, she recruited the help of 4 other people to help finish them and fined making them in 20 minutes leaving us with 25 minutes to go from that station up 2, transfer, and over 1, and transfer to the train station.  We had made it to the train with 5 minutes to spare.  On our way to Tianjin we went.

The train ride was not that bad.  The only bad thing was that even though it said no smoking on the train, people would go into the space between the cars and smoke out there, leaving the door open which would travel inside the car.  This did not make for a very fun ride, but was made better while chatting with the three men that sat across from us.

When we arrived in Tianjin, it felt like it was a lot warmer then Beijing.  This could not be more wrong.  Remember when I said Lee Eun Won’s present to me hadn’t arrived too soon?  Well this was the thing that made me really glad that I had received it.  We walked outside the station and it was much colder than Beijing.  I was only wearing my thin sweatshirt and one thick one so I was not as bundled as I have been and we spent the next three and a half hours outside.  Why were we going to Tianjin in the first place? Adam had heard that there was a CBA (China Basketball Association) in Tianjin and wanted to catch a came before we left.

We got the directions to where it was supposed to be, took an hour bus ride, and looked around a while.  Something fishy was going on when we were asking people.  There was supposed to be a game that day, yet none of the security or employees knew what we were talking about.  We went to McDonalds, to hotels and got on the internet there too look but all of them kept pointing us back to the same building that no one knew what was going on.  Finally we found someone that knew what was going on.  The CBA game had changed venues and was never updated on the internet.  The company that was helping us told us that if we left right then we could make it using the bus.  The unfortunate thing was that Adam scheduled our return for 9:30 which was when the game was supposed to end.  This was a problem because if we made it to the game we would have to leave about an hour into it.  We decided just to try.

After waiting about 20 minutes in the freezing cold, Adam said “Ok 10 more minutes and we are going back to McDonald’s” while Josh said “3 more buses”.  About 2 minute passed and both of them gave up.  Right then the bus that would take us to the game came and Adam froze.  He really wanted to go see that game, and I’m not sure what changed his mind, but we all continued on to McDonald’s and enjoyed a big meal for about what we would have paid in the States.  At this point we just wanted to get home, so we ran for a bus and got there about 8:25pm.  We debated changing our tickets to the bullet train because the last one took us 2 hours to get to Tianjin, so when we had the opportunity to do that we took it and enjoyed a nice quick 30minute ride back to the school.

Adam and I were discussing the trip down there.  He had said that it didn’t go exactly how he expected it to go.

Me: “What do you mean by expected? Define expected.”

Adam: “Well we didn’t get to do what we went there to do”

Me: “Well if the purpose of the trip was to have fun, I say we succeeded. Just the path to that fun was changed.”

Adam: “Yeah your right, that was fun.”

I didn’t care whether we saw that game or not,. I was just happy to be spending time with my friends, but I knew that Adam really wanted to so I went along with everything because I don’t like other people being disappointed. I honestly went because of the fun that I knew I was going to have.  I always do with the two of them and I knew that it would not be any different.  When we arrived in Beijing and back to our school, we arrived only 15 minutes after we would have been leaving Tianjin originally.  It was just enough time to finish packing and to get a little bit of sleep.  It was definitely one of the highlights of my trip and I would not change it for the world.

Lets get the Party Started

This past Saturday we had two parties.  One of them was Solange’s birthday party and the other was the wards Christmas Party.  For Solange’s birthday we went to the Lama Temple.  This temple is a Tibetan Buddhist Temple and it is not only a worshiping place, but it has been open up to the public as a tourist site.  In the Lama Temple there is a Statue of a Buddha that is 18m tall above ground and 8m below.  It is a very tall statue and it amazes me that it is made out of a single tree. 

As we were looking around there were two main things that we discussed.  The first conversation was about the religious accessories in the shop.  Everything was over 300kuai and most things were not much less than 1000kuai.  I was looking at a bracelet made out of Beeswax that was 3000kuai.  I questioned how could anyone spend 3000kuai (about $500) on a bracelet, and Seth asked back “How much did your mission cost?” I had never thought about this, but it makes sense. “You cannot put a price on religious devotion”.  The second one was when we noticed that people were worshiping and we were standing there take pictures.  This is what our Temples would be like if we allowed people inside.  They would become tourist traps and the sacred aspect of our Temples would be defiled. 

