Crazy Random Happenstances

Oh... hi!

2010-10-01T15:33:00.000+08:00

Well, hi there. Remember me? Yeah… I’ve been bad about posting. Whoops! I suppose life got pretty busy after school started. Where to start, where to start... I’ll talk about school, first. So far I’m like school for the most part. My classes are fairly easy (except for math and Chinese) and I’ve been receiving good marks. I’ll update you on what I do in each class.

Science: We finished out unit on physics (I scored fairly well on the tests) and are now doing biology. I much prefer bio—not as much math involved, hahaha.

Math: We’re doing quadratics right now… fun, right? I despise completing the square! We also had the super tough assignment that I ended up writing over one thousand words for. (Yes, I am a bit of an overachiever!)

English: At the moment, we’re reading The Crucible. I quite like it, which is strange, since usually I prefer to see plays performed and not read them! It was great, I got 30/30 on an essay on dramatic tension that I wrote and the teacher said it was the first time she’d given full marks on a 10^th grader’s essay! :D

History: We went on a field trip to these old forts in Dongguan from the Opium War. It was pretty interesting, but the hiking was very hot and tiring. We went to a museum after lunch and since we had extra time, our class went bowling! Yes, only in China will you finish up a field trip with bowling. xD (I attempted to upload some photos for this, but it took too long, so I'll just show some pics of it in a later post.)

ICT: We’re still working on our organization/campaign thing. My partner and I chose skin cancer prevention and awareness. First, we made a poster and now we’re working on a brochure about it. After that, we’ll make a website for our organization.

PE: We’re doing swimming right now. Yeah. Nothing else to really say…

Drama: We’ve almost finished our unit on protest in art/child soldiers. We should be finishing up the play that we’ve created and performing it after the holidays! We’ve worked quite hard on it, using different techniques, so hopefully it will be well received.

On friends: I feel like I’ve made a fair amount of friends. Most of them are in my grade (my huuuuuuuge class of 18 people, hahahaha), though I’ve made friends with some younger grades as well. My friend Julie helps me with my Chinese and Hye Kyung, Ha Eun and Eun Ji have helped me with Korean.

On CCA’s/co-curricular activities: My CCA on Tuesday is paper-cutting. This is the time where I hang out with my Korean friends, listen to music or sometimes watch a drama… all while paper cutting! Hahahahaha. On Thursdays I have drama club, which is run by the English teacher. We’re coming up with clowning routines, which will be shown to the school in… November? December? I don’t know exact dates.

My awesome scissors for paper-cutting! :D

Other random school stuff: It can be quite exhausting getting to the canteen for lunch, especially if it’s super hot out. The walk is around half a mile each way… I tend to melt on really sunny days. The food is… okay. Some days it’s good and others, well, let’s just not mention those days! I like my teachers, which is a good thing. xD Every morning we have homeroom for 20 minutes before classes starts. I’m in Wind House and last Tuesday we had a carnival during break time to raise money for the Year 11’s trip to Thailand. I think we raised a fair amount of money for them :D

Rain! Taken from inside the boarding house. xD

Sooooo, that’s all for now, folks! I have a few other posts planned—outings away from school (into Zengcheng, Dongguan or Guangzhou) and our weekend trip to Hong Kong! :D We’re leaving for Beijing this evening, so expect posts about that as well in the upcoming week. I hope to be more frequent with my postings now that I’ve settled into a routine here.

Love y’all!

Emily

The first few days of school

2010-08-13T00:00:00.001+08:00

Hello, all! I’d like to update you on the first few days of school that I’ve had here in China.

The first day of school. I’m usually nervous about it, but those old feelings of anxiety were NOTHING compared to this…. I felt like I was going to throw up! The first thing was the assembly. The head of the school basically welcomed us back to the school and introduced the new staff members. The returning students left with their houses and the new students were sorted into houses--- yes, like in Harry Potter! The four houses are Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. I’m in Wind and luckily my friend Connie, who’s also a staff kid, is in it as well! She’s from Scotland. We stayed in homeroom (with our houses) for around and hour—we got our planners and supplies and did some other things. Then… it was time for the school day to start.

