The Great Race part Two.

We LOVE to eattt!!! =)

Day Three. Part Two of the Great Race

I'm sleepy. The day was exciting, but yet...Oh, I'm so tired. I'll make this shorter than yesterday's, but at least i'm here, right? *rubs eyelids and cracks fingers to get ready to write*

Ugh. Here I go...

~~~The Scavenger Hunt~~~

At the Bus Station:

Go to Bus Station South

Ask the teller how much a ticket costs to go to TongLi

At the Market:

Find a fruit or veggie barely found in America. What is it? _____

Buy a fruit. What is it?_____ How much did it cost? ______

Ask a Chinese person why they come to the market for shopping. _______

Suzhou...chinatown? .____. (I think that's what it's called kinda...)

Fill in a chart of the strange things you eat and its name and what it tastes like.

At the tea store:

What tea do Suzhou people love to drink? ________ How much does it cost? ______

What kind of snacks can you get at the store? ______, ______, ______

What do people do at the tea store? ______, ______, ______

Just like yesterday it was tiring, but we had lost our competitive spirit and decided just to walk and take our time to go wherever, enjoying popsicles and stuff along the way. After all, the real winners were the ones who enjoyed their time the most. We had no reason to rush! Along the way we had some fun experiences like munching on huge pieces of sugarcane, finding the best popsicles ever, or just posing for more of our pictures. As usual it was fun!

Suzhou 'Chinatown' was exciting too. All of us kids ran loose in search of lovely little gifts or just food to eat. It was a great time to run free and spend all of our money! We even got a chance to bargain a little, to get a feel of what it was like.

(The streets smelled of stinky tofu. Disgusting!)

I'll never forget when Antonio brought me and Clare to a little stand where a man used a caramel-like substance to make cool pictures, determined by a spinner. I spun a peacock, and the man painted, or sort of drizzled that stuff onto a stick and made something like a lollipop. Eventually some others caught on. This is what they looked like~!

Steven's holding a fish, obviously, and Sean has two monkeys. Cute, eh? They didn't taste all that good.

But for some of us, the highlight for today was getting HAIRCUTS! =)

Only seven of us went (see below), not counting our leader Amy and Da Jie Jie, our 'big sister' high school tour guide kinda. There's not much to explain, aside from the usual 'they used scissors and combs and hairdryers and catalogues and shampoo and water'. Still we all came out looking pretty Asian, if i do say so myself. (Emily couldn't decide so she didn't get it cut. Steven got reddish highlights.)

Before...

...and AFTER!!

With that, i'm off. So tired. -.- Goodnight!

~~~Reporter Poh

The Great Race.

Hehe! We're called the "Posing Group". We make cool little poses.

This was our modeling pose. ^^

Sorry for the blurriness! Hopefully you can make everyone out okay.

Day Two. The Great Race~~~

HELLO! So anyway! This morning we got up to a very lovely continental breakfast, with lots of lovely food and lovely company of very lovely people~!

The Continental Breakfast consisted of... (the things that stood out to me, at least)

Steamed OJ (boiling hot, for some odd reason)

This sweet bread cake stuff with jam

Congee?

Eggs.

Noooooooooooooduls

Muffins

Sticky Rice

Yup! =D I bet you're jealous. ^^

Very happy way to begin the day. After that at 9am we went to have a meeting, and met up with four high school kids that were going to be our guides...sorta. Except they weren't really supposed to tell us where to go, only vaguely. And we had a list of things we were supposed to do, like a big scavenger hunt. and there was a big PRIZE AT THE END, Kojo said! (We can't really take his word for it, but it was a challenge.)

~The Scavenger Hunt, aka the GREAT RACE!!~

At the bank:

Exchange $20 into RMB (chinese currency)

Collect your receipt

Take a picture

The bank took a long time because out of two booths we could only use one. In the end we were the only group that stayed and all the others went to find another bank. =)

At the bus stop:

Sit/Stand in the bus to get to the train station, take a picture in the bus

Keep your bus ticket

Since it was only 1yuan to travel as far as you wanted on the bus, we used the bus a lot more than we thought we would have. =D And we didn't even get lost!

