My spring break

This year for spring break, Park Ranger and I went to a Gospel camp in Warsaw, Missouri. Actually, it wasn’t in Warsaw. It was in a small area with a lake and a few houses near Warsaw. That is, if a 40 minute drive counts as near.

It was a medium length trip; if you consider two and a half hours as medium. When we had left Kansas, we didn’t see many more cities. Soon all there was was scrubby bushes and browning pine trees. Before we left, we had packed a medium suitcase, two lunch bags, a tote bag, a purse, and two pillows. Then, taking advantage of every bubble of air in our compact car, Park Ranger and I started to drive towards our destination. Wherever that was.

We were half way out of our neighborhood when Park Ranger yelled, “Diamond! Look!” Before I go into this subject, perhaps I should explain my definition of the boundaries of my neighborhood. My neighborhood spans from where there are more people and stores than there are trees there. From that BP gas station, to the bank, to Palazzo 16, to Orange leaf, Sonic, the high school, and Zips.

We had just passed The Egg & I diner at 45 mph, and I was watching some elderly men in a Volkswagen, eating burgers. Then Park Ranger turned to me with an incredulous look on her face. “Diamond! DId you see that? That old lady?”

“Yeah. But they’re guys. Not ladies.”

“Not them! Her!” She pointed rigidly to a silver Lexus passing by. “What’s so special about her?” I asked.

“She looks like 007’s boss from Sky fall!”

Park Ranger stepped on the gas so I could look again. Soon, I was gaping wider than a large mouth bass. The resemblance- short, platinum blond hair, serious face- was almost scary.

Later we had left my neighborhood and after one hour, and were (or is it was? I don’t know any grammar,) in Missouri! We didn’t see a city, but we just were driving  on a paved road with few signs that indicated lodging and food, with a second adjacent road, but going the opposite direction. Oh, how BORING.

The Acura crossed over a hill, making rattling noises when it did. Oh, how BORING. There weren’t any mountains or hills, just pine trees, yellowing grass, and occasional farms. Oh, how BORING. Then, out of some intergalactic wormhole forming behind us, a buzz came from it and the most ridiculously fast motorcycle had passed. Nicknamed Bumblebee by Park Ranger and I, because his motorcycle was so fast it buzzed and he was wearing black and yellow, he made both of us jump in shock. He was going so fast, like 100 mph, that he passed cars in front of us and switched to the other lane to exceed all of them. In less than a minute, Bumblebee was no where in sight.

It was really not so exciting after that. There were endless fields of who-knows-what and who-really-cares and feral horses and cows and wild chickens. One thing was not boringly baked with the boring-est boring and seasoned with boring and drizzled with the boring works and a side of fresh boring was that we spotted to wild turkeys. They were hidden among the tall grass so they were hard to see.

When we started to get close to our destination, we saw a 1800’s white picket fence and blue house. It. Was. Old. Private mailboxes were all the rage in this tiny neighborhood. It reminded me of Secretariat and Little House on the Prairie. They have Reese and Nichols in countryside! Even tiny towns have big businesses around.

We had found the place we were looking for. It was a Tiffany blue motel and Tiffany blue church. There was a large lake, too. There was a hand-built dock with a pretty view. The water was very murky and you could see any fish. I assumed that people who lived here had to fish daily for food because there wasn’t a grocery store or restaurant around for miles.

There were three friendly dogs too. Maggie, Shelby, and Junior. Maggie was a middle aged golden retriever. Shelby was a mix between a great Dane, and Jack Russel; she looked like vanilla custard with Oreo crumbs and chunks in it. Junior was a young mutt- a mix between a yellow lab and a terrier and was yellow.

Our motel room was on the third floor seventh room of Motel A. Our room was  cramped like college dormitory. There were two sets of bunk beds inter locked, a teeny bathroom, a shower (shared with the room next door), and a closet thing. I found out that we had to share this room with another mother and her daughter. I was getting sleepy. So then, I showered, brushed my teeth, went to the bathroom, and slept in the top bunk. My bed was small, but Park ranger put a sheet and a sleeping bag on it for me.

Good Night!

 

YanziBean: Visiting the home of a needy student

Yanzibian – 6/10/12: Today is the day that we divide into groups, travel to the poorest of poor’s homes that have children attending Yanzibian Central School. i was in a group with Mr. Shen, the P.E. teacher of YCS, Cindy Wang, and Park Ranger.