Since we had the assembly, we started in 4^th period at 11:00. It was drama for me! What happened in that class was that we chose if we wanted to take art or drama. However, the two subjects were together for the day. It was a double period, which I didn’t mind, since I really enjoy drama! We split up into groups and talked about protest in art forms. The people in my group were Coco, Preston, Lukman, Nicholas and Julie (the last two are 9^th years). I have to say—highschoolers are the same everywhere! Luckily after this I had lunch. We got there first, since the drama building is quite close to the restaurant! Following lunch, we had a double period of English. All we did was an assessment of our English skills with a written test and then a speaking one with a partner out in the hallway. There are 14 people in my grade! xD All in all, it was a pretty easy day schoolwise.

Now, onto day two of my high school experience in China. The day always starts out with 20 minutes in homeroom with our house. We took a quiz thing about the school to try to gain points for our house. After that, it was double drama first period! :D

There are 11 kids in my drama class, mixed years 9 and 10. We started out with typical drama games and exercises, which are always quite fun. (: Then, we started to talk about our what our unit is about: Protest. We broke into three groups to come up with ideas of what we can do with that theme. After coming back together, the class unanimously decided the Protest topic we want to do is child soldiers, particularly in (the?) Congo. We went back into our smaller groups and came up with four words that the topic made us think of and three images. After sharing these with the class, she broke us up into two groups for freeze frames. Freeze frames are a frozen scene, like when you pause a movie you’re watching. We had to do three of them regarding the topic. My group’s first scene depicted children playing games without a care in the world. OnOn and I were doing a clapping game, while Lukman was on the other guy’s back (ahhh, I can’t remember his name! Dx) pretending to shoot at Hye Kyung, playing war as children always do. The second scene was the most powerful in my opinion. Lukeman had ‘guns’ at the backs of Hye Kyung and I, while the other guy was blocking OnOn, our mother in this scene, from reaching us. I was turned around part-way, straining out trying to reach her. I think that if we include it in our performance, it could be a really powerful image. The third scene we did was depicting Hye Kyung and I as new initiates at the camp for child soldiers. Lukman and the other guy were the older children—hardened soldiers. Hye Kyung and I were on the ground, huddled together. OnOn was another soldier, trying to slap Hye Kyung. However, I was block OnOn’s arm to save her (Hye Kyung). So, overall, I really have enjoyed drama so far!

After drama was break, which we needed to make it all the way back to the building! (Drama is super-far away from everything, as is the restaurant and the art building!) Next up for 4^th period was English. Basically, we did the same as yesterday—tested for proficiency. Luckily, we finished up and were sorted into the different levels: A (highest level), B and C. I was in A, obviously, since I’m a native speaker, hahaha. There are only 6 people in the class—Coco, Hye Kyung and I (the girls) and then Lukman, Preston and Kevin (the guys).

5^th period was next, at 11:55. This was Chinese class! There are only four of us in this class, since it’s the lower levels of Chinese (B and C) and most of the Koreans take Korean instead of Chinese. It’s me, OnOn, Lukman and Preston. This was quite a confusing class, since it was conducted in all Chinese! It was fairly fun, though. At first, the teacher drew a character on the board then erased part of it and we had to go up and try to draw the rest with our eyes closed. I managed to get it on the first try (purely luck)! :D After this, we played a pretty amusing game. You had to tell sometime to touch something on either themselves, someone else or in the room. For example, Preston made OnOn touch Lukman’s sock and she made him touch the light on the ceiling! This was all in Chinese as well, but they had me do it in English. Preston and OnOn got into a bit of a war… he tried to make her touch his butt, though she wouldn’t do it, so Lukman did it instead! xD It was really pretty funny.

Following this, it was finally lunch! (At 12:50 =.=) After lunch was science. We’re covering units of physics, biology and chemistry this year. First up is physics—we studied the basics of waves. It was really easy because we did that in science last year! The last class of the day was math. Ew. He gave us worksheets of logic puzzles, which were pretty easy once you figured out the patterns and such. There’ll be three classes that we’re sorted into—Math Studies (lowest level), Standard Level (I assume I’ll be in this) and Higher Level. After school got out, I went and visited Mom and her remaining kids, just like yesterday! I love the staff children… sooooo cute!

Overall, I think that I’ll be able to find my niche at this school! About the demographics of the school—mostly Asian, I’d say. Everyone in the class is Asian except me—I bring diversity! xD Coco lives Hong Kong/Canada (though full Chinese ancestry), Preston is from Germany (Half Chinese, half Viet) and I’m not sure where Lukman is from. I think we have a few more Chinese in the class and the rest are Koreans. .I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to many of the Koreans yet, except Jun. It’ll be interesting to see how our class dynamic is throughout the year! There’s definitely been some groups from choosing seats in class—the Chinese native speakers, the English speakers, the Korean guys, the Korean girls. However, everyone in my class seems quite nice. I already feel comfortable speaking up, thanks to the super small class size!