When we were finished looking around at the Lama Temple we went over the President our Branch and we made omelets and ate birthday cake. The cake only cost 60kuai (about $10) and was custom decorated by a cake store for Solange (When Adam, Josh and I got our scholarships we bought a cake that had “Congrats on Scholarships” with our names around the edge of the cake).  Cake in china is very strange.  Most of the have little jellies in them, the kind that you would see in Bubble Tea.  It tastes good but the texture is a little weird. Solange really appreciated that we decided to celebrate her birthday but she did not know that we had bought her a cake.  I think it was a nice surprise for her.

After we cleaned up Josh, Adam and I went out and played some basketball.  It was a lot of fun.  I have never really enjoyed playing basketball all that much because I have never really felt that good at it.  However, playing with Josh and Adam I feel a little better about my basketball skills.  Not saying that they are horrible at basketball but neither of them are super stars at it, though both of them can hit those free throws pretty well. We had played the game 21 and in the game you can ally hoop the ball and it makes the other players return back to 0 if they are below 13 and back to 13 if they are above 13.  I apparently am pretty good at this, but that is about it.  Each of us won a game and at that point we decided to stop playing and get to the Christmas party.

The Christmas Party was just like any other Christmas party.  There was food and singing and performances.  Abby had performed a piece that combines Silent Night and I believe God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen that was very good.  I was in the choir and we performed a Blues Christmas song that was not the greatest and then Carol of the bells.  That song is not that hard with the exception for the men’s part at the end.  Everything went pretty well other than that part. We had Honey Ham, mash potatoes, salad, various desserts, and lots of other things, which was all very delicious.  It definitely was a great night even though it was this night that I had exhausted all of my funds.  I was not too worried about it but I still had a week left.

On Wednesday this week we also had a class Christmas party.  It was at the restaurant that we had eaten at before with Brother Galer and with the class.  The food was still just as good.  At the restaurant we had our Secret Santa gift exchange, I had Che Zhan He (this is the quiet Koreans name in Chinese) and I bought his one of those basketball hoops that you hang on the wall.  He said he liked his gift, which I am glad about since I had no idea what to get him that was under our 30kuai cap. Lee Eun Won had me and bought me an 8 foot by 18 inch scarf.  It is massive, but it is so very warm, and could not have come any sooner.  The weather here in Beijing has become progressively colder and wearing 2 sweatshirts is almost not cutting it.    Fortunately I don’t have too many days left here so I just need to endure the last little bit and then I’ll be able to have a nice warm jacket and gloves.  I sang Silent Night for my class because they like to hear me sing and then Alessandro wanted me to sing Come What May from Moulin Rouge.  Everyone really liked it especially my teachers.  It was a good night but really I wanted to get going because I didn’t want Emily to leave by herself and I also didn’t want to be out too late, especially since I was supposed to have a movie night with Josh and Adam. It has been a lot of fun spending time with my classmates and friends, and I’m glad that I have the opportunity to do so.

The Blessing of Friendship

During this trip there have been two guys that I hang out pretty much all the time.  They are Adam and Josh.  Josh was in my class back at BYU-I when I as there in the winter but we never really talked all that much and Adam I had never met before.  The first time I really spent any time with these two was when we had gone to the Great Wall and we were making our way down the Alpine Slide.  I had felt out of place with Adam, Josh, Brett and Abby while we were there and actually thought that they found me a little annoying.  Since I thought that they didn’t really like me that much I didn’t spend much time with after that, until Adam started talk to me a little while later in the semester.  At this point things changed.  I wasn’t spending much time with Brandon since we weren’t in the same class anymore so I had to find people to hang out with.  Adam had started inviting me to do thing with them and since I enjoyed spending time with them, we became friends.  These two have been my best friends here.  We have been to a lot of places with each other but the ones this blog is about are the ones that it was just the 3 of us (or in the case with one with Solange).

