Leevi’s Amazing Trip

I feel as if I’m being fattened up, they’re always constantly feeding us and there’s food everywhere. So, my day so far? After going to sleep at 1 AM, we woke up at around 5 AM and ate some porridge thing and bread. Then we went to the marketplace to walk around and shop, there we had our “official” breakfast of wonton and dumplings.

Upon returning home (at, like, 8 AM) my mom talked with people, and we pretty much wandered around going nothing. I sat down to play at the piano for a bit. The piano (especially the high notes) was really out of tune.

The rest of the day so far has consisted of eating a large lunch and tons of fruit before and after lunch. My grandmother’s sister brought over cases and cases of fruit. Now everyone’s napping and I’m listening to music and writing this.

2:20 PM | 1:20 AM in Texas, day of senior graduation

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For dinner we had wine, sparrow and turtle, among other things, afterwards I felt so tired I kept falling asleep and waking myself up by almost falling out of my chair.

Interesting thing about the “house”. One of the closets you open up and… there’s a bathroom inside. Seriously. It was pretty scary when they first told me to go to the bathroom and pointed at the closet door.

June 5th [pt2]

My dinner had beef, shrimp, bok choi, mushrooms, and noodles. On the side was bread, fruit and some weird macaroni thing that I didn’t touch. Airplane food looks surprisingly good, though I think I had a bit too many meals today. Tried futily to go to sleep for hours upon end and watched the end of a couple movies, 101 Dalmations, and American Sweethearts (I think that’s what it’s called).

Central Time: 4:10 AM | China Time: 5:10 PM | 25 hours and 10 minutes so far

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June 6th

Well, here I am, in China. As soon as we stepped out of security we were spoiled. Our Yi Fu and Da Yi (Aunt and Uncle, two of many) were there to greet us… with 2 bouquets of flowers, one for me and one for my brother. The car we were in apparently has a proximity alert that you can activate that beeps faster when you back our and get closer to a car. I can see uses for that in America. The first time he put it on though, it sounded to me like a bomb was going to go off xD.

We drove for quite a few hours until finally, at 9:30 [PM], we reached my grandma’s house. We were greeted with happiness (and a pink pair of sandals for me to wear in the house). I wandered around, noting the abundance of pictures of me and my brother. We were then served dinner (#2) where they were constantly filling our plates (they fed us a lot, did I mention they had snacks for us in the car riding home?)

Afterwards, my grandma showed us around and gave us weird singing tops that made me think of the pit percussionists [xDD], a fan, a mini umbrella and I swear my grandma just handed me a laptop.

So that’s China so far, it’s 11:54 PM here and I’m not that sleepy, jetlag for sure. We left LA 1:30 PM Thursday and 13 hours later it’s 11:54 PM Friday. Huh.

Reminiscence: Everyone speaks Chinese in China (Der.), which is fine by me, I understand most of it, but my brother’s had issues. Like once he was served soup and continually told it was hot and to drink it slowly, he didn’t understand them, drank the soup and had to run off to the bathroom to cool his tongue. Later, when asked by Ching Ching (our grandma) to show her his teeth, he stuck his tongue out, misunderstanding of course.

Other note: Everyone takes one look at me and exclaims that I’m pretty and have gotten prettier with age, and by comparison my brother has well… not. He was a lot cuter when he was little. It was a bit disconcerting seeing as they were all saying it (without apparently communicating with each other). Is that supposed to be an insult or compliment?

Pictures of me on the wall. Beware the evil littleLeevi glare xD

BORING JOURNAL TIME

There are interesting parts but you have to find them xD.

Watch out 2 things, the pictures I took and random facts/reminiscences.

Thursday June 5th,

Day after we get out of school and we’re leaving for China already. We woke up at 3:00 AM and arrived at the airport before anyone else… seriously. After we walked in other people came in but the exact moment we walked in… the airport was deserted. It was actually really creepy.

After waiting for a while for the Frontier people to show up we checked in, stood there forever while the lady called her manager about a complication and eventually we got our bording passes. We then went to the gate and waited another 30 minutes. During that time I gave my brother a 4×4 rubiks cube to mix up, the took it back and solved it while an old couple nearby stared and talked about me ( D= ). Finally, we got on the place to Denver and the rest of the plane trip was normal, with me trying to go to sleep. Oh and our airplane? Apparently all the Frontier planes have an animal mascot and ours was something the polar bear.

Upon arriving at Denver we had about 30 minutes to go to the bathroom (ever been on a bus for a while? This is the same) and board the next before take off. This time we were headed towards Los Angeles. I watched Jumper throughout the ride and my brother thinks he saw the Grand Canyon.