Our Group

We visited a humongous farming field in the high, sweaty, wind-less, dirty mountains. Yup; someone lives here. 

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Someone actually drove us half way up the mountain. It was so bumpy and dusty that whenever we tried to nip a nap of the car ride, we would lightly set our head down and.. BONK! The noise of a human head colliding with a glass window was not pleasant. Then when we were 89% of the way there, we had to get off the car and walk the rest of the way. Whoa! It was a hard walk, (HARD ROCK!) (Think about it. The student that we are visiting has to walk TWO HOURS down the mountain. Just to get to school. That’s one workout.)(I forgot to tell you. The reason we are visiting the student is to provide the most hard-working, not to mention living in hard conditions, with scholarships and 500 yuan. It will be exciting. YAY!)

continued…..

Close Contact with a Cow

Our Group

Home on the Mountain

Walking on the mountain toward Shen Xue Ying’s home

Our actual team – the man in stripe is our driver.

Shen Xue Ying and her cousin and her parents came out to meet us.

Dried corns hanging under the window sill of the house

The yellow fruit is their home grown Pi Pa. The other plate full is sunflower seeds.

Cindy and I are getting ready to interview Shen Xue Ying. I am the note taker.

She Xue Ying poured us hot water for tea. She is 12 years old.

Shen Xue Ying is a quiet girl, a little shy in front of the camera.

Shen Xue Ying’s little cousin. He said he liked the candy we brought from Kansas.

Cindy, me and Shen Xue Ying

Shen Xue Ying’s dad is cracking open the fresh walnuts for us, using a curved farming knife.

They prepared a table full of their best dishes to treat us a lunch!

Our driver later drove the car to the foot of Shen Xue Ying’s house. He wanted to save us more walking the mountain road.

Shen Xue Ying made a special card for us.

She drew flowers and put a pretty ribbon on the card. Very thoughtful.

Walnuts on the tree – The first time ever for me to see walnuts on the tree!

Chimney of Shen Xue Ying’s house – we went up the hill on the back of the house.

Shen Xue Ying and her parents.

Shen Xue Ying’s family, her aunt’s family and us.

That’s what I see when I look out from Shen Xue Ying’s house.

But we eventually spotted our destination: an old wooden farmhouse that had angry barking dogs. We also encountered some cows. They were gentle, fat cows that lumbered on the rocky ground, stopping every while to eat some foliage. As we neared the baying dogs, Shen Xue Ying, our student, hurried over with her cousin to greet us. She led us into a flat dirt surface right outside their front door. When we had finished greeting the rest of their family, Park Ranger took out a bag of Jolly Ranchers and gave it to Shen Xue Ying’s cousin. He loved it at first taste after he put it his mouth. I can’t blame him; it was watermelon flavored. Then they set up a little table with small stools. I felt humble and embarrassed to be treated like this. They brought out a bowl of their home-grown, juiciest 枇杷, and another large bowl of tasty sunflower seeds. Then I prepared my notebook and my pen, so that I could write down notes for the interview. Park Ranger video taped the interview, while Cindy and I asked questions, talked and took notes. Then after the interview came a surprise. They served us lunch! I was so amazed at the mouth-watering dishes that they brought out, but at the same time I felt guilty because they were probably spending a whole month’s worth of money making us lunch! It was a little early for lunch, but the aromas of the spicy pork and green peppers taunted me, and I didn’t want to be rude, so I ate a small quantity of cucumber and spicy stuff. After that delicious meal, Cindy gave Shen Xue Ying and her family a small gift.  A xian dan（咸蛋）and a bottle of instant nai cha (奶茶). It felt really awkward to be giving a poor farming family an egg when they already had a coop of chickens. After that was a slightly tearful farewell, then we went down the mountain and went back to YCS to meet with other groups.

Finally we got to see the actual Kansas City Friendship School!

Yanzibian: Getting there

I went to China this year, for 2 reasons. One, to visit families.  Two, to participate in a Youth Volunteers  Event organized by KCCAA Youth Hope Fund – teaching English in the KC Friendship School. The school we were teaching in was in a small town in the deep rural area in Shan Xi province in China, called  Yanzibian, a mountainous village that was close to the heart of the catastrophic earthquake in May 12, 2008 in China. It was a seven hour long bus ride to get from Xi’an to Yanzibian. One thing I noticed was mountains. Lots of them. And to get hrough them we had to get through tunnels, 77 of them. Mom and I actually counted, but I stopped counting half way through, because there were so many. Mom counted all of them and even wrote down the majority of their names, and others, ones that she missed and didn’t miss, were no-names. We had never been through so many tunnels.