圆明园 (Yuán Míng Yuán)

圆明园is the Imperial Gardens.  When we got there we attempted to use our student passport to get a cheaper price but they wouldn’t let us.  Adam got a little rowdy with them and made them really mad when he said “it’s because we are white that you aren’t taking our student passport isn’t it”.  We saw some students from a different university to buy the tickets for us and explained to them that they would let us have the student price because we were white (when really it was because we were foreign students) and they were nice enough to do that for us. At these gardens there are ruins far into the park of a large fountain that was built for one of the emperors.  To get to the ruins we walked for a little while enjoying the scenery, climbing through paths on the hills that many people seemed not to acknowledge.  The scenery was beautiful from atop those hills and it was actually rather sad that those people around us did not have a desire to climb up and see this fantastic view.  

When we climbed down from the hill we found a tourist cart that looked like the stretch limo version of a golf cart and took that all the way to the ruins.  Adam and I sat up front with the driver and chatted with him about his family.  Towards the end of the ride we saw a group of older people wearing funny pink hats.  The driver had let Adam honk the horn earlier and so he asked if he could honk at them and he said yes.  That driver was a very nice man. Those ruins were amazing.  I know that ruins just broken down architecture, but I really like seeing ruins and imagining them in their former glory.  While at these ruins we did jumping pictures where we took pictures of us looking like we are jumping above whatever we went to see. I was fun to watch Adam and Josh do it, but most of all Solange.  It was cute to see her jump because it was her first time ever doing something like that. It was a very beautiful place and even more so because I love fall.

Forbidden City

The Forbidden City is where the Emperor and Empress would live along with their servants.  This place is pretty big to say the least.  We had borrowed Lauren’s iPod which had a virtual tour of the City on there so we could learn a little bit more about what we were looking at.  Without it we would have just seen a couple of thrones and living quarters and not known what they were for. Seriously though, the Emperor would have his living quarters in the back of the City, have a thrown halfway to the front gate where he could rest, and then one at the front of the gate as well.  The Forbidden City reminded me a lot of the scene in Mulan towards the end where the Emperor was recognizing the army for defeating the Huns. The only difference is that there isn’t a large staircase leading up to where the Emperor spoke. 

Overall it’s a really nice place to visit… once. I mean if I came back again with someone I would go see it again, but it is definitely a one-time per trip type of deal.  We had found this box type thing inside that had the character for happiness of each side.  Im not sure if it said this or not, but we got the impression that if we were to rub the box that we would have good luck in our dating and joked around saying that we would be married within the next year.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  It would have be pretty fast moving that is for sure.  When we got to the back of the City a woman started talking to us.  She was an art student that wanted to sell us painting.  She took us in a small room to show us the paintings for sale.  They were all very beautiful with the exception of a few awkward pictures that were not that appropriate.  I felt pretty uncomfortable and im pretty sure Josh and Adam did as well with those paintings so we explained to her that we didn’t have any money and that wanted to leave. One the way out we were able to get a picture with a Chinese soldier.  Normally we are not able to do this but we think this man was off duty with some friends or family and so he was willing to snap a few photos with us.  There was also a group of Soldiers that were going through training.  It was kind of cool to see them run around the square in unison.  

After we watch this for a little while we decided to go over to Tian’anmen Square again and look around a little bit but we got stopped on the way over there by a woman that spoke fairly good English.  She started out talking to us about American and good schools over there, what we were doing in China, just small talk.  Once we said we wanted to get going she had asked us if we wanted to get something to drink real quick.  Adam and Josh saw straight through this, and I was not too far behind.  Brother Galer had warned us about the Tea scams at the beginning of the trip.  They send out people who can speak English well and convince people to go get tea.  At the tea shop, which they work for, the employees bring “samples” of tea that are not actually samples.  Each one costs a lot of money for a small cup of tea.  After everything is said and done the person somehow defaults the bill to the tourist, who then ends up shelling out 1000’s worth of kuai on this tea.  Since we were warned about this we knew what was going on and offered if she wanted to exchange emails to practice her English but she said she was not interested in that, proving what she was doing.  After leaving we went over to the Square and looked around for a little while and then made our way over the Beijing Communist Government building. We were looking at it from the outside and we wondered if we could go inside.  The soldier that we asked said that we could be not today because the party was in session. So we decided to come back another day.

