Tea Tasting

During the afternoon, we visited the Long Jing Tea plantation in Hangzhou. As a tea obsessive, someone who always likes a nice cup of tea at night, I loved this. Hangzhou is famous for its "Dragon Well" tea, which is the national tea of China. Long Jing tea is made from young leaves on tea plants, giving it a richer flavor that is preserved, along with its natural antioxidants, when the tea is pan-dried immediately after picking. At the plantation, we saw huge slopes of tea bushes climbing up into the mountain on terraces, green hills disappearing into the mist.
We had a tea-tasting session instructed by a man called "Dr. Tea," who taught us all the secrets of green tea as well as its importance to the Chinese. As he spoke, we learned the proper way to receive and drink tea according to ancient Chinese customs. The tea we were drinking was in the form of "loose tea," or tea without a tea-bag. We learned to snub our noses at tea bags, for they destroy all of the natural vitamins and antioxidants within tea. The Chinese do not "drink" a cup of tea, rather, they "eat" a cup of tea, for all of the loose tea leaves are left to swirl about in the cup and can be eaten.

The loose tea was delicious--rich in flavor and especially good for the health, from what I was told. I had never drank tea that way before, but I couldn't wait to bring the custom home to my family, and so I purchased a couple of cans of the Dragon Well tea.

The West Lake

We went for a boat ride that afternoon on the famous West Lake, known as one of the most picturesque lakes in the world. It was absolutely beautiful.





middle (left to right) Melissa, Me, Rishika, Brooke, Tarun, Krishna

Global Citizen's Scavenger Hunt

Over lunch, we had about two hours to separate off into groups of four and embark on a Global Citizen's Scavenger Hunt. The activity was extremely fun and allowed us to test our real world survival skills/limited knowledge of Chinese by interacting with strangers. We each got to stretch our teamwork skills, leadership skills, and street smarts as we raced against the clock to find all the items on our list.

My group was composed of myself, Max, Tarun, and Devika, and here's what we had to find.
Find:
-a restaurant menu (this proved to be the most difficult for our team; for some reason every restaurant we went into had no take-out menu, no matter how many times we mimed and pointed)
-a pair of chopsticks
-something written in English
-a city map
-a Chinese newspaper
-a local bus schedule (involved me going up to a disgrunted bus-driver and asking about a "che zhan." He had no idea what I was saying.)
-a business card
-some foreign currency (not Indian, American, or Chinese
-Chinese candy (we ended up spending 20 yuan on something the judges claimed was "Japanese" candy)
-Chinese loose tea (Devika showed us all the ropes by asking to "smell" a pinch of the tea in a tea store and then simply leaving with it)

Take Photos of the Following:
-A team member in a rickshaw (we stumbled upon this in a moment of chance and it proved our crown jewel with the judges)

-the Chinese characters for bathroom
-a team member with a taxi driver

-Someone doing tai chi

Okay, so maybe he wasn't doing tai chi so much as we found a random stranger on the street to teach tai chi to, but it still counts. Right?

-a Buddha
-Confucius
-An animal
-A team member with a local student

He looks so shocked!

-a bicycle
-Traditional Chinese clothing
-An American company (Pizza Hut)
-A wedding (Okay, this we never found)
-A dragon
-A small red book

Okay, so maybe it's not the small red book of Communism, but close enough, right?

-A passport (not U.S. or Indian) (Never found this one either--who's going to show their passport to a random stranger on the street?)
-A boat
-A sign in English with incorrect grammar

um....?



My team was proud to say that we found everything except the wedding, passport, and foreign currency. However, we didn't win (grrr...) because teams were given bonus points for every additional pair of chopsticks they could find. But it was still tons of fun.

Happy Birthday!

I have to say, my birthday in China (June 22) was one of the most memorable birthdays I've ever had. On that day we all took a one-and-a-half hour drive to the city of Hangzhou, a city regarded as one of the greenest and most beautiful places in China, nestled on the banks of the gorgeous West Lake.

Our first stop in Hangzhou was at an ancient pagoda, where our tour guide explained to us the legend behind it. The story told that there was once a scholar in Hangzhou who fell in love with a beautiful woman who was actually a white snake. For their love, the gods cast the White Snake Lady into a well buried deep beneath the pagoda.

Acrobatics Show

After the Expo we had a delicious Indian dinner where Divyanish taught me the Indian custom of eating with one's hands...by stealing my fork.

We headed to an acrobatics show at the Shanghai Ritz Carlton, and it was absolutely stunning. Some of the stunts were so unbelievable that you had to wonder who was crazy enough to scheme that they were even possible, much less perform them. The video I've posted below doesn't quite capture the excitement, but you can watch a bit of it and see for yourself.

The Infamous World Expo

From the school, we drove directly to the World Expo. It was something I had been truly excited to see because I had heard so much about it. Needless to say, it didn't dissapoint, and I don't really think I understood the true scope of the place until I was inside. The Expo was enormous— each country had huge buildings, beautifully decorated, woven between streets with vendors and restaurants. All of it was so clean and modern and permanent-looking that I had to remind myself that the Expo was only open from spring until fall.