Now you’re probably wondering, Who’s ‘we’? ‘We’, (Cindy Wang, Tammy Lee, Grace Brentano, Eric Koch, Eric and Katrina Zhao, Promethium, and I) are a group of volunteers from a group called KC Youth Hope Fund. Every year, a group of student volunteers and parent volunteers travels to a rural, poor, and needy area in China to teach English. I decided,  Sounds interesting. So, I took part this year.

We arrived Yanzibian at about 4pm. The ride into that small town was quite bumpy . We were greeted by a group of teachers including principal Mei. He is the principal of the Yanzibian Central Elementary School. We were anxious to see the KC Friendship School right away, but were taken to the Yanzibian Central Elementary School which was where we would be teaching. This school was actually better than I thought! In my mind I thought it was only going to be one story, though it was 4 stories tall. I thought that there was no playground, no real bathroom, but there was an acceptable playground, a real but smelly bathroom, and AIR-CONDITIONING!

That day we walked to the Yanzibian Central School and were just visiting. We dropped by each of the classrooms to see how their English was doing. Then each of us did some one-on-one with the students by their desk. Eric Koch, the Blond freshman from Pembroke who can kinda of speak Chinese, (better than most kids), was trying hard to speak to the kids. Whenever during a conversation of English with the kids, and the kid looked confused, Eric would say, “woe dee jongwen boo hao.” （我的中文不好。）

Spring Break Part Two

I didn’t get much sleep before it was time to get up, so I was pretty tired the next morning. (Well, technically it was the same morning because we got there at 4 am.) Anyway, my family went down to the World Cafe, which is a buffet, and it’s really good. They have all sorts of food, and there is a guy who will fry eggs and make egg omelettes just for you, and you can tell him what you want in the omelette and he will make it. I loved it! After breakfast, I changed into my swimsuit and went down to a mini-beach. The water was really cold, so my friend Amanda, Bryce, and Andy just kind of waded, and played around. We had fun until lunch, then went up and changed. We went down to a seafood restaurant called Oceana. My brother, Amanda, and I sat at a table. We all ordered shrimp cocktails, and six shrimp tacos. We weren’t that hungry, bbut managed to finish. Amanda and I both got Obsession de Chocolate, which translates into Chocolate Obsession. (The menu had Spanish on it, and the English translation.) Well, the Chocolate Obsession was really good, and then Amanda and I changed back into our swimsuits and went Jet Skiing. It was really fun, and we went pretty far out. There was lots to see, and the ride was bumpy. When we got back, we went to the real beach, and played with the sand. When it was dinnertime, I took a shower and then changed and went down to dinner. I ate at the world cafe, then went up to bed and slept.

Day 3

We got our luggage today. My mom made me get up earlier, because we were going on an hour long ride to one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World; a temple in Chichen Itza. (Chee-chen Eetsa) We had a tour guide and a bus. The tour guide’s name was Jerry. He was funny, and his grandpa was Chinese. He showed us a tree with diagonal knife marks on it. He said that this tree gave resin, which the Mayans chewed as bubblegum. Since the resin had no flavor, the Mayans added honey for flavor. When we got to the mayan temple, we walked a short distance and and waited for some people in our group, because they had to go to the bathroom. Jerry gave us our tickets, and we waited to have them checked. When they were all checked, we walked outside – well, technically we were already outside because the building didn’t have any doors – and went to see the temple. It was really cool, and Jerry said that on the Spring and Fall equinox, a snake like figure is shown on the steps. By the way, there are exactly 365 steps in the temple. So when Jerry was done talking about the temple, we moved on to other things, like where the Mayans played a sport, some other temples, and other cool places. When everything was explained, we got to explore the market. I got an obsidian turtle, and another turtle that is pretty cool. My brother got a glass pyramid with and picture of the sun and moon inside it. The pyramid is glass, and see-through, but with the light, it looks rainbow colored. We met at the ATM machine, and got back on the bus. On the way back from the temple, we stopped at a place where you can go swimming, and stayed there and ate luch. Sadly, none of us except Andy and his little sister had swimsuits, but they didn’t want to swim. After lunch, we went back to the hotel. I learned some interesting things about Cancun that day. The island of Cancun is shaped like a seven, and not connected to the mainland. Cancun means ‘snake pot’ in Mayan. Underneath Cancun, it’s rock, so trees and other plants don’t have very deep roots. That day, it was really hot.

