Well!
Today was definitely a most exciting day. It started out at visiting the first school on our list.
I was a little surprised at how the students greeted and viewed us. I know Mrs. Wiliams had told us we would be greeted like rock stars, but I wasn't totally expecting the jumping, wanting to touch our hands, taking a million pictures, part of it.
We all introduced ourselves on the stage in front of all the students (who were yelling so loud I couldn't hear any of us speak through the microphone!) and then got off the stage to the front row to watch the first acts.
All of the acts were very entertaining; the junior high kids playing the flutes was very cute, and one girl played this unique-looking instrument that I have yet to find the name of, but the sound that came from it was Heavenly, and the break dancing guys were amazing. There was also a group of boys who dressed up in costumes and danced to a song, and a band.
After all those great acts, we went up. I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous, but I tried to get myself out of it. Overall, I think the performance went pretty well. The dance was fun, and it was fun to pull some of the kids on stage and have them dance with us.
Afterwards, we met some students who would be going to college the next year, and we all went into a room to learn how to do Chinese Knot-Tying.
Man! It was hard to learn. Unfortunately, I was a bit slow at the complicated moves and wasn't able to finish my knot, but it was fun to learn, plus we were able to chat with the college students!
After the knot-tying, they surprised us by taking us to an amusement park...that had these AWESOME bike-like things...they looked like gigantic stuffed animals standing on all fours, but you were supposed to sit on them, and put money inside (there was also a steering wheel behind the head), and the big Panda or Tiger would walk you around (COOL).
We all were surprised even more once they told us we would be paintballing...
Now, at first, I wasn't nervous. But I'll admit, after thinking about it a little, I was considering the bruises that could happen. After trekking up a hill that seemed to go on forever, we arrived at the Paintballing-station, and were drilled by an instructor while camoflauge-wearing army kids ran around behind us.
We were told to stand in lines (after teams were picked), and look at the opposing team. We were told that these people before us was the Enemy.
After some words of encouragement from opposing team members,( "I'm gunna take you down!") we pulled on the incredibly (long, for me) hot gear, including a face mask, grabbed our guns, loaded up, and trekked to the battlefield after learning the rules.
We all hid, waited for the whistle, and shot the enemies when we could see them.
Long story short, I was happy, (no bruises!) but a little too overheated after the whole deal.
Overall, it was a fun game. Afterwards, we went to the restaurant to eat, where I discovered that by the end of this trip, I will most likely become a vegetarian (picking up meat with chopsticks is physically impossible for me). We all were sweaty, trying to cool down, when we remembered we were scheduled for a long bike trip afterwards.
Truthfully, we were dreading it, since we were all just about ready to pass out. After eating, we had some time to go back to the amusement park outside, and we ran up a gigantic (hot) slide, and slid down the gigantic (hot) slide, ran into this amazing sideways room, that was very hard to walk in a straight line into (thanks to gravity, we were all falling into the walls), and then realized it was time to go.
Next came the dreaded bike ride. We pulled up to the bike-rental store, and stepped out the bus, and instantly became excited. What was there before us wasn't normal one-person bikes, but these bikes that had 2 (or up to 4) seats, each with a set of pedals.
We all hopped on, forgetting the whole tiredness deal, and were ready in an instant.
However, as TIffany, Kayla, and I discovered, the bikes with 2 seats with pedals, and one regular seat in the back was not such a good idea.
We watched as everyone zoomed past us on their bikes, we got stuck in the middle of every uphill (and we had to push the bike up), and also took a couple of wrong turns.
Even though we had some hard times on that bike, it was a great deal of fun-- after meeting up with Ms. Ross, we got the best ice cream I have ever had (Passion fruit and strawberry...mm), then ran down to the beach and drew our names and PLANO Y.A. 2009 in gigantic letters in the sand.
Once we rounded everyone up, we left back to the school where some of the parent were waiting, then left again to meet up with all the host students. We ended up going to Mos Burger, where there was some AMAZING rice burgers.
A rice burger, as I found out, is not bread with rice for the middle, but packed rice substituting the bun, and pork in the middle along with some lettuce-like vegetable. Afterwards, we went to the shopping mall, walked around, and I bought some shoes, and then we went to see a movie,
which most of us fell asleep to.
Although I didn't get to see it, since I was dozing off most of the movie also, Megan and Amanda were dead asleep.
After the movie, we said our goodbye's and went home.
So far, every day has been packed with fun activities, and I've noticed it is hard to have time to blog every day, so I have been writing them in my phone and then posting them to the website when I'm able!
Did I mention the garbage trucks play the same music our ice cream trucks do?
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