Hong Kong - Farewell China

Hello again!

Guess I am just gunna post a bunch at once (gotta take advantage of that free wifi ya know?!)

Answered comments in one of the other ones I am posting with this one.

Picture – this picture is of me atop Victoria’s Peak looking out over the entire city of Hong Kong on a decently clear night (rarity for China). It was our last evening in China and it was the perfect ending to a truly amazing country.

Well my time in China ended almost as abruptly as it began. Day 7 in China (6th day of our SAS adventure, February 22nd) consisted of an early wakeup call at our hotel 3:45 a.m. to be exact. That was an experience getting to see 100 people, most of which you haven’t known for longer than a week, fresh out of bed. Definitely saw some people’s true colors during the whole process of loading the bus, leaving the bus, going through customs, clearing immigration, and boarding the plane. I thought it was fine at the airport, definitely one of the easier customs at an airport, and there was no line to wait in. Some people however (the morning grouches) were not happy to do anything and just complained the whole time, personally I don’t see what there was to complain about; we were in China and had just had quite possibly the best 6 days anyone could ever hope to have in a foreign country. How could we be unhappy?!?!? It just didn’t make sense to me.

The plane ride to Hong Kong lasted 4.5 hours and the majority of our SAS group slept. I only managed to get an hour of shut eye and spent the remainder of the flight listening to music and reflecting on my journey. Sitting on the ship 3 days later I still can’t believe some of the things I got to experience! I truly had an adventure of a lifetime inside of an experience of a lifetime (Semester at Sea). How did I get to lucky? What did I do to deserve this? I kept making spiritual parallels with the worldly opportunity I had just been given and the spiritual opportunity I was given some 2000 years ago. God gave us the ultimate gift, He gave up his one and only son to die on the cross as payment for our sins, sins we have already committed and sins we have yet to commit. Again I ask…how did we get so lucky? What did we do to deserve this? The simply answer…nothing. We are completely undeserving.

Upon arriving at Hong Kong it was about a 1 hour bus ride to the ship where it took another hour for the ship security to screen all of our bags and allow us to board. By this time it was 1 p.m. and Jeremy, Kevin, and I decided to unpack, change out of the clothes we had been wearing for 3 days, and regroup around 3:30 to go out and see stuff. We were told that some must see places in and around Hong Kong were the markets in the temple district and Victoria’s Peak, so that is what we decided to do. We headed to the temple markets which have absolutely nothing to do with a temple, the street they are on is simple called Temple Street. There was a ladies market, a flower market, a goldfish market, a food market, and an everything market. We walked up and down the vendor lined street for about 3 hours taking in the sights and smells. I personally didn’t buy anything but a soda because we had already loaded up on souvenirs in Beijing and I didn’t want to spend any more money in China that I had to. Oh let me tell you about the Hong Kong subway. Ok so it was crazy crowded!! We were told in pre-port that this would be an issue in Hong Kong and you will never believe what they told us to do. They literally told us to shove people aside to get onto the subway train or you wouldn’t make it in. I had experienced some pretty packed subways in Russia before but this was different. It wasn’t so much that people couldn’t fit but that people would step into the subway and just kinda stop. Apparently the Chinese push each other too so it isn’t considered rude or inappropriate, simply something you have to do. Luckily it was just the 3 of us so we didn’t have to worry about leaving anyone and it wasn’t too big of an issue because the 3 of us were taller than most of the Chinese so we could muscle our way in pretty easy. Just another way of experiencing Chinese culture I guess lol.

After seeing the extent of the various markets we hopped back on the subway to return to the port area in search of dinner before hopping on the ferry to Victoria’s peak. The port terminal that our ship was docked at just happened to be the biggest 21st Century shopping mall in Hong Kong. They had all the major stores that you would expect to find in any mall in America (over 1,000 stores in all). Honestly I looked at a registry and except for regional stores back in Oklahoma there wasn’t one main store that I could name that wasn’t in this mall. Well we just so happened to an American burger joint. The three of us had all had our fair share of authentic Chinese food for the past 6 days so we were craving something different and we couldn’t have asked for anything better. They even had A&W Rootbeer…only my favorite Rootbeer!!! Ahhhhhh I can still taste that bacon, cheeseburger. SO worth it!