Spring Break Part One

During Spring Break, my friends and I went to Cancun, Mexico. On Monday, we drove to the airport, and got off the van. We did all of the usual stuff you have to do before a flight, then took a tram to Terminal C. We got off and waited for a while. Then we were going to go into the boarding gates, and I saw that our 10:18 flight to Houston was delayed to 11:50 some. I told my dad, and he went to look. He saw it, and told everybody else. We went inside the boarding gates anyway, but the bad thing was, we had less than an hour to make it onto the Cancun flight from Houston, and the plane was nearly two hours late. Well, inside the boarding gates, I waited until I got bored, then I played some electronics for a while. It was really boring. By the time we made it onto our plane, We would get to Houston at about 2:30-3:00pm. We landed in Houston, and got off the plane. Our flight to Cancun had left slightly more than an hour ago. My parents and some of my friends parents talked to the lady to see if we could go on the next Cancun flight, which was around 7:00 pm. We might actually have gone on that flight if there weren’t 14 other people in front of us, also wanting to go to Cancun. Most of us were hungry, so the adults took us to find somewhere to eat. We found a Wendy’s, so we ate there, and then looked around at the shops in the airport. Eventually, we just got on a flight to Mexico City, and from there, the two-hour flight to Cancun. When we landed in Mexico City, we went to the baggage claim, and couldn’t find our luggage! The adults kind of argued with the person behind the counter, and he said we could either miss our flight and get the luggage, or go on the flight and have the luggage later. The adults chose to go on the flight, so we went and arrived in Cancun aroung 3 or 4:00 am. We took a shuttle bus to the hotel, and checked in. Since we didn’t have our stuff, we just slept in our clothes. By the way, the entire time, my friends Andy H., Andy Z., and I were saying that Bryce and Amanda are so lucky, because they had an 8:00 flight to Houston that was actually ON TIME and they made it on the Cancun flight. Well, that was pretty much my first day. We got our luggage the second day, so we were pretty happy about that.

Geysers and how weirdly interesting they are

La,la,la boring car trip for four,five hours…………skip right along to the geysers. One thing you need to know about geysers is that they are extremely diverse. there’s green water, blue water, black water, even purple water in the geysers. there is only one thing in common, they smoke. As we walked along the wooden path, i couldn’t help but admiring each uniqueness. the first geyser we saw was called a mud pot geyser. it didn’t even look like a mud pot. it looked like disgusting melted clay. ewww!!!!!!! we walked along the path some more and saw a huge aqua-colored beautiful spring. the smoke rose so immensely and so fast that as soon as the wind gently blew it towards my face my eyelashes got dewdrops on them. we also found out it wasn’t smoke but steaming hot mist!!!!! we saw a few reddish orangeish geysers and another mud pot before coming to one of the most famous geysers. Fishing pot geyser. sounds all mystical and amazing right??? but we couldn’t even see the geyser. the geyser is only visible during a low tide and we went in a high tide. terrible luck. oh well. we saw some other pretty amazing thermal features. blue funnel spring was my favorite thermal feature of the day. it’s perfectly round and has a moderately dark aquamarine color. Beautiful!!!! it slopes gently inward until you can’t see the bottom we finished the walk around all the thermal features and we all had one thing in mind. Beautiful but deadly. thermal features can easily kill someone just by getting close to it about 1 to 20 feet away! yikes! but it made a memory of a lifetime.

Yellowstone

we went to Yellowstone! I was very excited on the car trip, but less and less exciting because we had to stay in the car for the majority of the entire trip.

the most rememberable part of the experience is when we went down to the Jackson Lake and there was a huge dam. I took off my socks and shoes and stepped into the water. It was freezing cold, but my feet got numb and I got used to it. Later Crystal joined me and we collected cool rocks. But then I fell down!!! My legs were wet but I still played! It was the most fun I’ve ever had in water!