Many of the larger pavilions had huge lines with 2-3 hour waits, and so we only visited the insides of a few of the African countries. However, just walking around and viewing everything from the outside was enough, for the buildings came in every size and form. One was huge and spherical, made entirely of glass; one was decorated with hundreds of snowflakes; one was jungle camouflaged with branch-like rods acting as supports; one had a spiraled, rooftop-road down which bicycles pedaled; one was composed completely out of tiny, fluttering mirrors like a great glittering crystal. The China pavilion was incredible—it overshadowed everything around it; several stories high it blossomed into the air like a bright-red upsides-down pyramid.

The funniest thing at the Expo was that for once, people saw us as the minorities, the strange foreigners. Strangers kept running up to us to take pictures, especially to Max and Tara, the two blondes. They were a new species all together. I was a wild time to run around a place that looked like Epcot x 1,000, taking pictures and seeing all kinds of exotic people and things. I was absolutely awestruck.

School Visit

(top left) Jason, Jennifer, and I with our new friends Xiao and Hhang-jojo
(top right) Jason Rhodes
(bottom) Students presenting a bit of their culture for us foreigners

School Visit June 21st

The school visit was honesty one of the most memorable moments of my life. We were told at the gate that we were supposed to have some sort of “cultural presentation,” which we were previously unaware of, and so we split into our two groups, Indian and American. Us Americans couldn’t really think of anything impromptu that we all knew how to do, and so we settled for teaching the students how to dance the hokey pokey.

It was truly amazing to try and speak to the young students with our bits of broken Chinese. They performed Chinese songs, dance routines, and short skits for us. The school wasn’t crumbling, but neither was it very modern or well equipped with supplies. The classrooms were very stark and bare, with only chalkboards and desks and no air conditioning. However, the students, children of migrant workers, laughed at our silly dance, fed us ripened watermelon rinds, and jumped to take pictures with us. The whole experience felt like the reason we had truly come to China—to share our own education system and discover both differences and similarities in theirs.

More Internet Trouble

Unfortunately, I was unable to connect with this site during the remainder of my trip thanks to a really bad proxy. =( My flight got in at 3 am today and I'm finally home! It was so difficult to say goodbye to everyone; I'd made such great friendships and I already miss all my fellow global citizens.

However, now that I'm home I've got reliable internet access and so I'm going to keep updating my blog for each day, it just won't be real time anymore. I'll be posting pictures, videos, and posts about all the amazing stuff that happened so still stay tuned! Sorry about all the internet trouble!

Temple of the Jade Buddha

The inside of the Temple, decorated with huge golden statues of various gods. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the actual jade Buddha, unfortunately.



A woman offering her prayers at the Temple.

June 20th

Today was packed with activity. We woke up early in the morning and visited the Jade Buddha Temple, housing the largest statue made out of a single piece of jade. The temple felt, looked, and smelled exactly the way China should have been like in my mind—huge oriental arches, smoky-sweet incense, enormous gold statues adorning decorated rooms where monks bowed reverently. Everywhere, Chinese people were knelt in prayer or offering burning torches of incense. Despite the large number of tourists, the temple felt very serene. Max found a penny on the ground which he was able to balance on a wishing well, bringing him the custom of good luck.

Next we visited a silk-making factory, where we toured to see how silk was spun into clothing and sheets from the worms in cocoons. It was incredible to see that one silk worm could provide 1,000 meters of silk!

After the silk factory we took a tour of a beautiful garden tucked away a street market. It started to rain, and the over-congested market felt stifling and dirty. There is a quality to the air, a sort of smog that never goes away, as if the smoke from millions of cigarettes is drifting up into the air and blanketing the city.

Brooke, Jason, and I went off on our own for lunch and discovered how hard it is to order off even a McDonald’s menu when everything is in Chinese. As we sat on a stoop to eat our lunch, we noticed that every single person who passed by stopped to stare at us. It was kind of like being celebrities.

The day became increasingly more amazing when we visited an EF language school in Shanghai. During the presentations made by the Indian group and the Chinese students, I discovered just how different American education is from Indian and Chinese education. I got to meet my penpal, Amy, and talk to her a bit about her school. Her English wasn’t very good, and she was a bit shy, but I was able to deliver my letter/picture to her.



We picked up a quick dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and then headed out to take a boat-tour of Shanghai at night. Shanghai completely transformed when the sun went down, and from the windy deck of the boat we could see all the amazing buildings illuminated. It was absolutely incredible, and I got a lot of amazing pictures.

June 19th: China at Last

The first thing I noticed in sepping off te plane as that the air tasted different- a sort of smokey, humid tang like cities and rivers intertwined. We took a bus to the hotel that aternoon where I dozed in a sort of stupor after getting no sleep at all on the plane. It was there that we met the Indian group and headed out to dinner.