Love y’all! Keep in touch—email me, Facebook doesn’t always work! (Wow, I just spent almost an hour on this post. O.o)

Emily

My schedule! (Or time table, as they call it here! xD)

Near Death Experiences with Squat Toilets and Crossing the Street

2010-08-03T11:30:00.002+08:00

So, I'm still alive in China! Hahaha. I'm going to do a re-cap of the days I've been here.

Saturday, 7/31
I already talked about this day up until the dinner we went to. It was a nice Italian place in downtown Dongguan. There were other lao wai (white people) there, so we didn't stand out much.

Sunday, 8/1
Sunday was packed pretty darn full... at 9:00 we all took the school's bus into Dongguan. Starbucks was first, where Kath, sue, Brian, Zoey, Kaliah, plus my brother and I. The other adults got photos done for their medicals. I had a green tea frappuccino. Starbucks is the same everywhere xD After that, we drove about f minutes to a mall/shopping center place. Woah. It was super busy! Mom and dad got sim cards for their phones after withdrawing money from the ATM. Next, we went upstairs to the DVD store! We got Glee, You're Beautiful, Modern Family and loads of movies, all for around $30 US total. Definitely legal, right? xD Then the main part of the excursion... Wal-Mart. Lovely. We spent over and hour there, finding various essentials. Three carts, to be exact, of these so called "essentials". Since it was Sunday, it was majorlyyyy packed and as expected, heaps of staring. It was embarassing-- not the staring, but the amount of items we had! Following that lovely excursion, Mom, Zach and I wandered trying to find food. We used the toilet... my first experience with squat toilets! We ended up crossing the street for Pizza Hut. Crossing the street= taking a chance with your live! Very overwhelming! Ordered out at Pizza Hut... it was better than the US Pizza Hut, hahaha. Following this, we drove back home. And collapsed.

Monday, 8/2
We went into Guangzhou today for medicals and IKEA! The medicals took a few hours- mostly waiting and paperwork. Antony and Tish are sooooo adorable, it was fun watching them! After medicals, we drove over to IKEA, where we first went to Starbucks across the street. Following that, it was 1.5 hours in IKEA... we didn't buy too much, since the van was packed full anyways. We also went to the Corner Deli, which has Western brands, etc. I got Ramune and Korean pocky. On the way back, we stopped in Zengcheng for passport photos at a wedding photo shop! There was definitely more staring than Guangzhou and even Dongguan.

Tuesday, 8/3
It's Dad's birthday today! I believe we're going into Zengcheng to buy bikes and just explore a bit.

It's so strange... sometimes I feel like I'm in China and sometimes I don't! It's the most bizarre thing. I think that I'm almost over my jetlag, so that's good!

I'll be putting up some photos and videos fairly soon, I expect.

Emily

I am in China!

2010-07-31T14:50:00.000+08:00

I am in China and have succesfully hacked the Great Firewall of China! Hahaha. Both of our flights went fine..... the 12 hour one and the 2 hour one. I really liked the airport in Taipei... so many cute things! It was SOOO embarassing at the Guangzhou airport getting our luggage... we had 12 bags total! (Not including our carry-ons.) Moving to a different country makes you really realize how many belongings you have. The 1.5 hour ride from GZ to Zengcheng was fine... luckily there were two vans- one for us and one for our luggage! We had AC in the van, which was nice. I've decided that airports and freeways everywhere look the same. I took many videos on the ride there, since pictures would turn out too blurry. When we got to the campus, it looked just like the pictures! It's quite picturesque, with the lakes and lots of greenery. I've totally forgotten the names of the people we met... whoops!

Our apartment is much bigger than I thought it would be. It's located inside the boarding house. It's a pretty open floor plan, with a itsy bitsy kitchen, a dining room table/area, 3 bedrooms (much bigger than I thought they would be!), a living room with a couch, table and TV (only DVD's... can't watch the news or anything like that). There are TWOOO bathrooms, which makes me very happy and greatful.

Meals are provided (since all staff live on campus). For dinner last night, I had rice, salad and quesedillas. I went to sleep around 6:30pm... totally tired and jetlagged! I woke up around 2am, then went back to sleep until 8:30am. I ate breaksfast in our apartment... some Chinese Cornflakes they provided. At lunch, I ate spaghetti... yum!

