Hello! My name is Callum, on the China Trip. Today we had a very early start with some Tai Chi. We did this Tai Chi in a park, and even though the Tai-Chi was difficult to grasp, the whole thing was enriching and interesting. Later we walked through the park, which had an excellent view of the Forbidden City. It had this vantage point from the top of a hill, which was apparently created to prevent wind from hitting the city. Wind hitting you in the back is representative of bad luck in feng shui, so the hill was artificially made by the Emperor.
Next we went to the Beijing No. 4 School in order to participate in the classes. Bejing No. 4 is a school that focuses on the sciences and sports, and hosts the Olympic committee. They even have an awesome observatory. We split into two groups and joined a class. The class was their English class, in which they were reading a story called “It Was a Good Barn.” We were each sent to a group of around five students to discuss this. Coincidentally the students were juniors like me. The story was essentially teaching that a barn and friendships are alike in that you must take care of them in order to keep them alive and well. After we had to create phone conversations to conclude the story. Two girls in my group made a hilarious story about loaned money affecting a friendship. After that we walked around and ended up facing some of the children in ping-pong, which was really fun.
Next we went to an old part of the city with slightly run down buildings. There we saw the Bell and Drum towers, the latter of which we ended up entering. There we saw an invigorating drum show with these enormous drums.
Finally we went to dinner with some of the students from Beijing No. 4, first meeting up in a mall to explore a little bit. I was able to eat lunch with one of the students, whose english name was Francis. He is considering studying abroad, and is into computer science. I also talked to a boy named Fletcher, who was basically a jack of all trades, being interested not only in film and music, but also doing all of the roles inside those fields (meaning he writes, directs, acts, etc. in his films, and he composes, sings and plays for music). Talking to them over dinner was really interesting and I hope that we will keep in touch.
On the bus ride back we were all still a little jet-lagged, so we were all sleeping. Hopefully we will catch up soon, and I look forward to the exciting rest of our trip.