Over some traditional Chinese cuisine, I talked with some of the Indian students about their day-to-day life and how things were sort of different between our two countries. I disovered that while in America we take different courses every year--for example, Geometry, Algebra I, Precalculus--in India, students have a "math" class, which cumulatively builds on their knowledge of all aspects of the subject. Also, squash and cricket, two sports practically nonexistant in the states, are very popular in Inda.

I managed to barter for the first time in Chinese with a street vendor out side, using my new favorite phrase, "Ni shir baba Chunglung-ma?" or, "is Jackie Chan your father?" Needless to say, he was very confused.

As we drove home on the bus, I saw Shanghai transformed. After the sun set, the buildings lit up like Times Square times ten, sparkling with rainbow light and waterfall of color and flashing ads. It was amazing to see, and I'm anticpating the boat-tour we take at night to better see the lights.

I tumbled into bed that night and was asleep within minutes, completely exhausted.

How to survive a fourteen hour plane ride.

June 18-19th: The Plane Ride From Hell.

Thirteen-and-a-half hour plane ride. Phew- what a feat. By the end of it, I wasn't sure if an outside world really existed beyond freeze-dried food and fasten-seat-belt signs. It was pretty amazing, though, to look out the window as we flew over the north pole and see huge iceberg islands looking like splatters of milk spilled across a vast black pavement.

Check out the video to see how bad our cabin fever really was.

Slight Technical Difficulties...

Well readers, here I am in China and you're probably wondering why I haven't updated in couple of days. I got here to the hotel, plugged in my computer, and discovered that Chinese government blocks any social networking sight including Facebook, Youtube, and... wait for it... blogspot.

Fortunately, a Chinese boy at a school we visited gave me a clever way to get around this, so I'm back and posting. I'm going to upload some posts and videos intended for the past few days, but this blog is probably going to be a day behind now.

Go Celtics!

We're all of us sprawled out currently in my hotel room watching the Lakers vs. Celtics game, after meeting up with each other here in Chicago. It was an interesting day, and I got to get to know all of my fellow scholars a little bit.

Here's the line-up:
-Frozan, from Massacusetts (just outside of Boston), a really sweet girl who actually moved her from Afghanistan only six years ago
-Brooke, from Virginia, with her slight southern twang and perky personality
-Max, also from Mass, but a very small town. It was both funny and endearing to watch him gape over Chicago's skyscrapers and highrises.
-Erika, from southern Texas, almost Mexico, a bit of an insomniac from what I've heard
-Roshika, from Califonia, our one die-hard Lakers fan watching in sorrow as they lose (hah!)
-Rochelle, from Florida, a self-proclaimed nerd and sweetheart
-Jason, from Hawaii, our six-foot-five giant with a cool sense of humor and an unfortunate knack for getting things spilled on him
-Jennifer, from North Carolina, with her neon green clothes and sunny attitude
-and finally, Melissa from Maryland, who I won't meet until tomorrow when she flies in to Chicago

We're boarding an early flight tomorrow, fifteen hours all the way into Shanghai. Yeesh. Maybe we'll whip out the twister board to pass the time.

Windy City, Here We Come

I'm currently sitting in the airport with Frozan (one of the Global Citizen Scholars), and Elizabeth and Mike, our two group leaders. We're all very excited to board the plane to Chicago an meet with the rest of our group!

Packing

Oh my god only three days left! Here's the itinerary- I've got today to pack, and tomorrow the fam is going to Boston, to stay the night because I've got a 6:45 flight to Chicago (yeesh). So, today i've been getting all my stuff together and trying to get packing, which I'm hopelessly slow at. I've also got this little Flip video camera that I'm going to use to upload videos real-time during the trip. Pretty cool, eh? I'm uploading my first (kind of lame) vid of me packing. =)

Umbrellas...?

So I've been checking out the weather as I've been packing.

It looks like Shanghai is going to be pretty hot and humid- we're talking seventies and eighties. Humidity + my hair = disaster, but thankfully it's not going to be too rainy, just some scattered thunderstorms once in a while. Check it out here.

As for Beijing, it looks like it's going to be much dryer (which means less humidity- yay!) but also much hotter. As in, low nineties. However, sunny every day, so that's plus. Here's a ten day forecast.

Shopping, Packing, and Backpacking

Well readers, I've got just under ten days until my departure- can you believe how time has flown? I've been working on final preparations and packing these past couple of days: I've gone to the bank to order some Chinese currency, gotten a visa card, and done some seriously hard-core shopping for summer clothes (i.e. bought a million and one sun dresses). I don't know how I'm going to fit it all into my suitcase. The little blue EF tours backpack is perfectly sized for carry-ons, though.

I've also been talking a lot with the students I'm going to be traveling with via facebook. It's been great to get to know the American kids, and even more intersing to talk to the Indian students. Who knew cricket was so popular? We're friends already, so I can't imagine how close we'll be by the time we depart for home. Also, the fifteen hour flight is sure to help- people bond through trauma.

Some other news: I've been selected to be filmed in a documentary EF is making of our tour to China! Myself and one of the boys, Jason from Hawaii, will be representing America, along with two of the Indian students. I won't lie, I'm very excited- I've never been followed around by a camera crew before!