China Mojo!

For my trip to China I kept a small journal about the activities and adventures I had while I was abroad.

Day 1: I woke up at 2:25am to shower and get ready to head to the Burlington airport. I left my home in Shelburne, VT at 3:30am and arrived at the Burlington International Airport at 4am.

It took us about an hour and a half to check in and get through security. Once we got to our gate our flight was already boarding. During the 1hour flight to Newark, New Jersey I slept. During our 4 hour layover in Newark, I slept on the floor in the airport. We then got our passports and visas checked and we boarded our 13hour flight to Beijing! I was able to watch a lot of movies on the flight. I watched The Kings Speech as well as Unstoppable and Tangled. I tried to sleep as much as I could on the flight as well. I hadn’t prepared myself for how long the flight was. It felt like eternity! The flight attendants fed us 3 meals as well as two snacks and a lot of drinks. The meals were really gross and I hardly ate them.
13 hours later we arrived in Beijing, China! All of us were so excited to be able to get off the plane! We picked up our luggage and went to customs. I ended up going through extra security because I had gotten a small ketchup bottle in Newark. It was about 5pm in Beijing which is 4am U.S time, so all of us were really tried from all the travel. We still had a two hour flight to Wuhan. At 8:30pm we arrived in Wuhan, China. We were met by Steve Wilmarth an American Professor teaching English in a Chinese high school. Once we got all our luggage we boarded a bus for an hour drive to our hotel in Wuhan. We checked into our hotel dropped our stuff off in our room and explored the city of Wuhan! I don’t think it really hit me that we were in China. It kind of felt just like exploring New York city except no one spoke your language. At about 11pm we returned to our hotel and went to bed. It was freezing since many places in Wuhan have no heat. It didn’t even matter, with the time change and all the travel I hadn’t slept in like 48 hours!

Day 2: We left the hotel Sunday morning at about 9am and went to a small local market for breakfast. That’s when it really hit me…I was in CHINA! Breakfast was crazy. I didn’t know how to order or pay. I just pointed to something that another customer was eating because I thought it looked good. The women wrote a number on a calculator for how much I owed her. Chinese people eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here we have certain foods we associate with breakfast but in China that isn’t the case. During this breakfast stop many students bought dinner foods which all of us shared, so I was able to try a bunch of different things. I usually didn’t ask what I was eating because I wanted to keep an open mind and try everything. Which I did! Shocking I know. I can be such a picky eater. We did so much on the first day. We visited a temple with 500 Buddha’s. I found my Buddha. You found the Buddha you liked the most and then you counted your age (21) Buddha’s to the right. I got two different interpretations of what my Buddha was. One girl told me my Buddha meant I got along well with others and another told me that it meant I was very knowledgeable. I don’t know which is true. We also visited the Yangtze River and went out to lunch were we saw our 1st squatty potty!
We then went to the high school where Mr. Wilmarth was teaching a first year class. We were split up into pairs me and Sarah met our host Kathy who was a 16 year old student at this high school. We had a lot in common. We talked about the Twilight serious, Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, and Gossip girl. She was interested in what my life was like the United States. She plans on attending an American University after high school. She spoke English a lot better than I was expecting. She lived in an apartment building on the 3rd floor and her father was there to help us with our luggage. When we arrived to her unit her grandpa and grandma smiled and greeted us. They gave us slippers to wear and showed us there home. We had an interesting dinner with them. I wasn’t sure what anything was but I tried everything. After dinner it was already 9 o’clock and we went to bed. The next morning I showered and sat down for breakfast. We had toast with blueberry jelly, dumplings and Coffee! I was so excited to have a cup of coffee I hadn’t seen it available anywhere we had been. We visited the high school and met with Kathy’s classmates. We had to stand in front of 4000 students for their morning flag ceremony. After that we got a tour of the school and had a private lunch on campus. We also went to a local college and got to sit in on a basic Chinese class. A boy in the back of the classroom was from Georgia and was so excited to have us visiting. We got a tour of the college and had another private dinner on campus. I felt like all we did was eat, and every meal was like 10 different dishes! After dinner our host families picked us up and brought us home. I taught Kathy how to play go fish. She taught us a game as well that I didn’t understand, but the grandpa helped me win!