Communist Government Building

Mao's Mausoleum 

Early on a Saturday we went back to Tian’anmen Square.  This time we would go inside the mausoleum to see the body of Mao Ze Deng.  When we got in line they said that we would not be able to take a bag inside. This was a problem because Josh had his bag with him.  Trying to be sneaky he hid it under his jacket and we proceeded. Unfortunately there was a security check before we could go in and they told us that we could not take in any cameras or the bag that Josh had to take out of his coat. So leaving our stuff with Adam while we viewed Mao’s body, we continued inside.  They kept us moving, so we didn’t spend a lot of time inside, however Mao did not look real at all.  He looked like a wax figure in the glass casket inside a glass box.  According to Isaac there are two Mao’s, one is the real one and one is the fake one.  I don’t know why they would have two of them other than maybe someone would want to steal his but I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would want to steal a dead body. After we met back up with Adam and he had his turn seeing Mao we went over to the government building.  This building was pretty nice inside.  There were plenty of places that we could not go, but that didn’t stop us.  We had talked to some of the workers and convinced them to let us take pictures behind signs, in rooms that people were technically not allowed in.  One of these rooms was the room where most of the conferences happen.  We got away with a lot of things in there.  The building had a lot of rooms that were for some of the other cities such as Shanghai and Sichuan.  They were beautiful rooms and found out that they were used for meetings.  It was very interesting to see the inside of the government building and see where all of China’s policies are made.  Unfortunately I had deleted all my pictures from there before putting them on my facebook or computer so I don’t acutally pictures of me there but I got Josh’s pictures and I always will have this blog and memories.

To be honest I am very grateful for Adam and Josh.  Without them I would have had a very tough time being here.  I would be a lot more homesick and I don’t think I would ever have seen a lot of this stuff on my own.  I know that my experience being in China would be completely different if I didn’t get to know them and im pretty sure it would not have been as enjoyable.  I am really going to miss them when I return home, but itll be great to meet back up during the summer.  They have become two of my best friends.

Of the lost fold

China has not been the most open about religion over the past few decades with the Communist party.  In fact, when the Communist party came to power, religion was stamped out of the heart of the people. Eventually the government has allowed religious freedom, but Christianity has struggled to regain its place among these people because of the limited permission from the government on religious activity and absolutely no proselyting among the Chinese nationals.  Throughout my study of Chinese I have come across a few instances where I can see the Christian influence show through.  The two instances that I am going to focus on are within the written language.

In the MTC we were chatting about the influence of Christianity on the Chinese people.  This point was illustrated through the character 船(Chuán, boat). Each character is a combination of radicals (a selection of 214 characters) that give meaning to the word.  In the case of 船there are 3 of these characters that made up this word.  The first gives meaning to the word, 舟 (zhōu) meaning boat by itself.  They could have stopped at this point but they kept adding to it.  Now the second character, I have recently questioned on which character it really is, but the character that we heard it was is 八 (bā) apparently is sometimes written like it is in 船 , which means 8.  The last part is 口 (kōu), which means mouth and is also a measure word for people. Now knowing all of these parts of the character, what does this sound like? To be specific, what even in the bible does this character seem to stem from?  Were there not 8 people on the ark that Noah built? This is just one instance that I have seen. 

The second influence that I have seen I discovered while I was here in China.  It is the character 基 (jī). I discovered this as I was studying my vocabulary for the chapter.  I was looking through the word 基础(jīchū) stood out to me.  基础means foundation, base, or basis.  This caught my attention because it is the same 基that is in 耶稣基督(yēsū jīdū) meaning Jesus Christ.  Now this struck my interest because we say that Jesus Christ is the foundation on which Christianity is built upon, so I looked up what 基meant by itself and it is the same, foundation.  Seeing this I looked up what the rest of 耶稣基督 meant.  耶is a character used in 耶和华 (yēhéhuà) meaning Jehova or the Old testament God. 稣has the same meaning as 苏 (sū) which can mean revive, to come back to life.  As we know Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected, or brought back to life.  督 means superintend, direct, which as we also know that the only way to return back to our Heavenly Father is through Christ.  So Jesus Christ in Chinese looking at the different individual characters is the Jehovah, brought back to life, who is the foundation, and direct (was back to Heavenly Father).   Now I know that I find this because I was looking for it, but even so, this is a testament to me that China was once a very religious society and has a large Christian basis to it.