Tonight, we're going into Dongguan, which is a city 45min away, to eat dinner. Should be fun, I assume! We're going to swim in the pool this afternoon, too, I think. It's extremely hot and humid out! I think that tomorrow we're going to Dongguan for the whole day and then on Monday, to Guangzhou to do medical stuff and go to IKEA.

Bye for now, everyone!

Emily

In the Taipei airport!

2010-07-30T08:56:00.000+08:00

I'm in the Taipei airport right now! (:
The flight wasn't too bad. I have about an hour left of my layover, then it's off to CHINA! xD

Love you all!

Emily

Here's the public link to my photos on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044657&id=1365747006&l=33ddce4c4a

D-Day... well, departure day.

2010-07-29T09:54:00.000+08:00

So... it's here. In about 3.5 hours, I'll be leaving for the airport and therefore leaving behind my life as I know it. That's really kind of scaryyyyyyy! The past week has been pretty good. I saw Catherine a few times, went to Renton River Days with my cousins, saw Salt with David (I love that child!), saw Despicable Me with Autumn and Amy, had my goodbye party (by the way, this is not in chronological order! xD) and then today my grandparents, cousins, aunt and uncle came over to help us move furniture and pack up the house and our suitcase. God, I'm going to miss all of them extremely. All of us were crying when they left and my little cousins kept asking, "Why are you guys crying?" Sigh.

We'll be going out to Ivars to eat for dinner tonight, then coming back home to finish up our packing. Our neighbors Jeanne and Danny will be driving two vehicles to transport us and our luggage to the airport at 10:30. Yes, you red that correctly, two vehicles. Hey, we're moving! We have a lot of stuff! Our flight then leaves at 2am (-ish).

So.... next time I post, I assume I'll be at the airport in Taiwan after a looooooong 12 hour flight, during our 5 hour layover there. Then it's a 2 hour flight to Guangzhou and around a 1.5 hour car (well, van in our case!) ride to out new home in Zengcheng, China.

Goodbye! I love you and and will miss you more than you can know!

<3 Emily

One week! :O

2010-07-23T09:27:00.000+08:00

Aiyaaa, one week from now, I'll either be in the Taipei airport, in a plane going to China, or actually IN China. It's kind of crazy, no? So luckily our visas came yesterday, however there was a bit of trouble with Dad's work permit-- the original copy of it wasn't there. Fingers crossed that everything will turn out alright!

Today was a fun day. I had a going-away party at Coulon with some of my friends... I had a good time! It was amazing that they all signed a violin for me. :D Unfortunately not all of my friends were able to attend, so I've been trying to schedule time to spend with everyone before I leave. Let's see... what's my schedule for the next week?

Friday: Renton River Days with little cousins, possibly seeing the summer teen musical with Jackie. Shipping off our boxes to China.
Saturday: Haircut, re-dyeing my hair with henna. (I love henna dye... totally natural and gives you a great color!)
Sunday: Picnic after church to say goodbye to all of our church friends. Possibly movie later or hanging out with Cath.
Monday: Dentist appoint at noon, but I'm actually free after that! :O
Tuesday: Going over to my cousins/grandparents house for dinner and goodbye. (Ahh... I'm gonna cry so much! Dx)
Wednesday: Our last real day, pretty much just packing up. Maybe seeing people... Clarice? We leave for the airport sometime after 10:00pm.
Thursday: Our flight leaves at 2:30am! The rest of the day is either spent traveling/lost with the time change/
Friday: I think we get into the Guangzhou airport around noon. :O

Aigooooo... not much time at all!

Emily

Two weeks!

2010-07-15T06:03:00.000+08:00

Oh. Em. Gee.
Two weeks (tomorrow).
AHHHHHHHH!

I'm kind of freaking out, if you can't tell, hahahaha.

Currently we're packing up our house. Let me tell you: NOT a fun process. We're having a garage sale on Friday, so if you're someone who knows me, come drop by to say hi or buy stuff!

I was going to post a photo of my horrendous room right here, but the photo is too grossly disfigured for your eyes. I'll take one another time! xD

I'm planning a going-away party (for myself-- I know, it's sad. But my closest friends are lamefaces and are out of town from here on out. lol) that's a week from today. It should be... fun, I guess? It's at Coulon and the weather's supposed to be nice. It'll be good to say goodbye to everyone and all that.