With full stomachs we headed to the end of the terminal/mall to the ferry dock and loaded up for our trip across the harbor. The boat ride took all of 6 minutes and we were on Hong Kong Island. Our ship was docked on Knowloon island, which is still Hong Kong, all the islands are just separated by the bays. From the Ferry Dock on Hong Kong Island we hopped on a bus which took us to the cable car station at the bottom of Victoria’s Peak which we rode straight up (literally almost a vertical incline) to the top. Everyone who knows about Hong Kong will tell you to go up Victoria’s Peak at night and they definitely know what they are talking about. It was INCREDIBLE!! You can see the ENTIRE city lit up! We could even see our ship sitting across the harbor gleaming in the night. Then you could walk around on top of the building overlook and look to the south and see ships coming into the harbor and ships sailing out to sea. It was awesome. The pictures I took don’t quite give the view the respect it deserves but I mean what can I say, I just can’t live up to the standards my Dad has imposed on me in the picture taking category, so I apologize if this picture isn't up to snuff pops. Haha oh well I have moved on. We chilled on top of the mountain for awhile just taking it all in before making our way back down the cable car, hopping back on the bus, taking the ferry across the bay, and walking through the mall to our ship. Jeremy decided to stay out later and went his own way at the bottom of the peak when Kevin and I hopped on the bus. By the time both of us returned to the ship is was nearly midnight and we were both about ready to drop like a sack of potatoes. 7 days in China, 6 of which were on a non-stop SAS trip including a 3:45 wake up that morning had finally taken its toll on the 2 of us. It was the best night of sleep I have had on Semester at Sea yet!!

My last day in China was honestly very uneventful. I slept until about 1030, I thought I had set an alarm but honestly I might have turned it off and rolled over because I was so tired I just don’t remember. There really wasn’t much left to do in the city of Hong Kong itself unless you wanted to shop or go outside of the city which I didn’t have a whole lot of time for before on-ship time. So I decided to take advantage of the free wifi in the mall/terminal our ship was docked at. This was the point where I uploaded my first two China blogs. After starting the China blogging process, I did some major research on some of the other ports I am visiting here in the next 2 months because I had access to the good travel sights and not just wikitravel. Before you knew it I had accomplished everything I needed to online and it was rapidly approaching time for me to be on the ship. I re-boarded the ship and said goodbye to China from the back decks of the ship, taking in the lights of Hong Kong harbor one last time.

As I have finished writing about my China travels I am currently in my next port…VIETNAM!! It was only a short 2 day sail and after 1 A day of classes and 1 B day of classes we woke up in Ho Chi Minh City!! Crazy huh?!? I stepped out of one world and into another in the blink of an eye it seems like. I still can’t believe all of this is happening so fast! Well I’m off to explore Vietnam, enjoy the three blogs I just uploaded, sorry again for not being as thorough with some things as some of you might like. If you have any questions about specific things that I might not have mentioned (sorry everything seems to kind of mesh together when I have written so much about China) just make a comment about it on the most recent blog post and I will try my best to address it in the next blog.

Love you and praying for you all!!!

T

“Lord I wanna feel with your heart……see the world through Your eyes.” – Casting Crowns

The Great Wall...Nough Said

Hey again!

I know I just posted another blog simultaneously but I am trying to take advantage of as much free internet as I can because it is expensive on the ship! This blog is about the greatest day I had in China so I felt it was necessary to dedicate an entire post to it.

I responded to comments on the other Beijing blog that I posted right before this one at the same time so no point in doing it again.

The picture I chose is me on the wall and there is a story behind it but I explained it in detail below so I will just let you read it.

Okay so our final day in Beijing (Day 6 in China, Day 5 of the trip, February 21st, and my dad’s Birthday!!) was my most memorable day on the trip so far!!! We woke up early as usual for breakfast at the hotel before loading up the buses and heading outside the city. Our first stop of the day was at the Beijing International Kungfu School!! It was crazy!! The students at this school focus on learning the art of Kungfu. To pay for their schooling, they put on demonstrations and even act as stunt doubles/extras in Hollywood movies. The campus was a simple dormitory building, a courtyard used for training and exercise, and two smaller demonstration building used for performances and competitions. We weren’t exactly given a tour of the facilities but we kind of got one because we had to walk through the courtyard to get to the demonstration building where the students put on a private demonstration for us. Yeah we got to see a Kungfu Demonstration!! Kungfu is widely known as a martial arts form but not many people are aware of the artistic nature behind the skill. Our demonstration was composed of 5+ segments. It’s hard to describe exactly what they were doing but it involved a lot of flips, kicks, jabs, and rolls. It was SICK!! The coolest part in my opinion was watching them do the session where they broke a lot of stuff. To name a few: one guy broke an iron plate on his forehead and another snapped a wooden pole in half with his adams apple. With his ADAMS APPLE?!!?!?! If you don’t believe the last one (I wouldn’t either if someone told me so I don’t blame you) I have a video to prove it. After the demonstration we were allowed to hang out with the monks and take pictures as well as get a small lesson in simple moves that we could practice. Some of the pics we took were sick because the monks would like act like they were kicking us or poses where they jumped over us. Definitely a cool experience to see them perform, and then get a chance to interact with them.