My hope for the people of China is that eventually they will turn back to their religious roots and accept the Gospel of Christ.  Having taught these people on my mission it would make me happy to see China be open to missionary work and to be able to attend church with the people I love.  In due time it will happen, but hopefully it will happen within my lifetime.

National Week

The first week of October is National Week.  This is like their fourth version of 4^th of July except students do not have to go to school and some businesses shut down for the entire week.  In my personal opinion, this week came a little too soon in the semester but it was a very nice break either way.

The first day of our break woke up and tried to go to Long Qing gorge.  This didn’t end up going through because the line was so long that we decided to just do something else.  Instead we went and ate at the Crow’s Nest for the first time (See explanation in “By small and little things…”).  After this we did a little shopping where I got my traditional Chinese outfit (later on I would complete the outfit with some traditional shoes from Ho Hai where I also bought my Chinese Lanterns) and some t-shirts.

We had decided to make the trip to the gorge on Monday, so we woke up early and sat in line for the bus that would take us to the Gorge.  The line only took us about 45 minutes to get through, but the bus ride took us nearly 3 hours to get to the gorge.  One thing about National Week is that since most people have the week off, they like to travel back home or go see some other part of China.  This makes driving nearly impossible and definitely makes it extremely slow.  When we finally reached the bus stop where we were to get off (we had no idea which one it was when we first got on the bus but found out by asking some students), we negotiated some taxi drivers to take us over to the gorge, in which we took another taxi to the front gate.  After buying our tickets we went inside and took the boat to get into the gorge itself.  The gorge is beautiful.  The river that runs inside winds back and forth like a serpent and the walls are massively tall with the occasional few faded characters painted up their faces in red.  Im not sure what they say but it was pretty high up and they were pretty large, which makes me wonder who painted them, why, how long ago were they painted, what was their significance, and of course what they meant.

In the gorge there is a bungee jumping platform.  It is not too high but it is still over a 100ft at least.  I have always wanted to go bungee jumping.  I don’t know why, I just have always wanted to try it.  It seems kind of frightening to hurl yourself off a bridge and let yourself fall face first towards the ground.  As we made around the last bend, out popped the bridge.  We watched people fall off from the river below and at this point I was getting really excited.  I would finally get to bungee jump, something I never thought I would do, especially not in China.

After being let off the boat, our group made its way up to the bridge.  Some of our friends had made it before we did and we watched as they took their jumps.  At this point I was really, really excited.  I gave my stuff and camera to Jessica who wasn’t able to jump for medical reasons and got my ticket to jump.  It cost me only 150kuai ($25) and I didn’t have to sign any forms.  I just read a sign explaining the rules, and responsibility of each jumper, got weighed and from there I was walking up the stairs to the bridge to wait in line behind everyone else.

As soon as I hit that bridge I was suddenly starting to get nervous.  I was thinking to myself, im really doing this, ive never thrown myself off anything higher than 15 feet, and on top of it having my feet strapped to a rope at the ankles.  However, when I sat down and was getting strapped in (the straps were just Velcro ankle braces that wrapped around a few time) I was super pumped that I was about to jump.  I told the man that I want to jump myself and he said ok.  When I got on the platform however, that excitement changed.  I stood there looking down thinking to myself “What am I doing??? I don’t want to do this anymore!!” and it was at this point that the man told me to raise my arms as if I was doing a dive (“NO, I don’t want to raise my arms! You can’t make… me… do it! Ok fine”).  I stood there for a few seconds looking down at the river below, and I felt a sharp nudge on my back from the man intended to send me off the platform.  Well that set my upper body forward in motion so as I leaned into it with my lower body and as soon as I became parallel with the bridge I jumped off like a swimmer.  It was a pretty good dive actually, but boy was it freaky. 