Ps I saw a big fish there too!

Geyers in Yellowstone Park

 

Yellowstone

My family and Crystal’s family, are going to Yellowstone on 7/17/2011. I am EXCITED half. Because it takes like two days driving, well, things just don’t go well. Like car sickness. My cousin has serious car sickness, and can end up sneezing and moaning.Today we’re packing. (I will update soon cause my dad isn’t giving me the scoop on Yellowstone completetly) 🙂

Days at New Orleans – Day 1

Today at New Orleans my dad, bother, mom, and me went to the I MAX Theater and watched a movie about hurricane Katrina and saw how powerful it was. We also saw other hurricanes that hit New Orleans.  We saw floods that hit New Orleans too. I learned when those hurricanes and floods hit New Orleans. But before we did anything else my family and I had on a plane to get to New Orleans. It took two hours to get to New Orleans but I played my I pod Touch till we got there… Well that is the end of day 1!

San Juan Island

If you like the smell of lavender, this place is for you. This lavender farm has all kinds of things for you. But I chose an orca whale. How does an orca whale connect with lavender? There at the lavender farm, you stuff your own stuffed animal. You can choose between a dog, a whale, or a bear. You put two packets of lavender in the stuffed animal. Now the stuffed animal will smell like lavenders. I put one packet of lavenders in the head and the other in the tummy. The rest was stuffing. It was really hard to get the tail because the stuffing refused to go in. At the end, I found a chopstick and I finally stuffed the tail. Wow, that was hard. GRRRRRR. How in world are you supposed to stuff this tail??? I kept on thinking. Well at least it prepared me for another challenge. I was stuffing another stuffed animal (a dog) for my friend’s birthday. I tried really hard to stuff the legs but no use. I tried chopstick, hand anything I could think of with no luck. I was about to ask my mom for help when I finally realized that you  have turn the stuffing into a ball. Whew! That was hard!!!

P.S. The whale watched me type this!!!!!

Olympic National Park

Have any of you ever been in a natural spring? If you have, great. If you haven’t then you really should. (Bring a nose plug.) Sol Duc Springs at Olympic National Park are relaxing and fun. At Sol Duc Springs Lodge, they have a natural spring straight out of the earth. It’s this little stream of water shooting straight out of the ground. There is a pool around the spring but the water is really warm so it’s more like a hot tub. I sank into the water my muscles melting. Ahhhhhhh. How relaxing. I never want to move.  I thought. Well readers, do you think you want to do that? If your answer is yes listen to this! (People who answered no please read this anyways ). The pool smelled like rotten eggs. For my dad, the smell was really bad but for me it was actually okay! Now that’s a day I call really fun!!!

Mount Rainier

Majestic, elegant, beautiful, those words can only bring you so far in a field of beauty.

        If you love beauty, nature, snow, and adventure, this hike is right for you. At first, you see snow, snow, and more snow. Then you see that this trail is a snow trail. You start by hiking up a small hill, avoiding small pine trees. This for me was one of the hardest slopes. I wasn’t confident and didn’t know the tricks in hiking. As I hiked, I started out scared and slow in walking. We passed ridges and tree craters (my dad had to drag me) and I gained confidence. I started moving faster and I sprinted ahead, just as I started to understand the trail, the trail ended and my mouth fell open.

         Ahead of me was a snow mountain complete with glaciers and pine trees. It was picture perfect. I had never imagined something so beautiful. Snow and pine trees covered the mountain while glaciers peeked out. It was so artistic. My dad took lots of pictures of course and we started heading back. I was determined to head back without help. But just then a couple told us they saw a bear. I felt some of my confidence drain away yet I continued. I have never done a hike so beautiful, so full of adventure and so memory making at the same time.

Trip To China 6

Last night we went to the Shanghai Band. Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you! I’m in Shanghai! Anyways, Shanghai Band is awesome! There are buildings everywhere and we were there at night so it looked really sparkly in the dark! There was one building that has lights on the elevator and when ever the elevator goes up and down, it looks like little tiny stars! There is a river that separates the East Band and the West Band. We got to ride on a boat and look at the view. The boat has three floors. I wanted to go on the top but my sister was a chicken so we had to stay on the stinkin second floor. Well I guess the second floor wasn’t that bad. But, I think the top would be better. I sure had a SPARKLY night! Got to go! Bye! 