At the Train Station:

Look for a teller

Ask how much the student ticket costs to get to NanJing

Ask how much the student ticket costs to get to Shanghai

Since we wanted to be time-saving, our group purchased the tickets for Shanghai beforehand. I believe we leave to go there next Thursday, but every group goes at a different day. After everything, we had to ride a bus all the way back so that we could return them, just because we were supposed to be back at Suzhou at four. -.-

At the Market (or store):

Buy TP (toilet paper)

Buy a pencil/pen

Buy chinese candy

Buy something you can't find in US

We had so much fun doing this! I guess you'd all know why~~~

At the Bookstore:

Get a Chinese-English dictionary

Buy a map

Buy Suzhou postcards

*cough* they ran out of postcards by the time we got there. The bookstore was HUGE! it was four floors and everything was in chinese.

At the Silk Museum:

What animal makes silk? *snickers* ___________

What does the animal need to live? ___________

Why is the silk white? __________

Why is it called "The Silk Road"? ___________

**Eat lunch please.

Phew. It was hard, but after all this backbreaking work that makes us look like tourists (well, at least the picture taking), here are the RANKINGS!

Last Place: Woody's Group

Third Place: Pam's Group

Second Place: Amy's Group (our group. Aka, the best group overall.)

First Place....

...BACON!!! =D

Well we didn't get to find out the prize. So then we just went home and had 2 hours of free time, and yeah! Then we walked to a restaurant by a river and stuffed ourselves full of yummy food. Some people freaked out over the chicken head on the dish. *sigggh* But we had lots of time to social, and then after that we walked past the park and went to Kojo's surprise activity.

A BOAT RIDE!

It was very pretty, with lots of lights and stuff.

See? =)

Compliments to Amy Liu for taking this picture. <3>

Most of us fell asleep on the way back because we were so exhausted from all the walking and running. Speaking of exhausted, basically everyone is asleep by now, but here i am trying to fill all you concerned and very lovely parents on all this. *phew* I'm really tired right now.

Yawn.

I'm sorry about the very little pictures though, because it stretches out the page, which is really dumb.

My eyes are drooping...that's it. I'm off...until tomorrowww! I'll try my best to write earlier so I can provide you all with more specific details.

Love to everyone out there =)

~~Reporter Poh

FINALLY!

We're. All. Here. In. CHINA!

Thank goodness we made it here, after tons of hard work sitting in the plane and scavenging for food in the airport! =) And so after about 15 hours cramped in Air Canada (but thankfully with movies and TV shows) we sat in a bus for 2 more hours and made it to Scholar's Inn, where we are now!! :3 Nobody got hurt, and there weren't many sidetracks along the way. Hooray!
*Note: I must tell you though, there is only one computer here and we all want to use it. Therefore it may be difficult to respond to emails.

Yeah. And basically after we settled into our rooms we went to have a lovely chinese dinner that was very good, even though some people thought it was too spicy. We shared lots of lovely stories of being little kids and other things...and now we're all back in our rooms, waiting for the next day's adventures!!! =D YAAAAAAY!

For your random interest:

Partners for the hotel rooms~!

Alexandria and Kathleen

Clare and Meghan

Maya IH and Jet

Maya Y and Lisa

Angela and Emily

Isadora and Elizabeth

Mitchell and Antonio

Clayton and Kelvin

Steven, Sean, and Allen

Next week I'll try my very best to add pictures.

Until then...

Stay tuned~~~!!

Apr 15 PDX airport procedures

4:00 AM
Check in with CRR small groups in front of Air Canada counter
collect passports and binders from your Chaperone
Check in with small group at Air Canada
Proceed through Security Check
Go to gate with small group
6:00 Depart for Vancouver
Passport must be with you at all times!