The wind rushing in your face created a vortex that blocked out any sound outside of it.  Im not going to lie, I screamed as I was falling, but as soon as I hit the bottom and was shooting back up towards the sky, my screams of fear turned in laughter and screams of enjoyment.  After a while the straps, that I previously had been concerned about coming off, were digging so hard into my ankles that it was starting to hurt (I actually was cut and bruised by them for about a week after the jump) and was happy when the boat below came with its stick to guide me into the boat to sit while they took them off.  After everyone had jumped, we explored for a few minutes, got something to eat and it was back to the bus to get back to Beijing.  It was a fantastic day and it was not over yet.  When we arrived in Beijing, Jessica and I took a taxi to San Li Tun for Kieran’s Birthday (See “By small and little things…” for explanation).

Later that week we decided to go to an Acrobat performance.  I thought it was going to be like gymnastics but, no, it was not.  It was really interesting actually and im amazed at all the things that these people could do.  There was a man that balanced himself up on chairs, hanging off and supporting himself with only an arm or hanging half of his body off the chair, which looked extremely unstable.  Later a woman spun cloths and umbrellas on her feet and at one point was juggling them.  Another man and woman were doing balancing tricks and the most impressive one was when she was standing on his head with one foot and the other one was up in the air. 5 women later would contort their bodies on top of each other doing back bends and then using their mouths to support their bodies on a post while do a back bend in the air.  A few men did some tricks through hoops, the hoops were stacked 5 high too!  It was amazing.  The final one was a motorcycle cage.  They had kept adding motorcycles until they got to 5 and they were circling and doing patterns in there.  I had never seen this before so to me this was a really cool act.

For the rest of the break I did some shopping and relaxing.  It was a great break and although I wish it was a little later in the semester, im glad that it was where it was because if it had been later it would have been it might have been too late to bungee jump

Sweeney's shop below the bridge

So I mentioned this in my class blogs but i didnt say all that I wanted to say about this in there. A little bit of this will be close to what i said in there but there will be a lot more detail added to it.


A few weeks ago Josh and Adam had gotten their faces shaved by a man underneath a bridge not to far away from the school.  Thy had complained how much it hurt and that it was one of the worst decisions they have made on this study.  Ever since i hear about Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street and saw the movie, i have wanted to learn how to shave with a straight razor.  When i heard about Adam and Josh getting their faces shaved by someone else, i thought "well that could be interesting, but if they said it hurt i dont really want to do it".  One day after we were returning from one of our adventures out and about, we got on the subject of shaving.  Since it had been about 3 weeks since i had last shaved, i decided it was about time i did.  Adam and Josh tried to convince me to go get my face shaved by the man under the bridge saying it was just one of those experiences that you just had to do.  Are you crazy?  If its going to hurt, why would i do it?  Why would i pay money for someone to shave off the top layer of my skin as Josh had put it.  Well, thats where they got me.  I had said that if they paid for it, i would get my face shaved by the man under the bridge.  They jumped on that as quickly as i said it, and jokes about paying the man more money for shaving my face ensued.


That following Monday we took bikes over to the bridge where the man works and i sat myself down.  I was a little nervous looking at them with huge smiles on their faces and chuckling a little bit at what i was about to experience.  The man started lathering my face with who knows what and then started to slap his blade on a leather belt to sharpen it.  It was now time for him to start the shave, and with the first scratch, my eyes flared with pain. Both Adam and Josh laughed when they saw my eyes bulge which made me start to laugh.  The man yelled at me to stop smiling and chuckling because he could not shave my face while doing so and he didnt want to cut me.  Well that didnt really help much.  He had cut me a few time before he was done, but a few nicks is better than a full on Sweeney Todd death slice that i was afraid of the entire time he was shaving my neck.  The shave was painful i will give them that, but it wasnt as bad as they had explained to me (i will admit that the very beginning and upper lip were painful enough to make me tear a little). They had said that their skin felt so raw afterwards, and i didnt really feel anything until the next day.  When the man had finished shaving my face, he wanted to be thorough and was making sure he got every hair. While he was doing this he went up on my forehead.  I had no idea what he was doing up there but i was thinking to myself "Why is he trying to cut hair on my forehead? There's nothing there and if he gets close to my hair line, he better back off, I dont need any hair to be removed from there!"


I will agree with them, it was a very painful experience and I'm glad that they were able convince me to do it.  I guess the next best thing to learning how to use a straight razor is having someone shave you using one.  Im not sure if this is what it feels like to shave yourself with one, but one thing i do know is if it is how it feels, im not sure i want to learn how now.