Trip To China 5

My over-all trip to Hunan was pretty good. I met every single family member on my mom’s side. Hunan is really pretty. You can see lot’s of green! The family is also really nice. There is a 15 year old boy that can also speak English. I like him just as much as I like Uncle River. After he was done taking a test, he got to play with me every day. Once, he took us out bike riding. It felt so good! Each bike can hold three people. We took tons of pictures. There’s also a girl who is one year older than me. I taught her how to make friendship bracelets. I love spending time with my family! Oh! And, I have something else to tell you too. I got to ride a motorcycle for my first time in my life! Over there, there is another uncle that raises pigs. When ever I go visit the pigs, I get to ride on the motorcycle. Once, the pigs pooped on me！I smelled horrible! But, the motorcycle ride feels so good with the wind blowing in your face! Okay, so, we’ve got Beijing trip ticked off and Hunan trip ticked off. All that’s left is Shanghai trip! Hunan trip was awesome! I’m looking forward to another trip full of adventures!

Trip To China 4

There is an uncle named Uncle River that I really like. He can speak english. I play with him everyday when I’m in Hunan. Today, Uncle River needs to go some where else in Hunan for work. After he leaves, there will be nobody to play with me unless I play with my annoying little sister or talk with thoes dirty smoking boys. That’s right, smoking. Did you know that every single boy in this house is smoking? Once I found that out, I put no smoking signs all over the house. I put one on the doorway, one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in the dining room, one in the bathroom, one on some random wall, and one in Uncle River’s room. Another problem that I’m having here is……….MOSQUITOES!!!! It seems like all the mosquitoes are attracted to ME! I wonder how the rest of my Hunan trip will be!

ORLANDO – the real experience featuring HARRY POTTA

I went to Orlando this past week, and I will tell you about it.

Day 1-

We flew to Orlando. I really love, plane trips, but this one was a little disappointing. The waiting wasn’t intense, and I had a ham and dijion mustard sandwich, so on the plane, it was better to wait until the flight was over than to stand in line for the bathroom………….          When we landed, my mom “lost” her glasses, but, they were really inbetween her seat and mine… yeah, it was 10:00 when we got to Country Inn, and but I did like our room because it was on the first floor.

Day-2

When I wokke up, it was like 7:00, and my parents told me that they were going to get the rental car. I woke up again, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and woke up Promethium. Well, I am a person, and persons watch tv they wake up. Promethium joined my watching of the tv until mom and dad came back, I had BREAKFAST! We had a choice of biscuits, gravy, oatmeal with almonds,chocolate chips, and cinamon to taste, fruit, waffles, eggs, cereal, unfoortunately, NO BACON!! 😦

and we were off to SEAWORLD!! Well, I am not going to do this formally, but here is what I did in random order.

1.entered and dad took tiresome photos

2.went to go touch oily stingrays

3.fed sharks

4. had lunch

5.dolphin show

6. shamu show

7. sort of acrbat show

8. flamingoes

9. no rides – the only ride we were going to take had “mechanical problems” when we were about to take it 😦

Checked into JW MARRIOT!! That’s our hotel check out this site! http://www.grandlakes.com/

Day-3

So if you saw the website above, This topic is LAZY RIVER!! It is like an awesome pool that has a path and a current and wide enough to fit 2 floaties, and 2 seperate hottubs with waterfalls.

part of the lazy river pool

After spending some time there, we all went back to the hotel for lunch. THEN….. The wizarding world of Harry potter!

Well, it is in Islands of Adventure. When we went in, there were five islands, Dr. Seussland, the Lost Continent (Ride Posiden’s Fury!!), The Wizarding world of Harry Potter, Super hero island, and Comic/Cartoon mainia! But you know where we’re headed!

We started out Passing Zonko’s and Honey dukes, our destination was the Wizarding World of Harry Potter park!  We finally reached that park.  It looks just like what I saw in the Harry Potter movies! 

The first thing Me and Promethium did was go on the Forbidden Journey.The line was very very long, but it was worth the wait. It was a very cool rollercoaster ride inside the entire castle.  Both my parents were not big fans of scary rides but they went on this one too.  Mom said she actually was relaxed on the ride but had to close her eyes most of the time. It felt like you were flying along with Harry Potter.  As he flew over the mountains in the sky, it felt real and it was scary. 