Day 3: We woke up our last morning at our host families and I was excited to have my toast with jelly and a cup of coffee. We said goodbye to the grandparents and father and Kathy’s mom drove us back to the high school to meet up with the rest of our class. We had a 5 hour bus ride Hubei province. We stopped along the way to use the restrooms and buy snacks. We played catch phrase for a good 2 hours on the bus. Our first big stop was for lunch at this cave restaurant overlooking a beautiful river. I have a lot of amazing photos. We stopped and bought gifts from little street vendors. We went on a hike through a cave and did some ropes courses. So far this was my favorite part of the trip. After the hike we went on small river boats and got a little 10 minute tour of the river. After all of this we ate dinner at a restaurant that very pretty close. I bought Clementine’s from a local on the street. Tonight we boarded our cruise on the Yangtze River. The boat was nothing like what I was expecting. I had been on Royal Caribbean cruise ship and this was nothing like that. It had 4 floors, a rooftop with chairs and a small dining room where everyone crammed in for our meals. Our teacher said that it would be alright for us to have a couple drinks while on the cruise so everyone bought liquor at this little store on the boat. I bought rice wine which is 57% liquor and was gross. I had about two sips and poured it out. Our class played a drinking game called Kings on the top of the ship and all the Chinese people were staring at us wondering what we were playing. I was so tired from all the activities that day that I ended up going to be around 9:30. A Chinese announcement came on at about 10pm and Sarah and I just ignored it because we couldn’t understand what it was saying.

Day 4: Sarah and I were woken up at 6am by really loud music playing in the hallway and we didn’t know what it was. Then Abbie another girl in our class came and told us that the announcement they had made the night before was informing us that music would play as a wakeup call for breakfast. So Sarah and I woke up and got ready to have breakfast at 6:30am. We got off the boat and saw the White emperor City and climbed up 363 stairs. Our tour guide wasn’t sure how many steps it was so my teacher and I counted. We also got an amazing boat ride from some locals that were displaced during the three gorges dam project. It was an amazing view and I bought our class photo on the boat.

Day 5: We woke up and got off the cruise ship and boarded our bus to head back to Wuhan. It was a 5 hour bus ride and we met up with Steve Wilmarth one last time for lunch. We got to do some shopping. Ana and I went off to find ice cream and were only able to find some little prepackaged Haagen dazs cones. We went to the airport and had a 2 hour wait for our flight to Beijing, and then another 2 hour flight to Beijing. I slept the whole flight. When we landed in Beijing it was 11pm and we took taxis to our hotel. We finally arrived at our hotel at about midnight and all of us decided to go to bed.

Day 6: Sarah and I woke up at 5:30am because we had to leave our hotel by 6:30 to go to Williams Wild Wall Tour. It was a 2 hour bus ride from our hotel to Williams Wild Wall Tour. We arrived at about 9:30am and had some breakfast and tea. It was about a 2 hour hike up to the great wall. It was the hardest hike I had ever gone on, but the views were absolutely amazing! We went to a part of the great wall the many tourists never see. At one point we had to crawl up the wall because it was so steep we couldn’t stand up right. This was the most amazing experience I could have had on this trip. It was by far my favorite part of my trip and has officially made my list of top 5 achievements! It was about another 2 hour hike down, we didn’t take the same trail on the way up because it was kind of icy and snowy. Once we got back we had delicious dumplings for lunch. We got back on the bus for a 2 hour ride back to our hotel. Some student showered and changed and went out to the bars but myself and a couple of girls just went shopping at the local stores around our hotel. On our way we stopped in on the cat lounge where some of the other students from our class were hanging out. I ordered a blue Hawaii martini and hung out for a little while. Sarah and I went back to our hotel after our drinks and went to bed.