In Los Angeles we had to leave the airport and come back in through the rigorous security checking again due to the “complications” mentioned earlier. That alone took up more than an hour. We had some time to grab some lunch for on the plane though (sushi) and buy my brother candy, a keychain, a magnet and a clock thing because he threw a mini tantrum (at age 11 Dx).

When we got to the gate they checked out boarding passes then pointed us out to a… bus? We didn’t ride the bus to China, sadly, but instead rode the bus for quite a while to arrive at the end of the airport where our plane was. LAX (Why is X the 3rd initial?) is a gigantic airport, suffice to say.

In the place (it was a lot bigger than the other two) they had all the normal safety announcements… except in Chinese first, then translated into English for the .01% that needed English. And their safety presentation? So much better than the American ones, they had a video of it, complete with examples and animation. The flight attendants were better too and actually acted more lie attendants. It was also a nice experience to have little hot towels given to you to wash your hands. For lunch (did I mention they served us lunch and dinner?), I chose to have fish, which came with rice and bok choi apparently. On the side we had bread (with butter) and for dessert, some strawberry cheesecake block. For dinner… well I haven’t had it yet at time of writing.

Started: 3AM | Now (Central time): 6:00 PM | Now (China time): 7:00 AM… tomorrow | 15 hours traveled so far

Who else thinks I’ll have major jetlag?

Okayso, here I want to ask you, what questions do you have about China? How to people act, what things look like, daily living, ask all those thousand and one questions everyone has about China and I’ll try to answer some (:

Next up I have my journalish entries and stuff and I’ll need some non-boring stuff to lighten up the boring days . Ask away, everybody!

*scribble*

Page 20: Random Thoughts

-I may not get money at Chinese New Year at home but I visit China and get money dumped on me. Huh.

-How do they make Chinese fonts? I know they exist but… really? A new image for every word?

-How a Chinese restaurant works:

1. When you first order, somebody from your party goes to order tons of little and big dishes.
2. They bring a few plates at a time and continue bringing dishes all through the meal
3. Food is cooked and delivered faster than in America
4. They’re always refilling tea/drinks, bringing in new plates and taking out finished plates
5. Food tastes better

Overall I like Chinese restaurants a lot better than American ones.

-Schedule

• Pre-breakfast-Bread or porridge
• Breakfast-Wonton/dumplings or eggs
• Snack-Whatever
• Lunch-Eat out or eat at home, many dishes, resembles dinner
• Snack-Watermelon (I think it was in season, it was everywhere)
• Sleep-Nap time, I sit and enjoy the peace while everyone sleeps
• Dinner-Chicken, Mao Dou, Turtle etc.
• Snack-Soy drink, apples
• Sleep-Nighttime, der

“Oh no, the Chinese are coming D=”

Page 37, China’s Differences

1. The streetlights display the number of seconds left
2. The walk symbol actually moves
3. Everything’s in Chinese (except for English translations in tourist spots)
4. Tissues are rougher
5. Kids are polite
6. Public toilets are lower (i.e. on the ground)
7. Even Police cars drive on the wrong side of the road
8. Customer service is taken to a new level such as
9. People fill up your gas for you at gas stations
10. Long, public roads all have tolls
11. Yellow watermelons
12. Food everywhere
13. They call tea water
14. You drink yogurt
15. Hot water actually takes time to heat up
16. Everything’s “Deluxe” (for breakfast today I had deluxe milk and an exquisite muffin, I mean really? and exquisite muffin? It wasn’t even that great.)
17. Everyone is shorter than me
18. Tons of people, including women, ride motorbikes everywhere.
19. People walk in step (seriously I just saw two people walk by exactly in step) (and again the next day, two boys walked by whose arms were even swinging exactly in sync.
20. Everyone loves to play with my hair scratch that, people in America do that too
21. There’s construction in sight everywhere (expanding infrastructure ftw)
22. Everything is 10 times more efficient
23. Yang Mei (it’s a fruit that’s everywhere in China, yet I’ve never seen in America
24. Most people live in little apartment-like places… except they own them. (you should see the real estate agencies xD)
25. Engrish

Yang Mei

What’s this? A blag made by the amazing Matt-chu of course, for my China trip ^_^. Upcoming you’ll find all sorts of stuff about my experiences in China (boring and not), including mountain climbs, constant rain, lunch at tons of restaurants and driving in China (it’s scary, I tell you). So sit back and, er, wait for me to post stuff. Welcome to my China blag.