The end of the ride leads to a giftshop, Filch’s Emporium, and we got a slytherin tshirt ( for someone else,I personally am not a fan of Slytherin), Harry Potter mug, and a golden snitch pin.

Then when we passed a butterbeer keg, I begged my mom for some. We each gat a cup, mom, dad, Promethium, and I. They got the cold kind.. I recommend the frozen kind. it is $4.69, One dollar more than the other kind. 

Frozen Butter Beer - yummy!

We then found out that our giftshop items were missing. We looked under benches, asked around, but couldn’t find them. Later someone told us to go to the gift shop where we bought the stuff, see if anyone had found our sack and took to the store. But no, no one had taken our sack back to the store. However, the store clerks were extremely nice and felt sorry for our loss.  They looked up their cash register to find our purchase transactions. Eventually they found our transactions, and they decided to give us the items we bought.  Just like that, we got our stuff back.  My mom was going to buy another t-shirt because it was for a friend of her work.  What a kind and wonderful magic this was! The park literally covered our own loss!

Well, after that, Me and Promethium rode the flight of the Hippogriff twice. It is not too exciting or scary, just simple, fun, and less than 20 seconds long. At Honeyduke’s, we – Promethium and I- got peppermint toads, sugar sticks, and a bag of assorted candies( expensive, but worth it!) , and at Zonko’s, Promethium got two pink pygmy puffs, one for her, and one for her friend. I got a  purple pygmy puff named Tsi Tzi!

Honey Dukes Candy Shop - awesome!

Go to youtube.com  and search Harry Potter theme park orlando Ollivander’s wand demonstration. It’s funny, and the person chosen gets to do the demo and gets a free wand.

Day-4

The morning wasn’t exciting, the after noon was. We drove 1.232 hours to Daytona Beach and it was AWESOME!!! I used my orange floatie and surfed waves! The big ones just aren’t that big….(NO FISH 😦 )I got alot of saltwater in my eyes.then I collected shells and buried feet, until it was time to go eat dinner. it was a buffet with seafood and RICE PUDDING!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :O

HEY YOU, TRY THIS!

If you hav happen to see sand and water lying around, mix them together to make a sandball. If you are outside with a distracted friend, or in the woods and see a rabbit or bird, THROW IT AT THEM!! THE REACTION IS FUNNY!

Day-5

I watched tv all day and then three was when we had to leave for the airport. 6:10 was our departure. The flight back was like the flight forth, except I went to the bathroom this time. Boring…………..

Well, that’s the end . I’ll update once I remember everything….. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Trip to China 4

Today we went to a park called Tian Tan. It’s really pretty. Along the way there are very pretty trees. Some-times there will be wild cats taking a stroll too. At the end there were two very cute little wild kittens on a tree. They were only about 6 inches long and 3 inches tall! One was white and one was black. If I could keep them as pets, I would name the white one Snowbell and the black one Moonlight. Today is my last day inBeijing. I’m going to Hunan Tomorrow at10:00in the afternoon. There won’t be any internet over there. I’ll make up for the rest of trip when I get back. Until then, see ya!

Trip to China 3

Today is the best day ever! I got to climb the Great Wall of China! My mom and I went to the highest point. For some reason, I didn’t feel tired after the climb. The view is awesome at the top! You can look down and see the beautiful trees and friendly grass green mountains. The Great Wall looks like a gigantic dragon. Once I got to the top I started singing a song that I made up about me climbing the Great Wall. We got up early in the morning at 6:00. Now, you would think that after somebody climbs the Great Wall, they would go home and rest. Well, this girl doesn’t. After I climbed the Great Wall, I went to the place where they had the Olympics in 2008. I got a ring of all five fortune dolls. I also got a very pretty sunhat that’s all different colors. Today is the best day of this trip for sure!

Trip To China 2

Today we went to the Capital Museum. It was very unique. My favorite part was the clothing. I like how the chinese people use animal designs for thier hats and shoes.My second favorite exhibit was the porcelin pots. Theyr’e so shiny and pretty! I noticed that the most common designs are dragons, lotis flower petals, and chrysanthamen flower petals. Here is one thing about this museum that I’ll never forget, my annoying little sister broke a lid from a teapot set that was 600 yuans and my mom had to pay for it! And my mom even told her not to touch it! Today is unforgetable!