Day 7: On the last day of our trip we were finally able to sleep in! Sarah and I woke up around 9am and had to be in the lobby by 10am. It took us about an hour to walk to the Forbidden City. By the time we got there our feet were already sore and tired. We walked around the Forbidden City. I wasn’t very interesting in it. All the buildings look the same to me and we didn’t have a tour guide so I couldn’t really learn anything about the different rooms since it was in Chinese. We figured out how to cross the street. Since the streets are like 10 lanes wide you need to go into underground tunnels to cross the street. We had to go through security before we could get into Tiananmen Square. It wasn’t really what I had imagined; it was basically just a huge open area with a cement floor. We walked through Tiananmen and across the way was the Pearl Street Market where there was a bunch of shopping. We went into backstreet and got to bargain with locals. I bought a scarf, chopsticks, 2 scroll paintings, a makeup/coin purse, bracelets and coasters for my parents. I was really happy with all my purchases. I had been waiting to go shopping all week. Sarah and I left the Pearl St. Market at 6pm and it was starting to get dark out. We made it out to the street and I put my arm up trying to catch a taxi like you do in NYC. Well everyone just waved to me and ignored me. I had no idea how to get a cab. I tried asking people on the street how to get back to our hotel or to get a taxi and no one spoke English. It was already 7pm, dark out and Sarah and I were completely lost in Beijing! Someone came up to us and asked if we were looking for taxis and told us that they have designated spots where they stop to pick up people so Sarah and I stood and waited there. Eventually a cab pulled over and we just jumped in. We handed him our hotel card. He got lost bringing up back because our street was a one way and he had come from the wrong direction. We were kind of nervous getting out of his taxi and walking down this alley way because we weren’t sure if this was in fact where our hotel was. But eventually we saw the sign for the green tree inn and we were so excited we had finally made it back! Once we had made it back to the hotel we just decided to stay in for the night. I repacked my suitcase and organized my things to be ready to leave the next day. Even though I had an amazing time in China I was excited to go home and eat regular food and talk with people outside of our class.

Day8: Sarah and I woke up a little early and went shopping bought UGGS for $40 US dollars and spent the morning in Beijing. We then left our hotel and noon to head to the airport. Our Flight left Beijing at 4pm and was 13hours. It didn’t feel as long the second time because I never check my clock or paid attention to how long we had been in the air. We arrived in Newark at about 5pm which was weird because 13 hours had passed but with the time change it was the same time. We left Newark and arrive in Burlington, Vermont. I was excited to see my parents and I wanted to tell them all about my trip but it was already 11pm and I was really tried. So they brought me back to my apartment and I tried to fall asleep.

Multimedia Plan

Questions to answer:

1. Which media environments and technologies/applications/platforms will I use in documenting and telling the story of my China trip?

I plan on documenting my trip those digital photos as well as keeping a journal of my experiences. I know I will be taking many photos every day while in China. I will also plan to write in my journal each night.

2. What equipment/gear will I need to bring to capture my stories?

I will be bringing my Digital Camera. I will wait until we get back to upload and share my photos on the web.

3. How will I capture and "bottle" my stories while traveling in China?

I will capture my photos on the digital camera I listed above. I plan to create a flickr account that can be accessed through my personal blog. I also really liked the idea of creating a personal scrapbook with the photos I take.

4. Please provide a "sample example" of your multimedia approach here.

China

Before starting this semester I really didn’t know much about China. I knew almost everything in my life had a ‘made in china’ label, and that Chinese food was one of my favorite foods. I think I have misperceptions of china, from photos I’ve seen and things I’ve heard it seems like a really unsanitary place. This whole issue of bathrooms is grossing me out. I’m shocked that such a developing and populated city such as Beijing hasn’t figured out how to install restrooms with running water and sewage. The things I have learned about China have been from my professors as well as the internet.

Reading the article about Chinese mothers being superior also makes me think that Chinese people feel as though they were raised better and will look down upon me as an American when I am in China. I feel like I will stick out like a sore thumb being such a tall girl, with incredibly blonde hair and blue eyes. I wonder what it feels like to be the minority. I don’t think I’ve ever been stared at for looking different, because here I am no different. At the same time I think myself and Chinese girls have a lot in common. Maybe our looks and educational background will be different. We may have not been raised the same or have the same cultural values and morals. We do however love clothes, boy bands, and hello kitty merchandise.



I would really love to learn more about Chinese culture. I want to be as prepared as I can before I’m completely immersed into this other culture. I think it will be shocking and overwhelming at first. But I think that’s what I’m looking forward to the most. I’ve only been to tropical resorts and cruises, so I’ve never been out of the country where it’s not predominantly Americans.

"Beijing Olympics drummers performance"

About me:

1. Shelburne, Vermont

2.I took alot of family photos over the holidays

3. I like that everything is so easily accessible. You don't need to go very far to get the information that you want.
I don't like the amount of awful reality tv.

4. Event Management. I would love to plan weddings in the future.

Burning Question: What kind of outrageous foods will I have to eat?