Arrival Tour

Sunday, February, 21^st, 2010

Today we went to the Cantonese branch of church in the temple. It was so cool they translated it into English so half the room sang in English and half the room sang in Cantonese. They translator on accident said he was eaten by bees it was hilarious. Then they said great news you can go to the basement! It was hilarious.

The bathroom in the temple housing has a picture of Mickey washing Pluto. It was cute, also Dalmatians.

Later Christina came with Shelby and I to the Festival Walk in the mall. I was excited I really like her. In a way I wish I was alone just for the fact that I can connect to people like I want to. I’m going to continue emailing certain people.

 I decided to hang out with Christine, Kurt, Jimmy, and Marc a little bit. We watched the laser light show off the sky scrapers. It was pretty cool but I couldn’t get my camera working right. Then we rode the Star Ferry two times the first time I saw them pull the boat in and it was cool. I flipped around to tell the boys something and started falling over. I grabbed a guy’s arm. He turned out to be a drunken English guy haha. I almost fell twice then. Before all of this I got whacked hard in the face by Christina. Sorry that was random. She was pretending to hit Jimmy. It hurt.  (Christina and Kurt are brother and sister).

The group I wrote about before decided to take the upper level ferry and Shelby had already bought her ticket for the lower level, so I told her I wanted to go with them. She seemed ticked. I felt so bad. It was so fun though. When we got off I couldn’t find the group even though Shelby said we walked right past them which ticked her off more cause she said we didn’t look but I did. Oh well the ferry was fun and I wish I would have went with them sooner cause they walk slow and enjoy the city. So fun! I even got the on metro and understood it.

It was fun getting to know people.

Monday, February, 22^nd, 2010

Today we got up to catch a bus 29A to the metro station. Where we caught a metro then we had to go through Immigrations and cross the border to mainland China. It was pretty easy. They really only looked at my passport picture once. We got to the hotel where Jacob bargained the price down. It was really. It was all done in Chinese. Then we went to lunch with the branch president (Pres. Lewis) and his wife who is in charge of the Relief Society and their son.

At lunch I really didn’t like the food but they had these yummy donut things (monto?). Then we had lots of training. After that we went down to this market thing and got yummy noodle things. Tons of pool tables were out with guys playing.

We went to the pool tables and heard noise. People were in line dancing so a bunch of us in our group joined drawing more and more attention. It was so fun! Also, Shelby and I didn’t dance. We talked to the kids and the moms kept bringing their kids closer and closer to us. It was so fun!

Tuesday, February, 23^rd, 2010

Today was our training almost the entire day. I bought a pair of shoes for 48 Yuan which is less than $7 (I hardly ever wore them again.) We saw a little girl banging mice in a bucket on the ground, I felt bad. Then Jimmy, Kurt, and Marc ordered frogs for dinner and watched the guy kill them. It was sad. A girl in the store helped out and practiced some English. It was really cool.

We did a crash course in Chinese and it helped. They showed me how to read Pinyin which is the spelling of the characters.

I went to ask Jacob how much a spare key is and had a long (1.5 hour) talk with Sam. Jacob left to tell Gail bye. He is so amazing. I’m super nervous about tomorrow. Sam has been here a semester and gave me advice when I let him talk I shouldn’t have cut him off but I love his advice. He was saying that my Chinese experience is like a bowl of ice cream. There are many different flavors but you never know what your favorite might be if you don’t try them.

Another thing he pointed out I need to be able to see why each person is in my family, there must be a reason. I’ve never looked at it that way before. That was an amazing insight.

There is going to be a lot of free time in China. I decided I want to work on some Chinese and get better at it. We head off to our schools tomorrow so I better go to bed.