It's depressing... the majority of my closest friends are gone. One's in Australia, one's in California and the other is in France. WAY TO DESERT ME, GUYS! Just kidding... I love them, but I just wish that they were here.

Hmm... is there anything else to report on? I got some CD's from the library... Chinese for Dummies and Cantonese for Beginners. I also checked out a book on Chinese culture. Oh! A few weeks ago I bought this adorable mini Chinese Dictionary.

Isn't it cute? Well, you can't see the size. But trust me, it is.

So, that's all for now! I'm off to do more sorting/packing, then off to a pool party later today.

Ciao!

Emily

Plane Tickets!

2010-06-29T14:33:00.000+08:00

I made a vlog on Youtube! :D You should subscribe to me there!

So, it's official... we have plane tickets! We're set to leave on July 29th at 2:00 in the morning! A month from now I'll be at the airport. Weird! We're going with EVA Air, which is a Taiwan-based airline. My parents ordered a vegetarian meal for me on the plane. Yay, lol. The flight is around twelve hours, though hopefully I'll get a good amount of sleep due to its lovely take-off time. After that, we have a five hour layover in Taipei. Hopefully that'll give us some time to exchange money, get food to eat and freshen up. After that is two hour flight to Guangzhou- a quickie compared to the previous one! It'll be around noon on the 30th when we arrive.

My parents training for their teaching jobs starts on August 1st, so they'll have two days to adjust to the time before everything starts up! The boarders arrive on August 10th and school officially starts on August 11th. My brother Zach and I will be hanging around campus for that in-between time, I suppose. I'm sure that we'll go into Zengcheng, Dongguan and Guangzhou to buy supplies, go shopping, etc.

I don't really know how I feel about this at the moment... I'm excited about the new opportunities and all that, but I'll definitely miss my extended family and friends. Oh well... life is about choices, right? You're always changing and at some point you have to move on from where you are in life so that you can get to another, even better, point.

Un-related to China: I think I'm going to the zoo this week with some of my friends. It should be fun! :D Also, I'm stressing out about college. Even though I'm only a sophomore. AH! I don't know where I want to go, though I'm pretty sure I want to major in International Relations or East Asian studies, most likely with a minor in Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Those are three of the languages that I want to learn in my lifetime... the other ones are Spanish, Russian and Arabic. Speaking of Spanish (hahahaha), I want to be an exchange student to either Paraguay or Ecuador with AFS, for a gap year in 2013-2014. It'd be a great opportunity to learn Spanish, as well as lighten up a bit after the grueling workload of the IB Diploma program and to relax before college the following year.

再见 (zài jiàn).... that means 'goodbye' in Mandarin!

Emily

Heyyy there!

2010-06-18T08:05:00.000+08:00

Who am I? My name is Emily and I’m a teenage girl who will be living in Zengcheng, China (near Guangzhou and Hong Kong) until I graduate in 2013. My parents will be working as teachers at Utahloy International School: Zengcheng, or UISZC. Here is the school’s website: http://www.utahloy.com/zc/

UISZC is located about an hour away from Guangzhou and 90 minutes from Hong Kong. It’s in southern China. It’s kinda cool, because my mom grew up in HK and my grandmother grew up in southern China! (Fujian province.) UIZC is an IB-Certified school. The campus where my mom’s been offered a job is a boarding school campus, with some boarders and some day students (the campus in GZ is just a day school). It’s SUPER small, only around 150 students! That’d certainly be a change from Hazen, hahaha. It’s a beautiful campus, situated on a lake. The salary is great and with my mom as a kindergarten teacher and my my dad working there also, as a counselor, we’ll have plenty of time for vacation. They have October, winter, Chinese New Year’s and spring vacations! Lots of opportunity for travel around Asia… Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, other places in China and of course Hong Kong on lots of weekends, just for Mom’s sake! (;

Here are some great photos of the school's campus: http://picasaweb.google.com/anneke.krynauw/SchoolCampusUtahloyInternationalSchoolZe

ngCheng#

Anyways, more about me. I enjoy reading, writing, playing the cello, photography, running, fashion, travel, acting, volunteering, babysitting and learning. Sometimes I feel like a stereotypical teenager, other days I feel like an alien compared to my peers!

I hope that you’ll stick with me on this crazy journey of mine in China! I’ll be posting about crazy, random happenstances that occur on my adventures.

~ Emily

P.S. And yes, this blog title is from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. <3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apEZpYnN_1g