From the school we headed out of town a ways and stopped at lunch at a local restaurant that was located in a greenhouse. It was a little weird eating in a greenhouse and something I never thought that I would do personally. The lunch was the normal family style Chinese cuisine but for some reason we all really like the rice at this place. Don’t know what it was but the rice was just really good! They also gave us this pork dish with peanuts, let me just tell you it was hotter than anything I have ever had before. Nothing in Mexico compared to this stuff. My sinuses cleared up so fast! Then none of us could get the taste out of our mouth lol. My friend Allison and me where two of the first people to try it, so everyone got a good laugh when we started freaking out and chugging water. I mentioned earlier that the Chinese serve a lot of vegetables with their meals. Well you all would be very proud of me, I branched out and ate a good majority of the vegetables. It was a big joke because I bet I ate more green vegetables in the past 8 days than I ate all last year. Haha oh well…when in China, do as the Chinese do!!

After lunch it was time for the highlight of the day. THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA!!!!
Ahhhhhh I don’t even know where to start?!?! It was indescribable! The section of the wall that we went to was the Mutianyu Great Wall. For this section you have to take a gondola from the parking lot up to the wall because this is a section that is nestled into the mountains. Getting to explore this mountainous section of the wall was special for a couple reasons. First, the views were incredible. I love being in the mountains and then to be standing on the GREAT WALL of China and seeing it winding between mountain peaks and disappearing in both directions was just surreal. Second, there were no other tourists around. This section isn’t the most easily accessible section and far enough away from Beijing that not many foreign tourists visit the spot. Besides some Chinese tourists it was basically just our SAS group and the wall. We hiked along 8 stations of the wall (a station is the section between 2 guard towers) and took more photos than any of us know what to do with.

Okay mom don’t read the next part cause it might upset you. Haha just kidding…kinda. So the guard towers that I just mentioned were situated along the walls at intervals but there was no way to get to the top of them because the ladders had been removed. Well I really wanted to get on top of one! Soooooo, Jeremy and I noticed that there weren’t any signs saying we couldn’t climb on the wall, and there was no police or “wall guards” (I mean it is a pretty big wall, it would take a lot of cops to guard) so we were like, “Let’s climb it!” If you climbed up on the side of the actual wall, which was easy, then you could walk across the side and get over to the tower where we found a foot-hold to propel ourselves up high enough to grip the edge and climb on top. The only dangerous part was that if you slipped you feel off the wall and about 70+ feet to the mountain side below. Oh well we made it and it was AWESOME!!! We got some really sweet pics, including the picture that I did for this blog post. The reason I like this picture so much is because it is very similar to a pic I took outside Barcelona a couple summer ago (except for the fact that The Great Wall is WAY cooler!!!). You can kind of tell but I am standing on the edge of the wall in a little nook, but the edge none the less, with a straight drop behind me. Sorry mom…kinda lol. Well we had been ahead of most of the SAS group so when they saw us up on the tower a lot of people decided they wanted to do it too. That’s right…trend setta baby!!! The views were sweet from on top of the tower and it was awesome getting to chill up there for a little bit. Getting down from the tower was a little hairy but we all made it down safe and sound for the most part (couple people scraped themselves up but nothing serious) and continued hiking around.

Gahhhhhhh I still can’t believe I got to experience the Great Wall!! A year ago I had no clue I would get the opportunity to go on Semester at Sea, let alone see the Great Wall! A couple of us were talking about it as we were walking along and it was so weird thinking that we were actually there. We were actually walking on the Great Wall of China!! After 2 hours of hiking around it was time to head back down to the base of the mountain to do a little market shopping before boarding the buses. I mentioned that we used a gondola to get up, but to get down we got to ride in little single person toboggans on a steel track! Okay that was fun…all you have is a hand break and using it is optional. Yeah I didn’t use mine except for when I came flying around a corner and Jeremy, who was in front of me, had stopped because there was a slow Chinese family making their way down in front of us. Yeah I didn’t stop in time and plowed into Jeremy but we just laughed and kept going. The toboggan was just another random surprise that none of us knew about that was so sweet!!

The bus ride back to Beijing was a little over 1.5 hours so a lot of people slept (not me, how could I sleep after seeing THE Great Wall?!?!). Our last dinner of the trip was at a local restaurant that was similar to everywhere else we had been. But the real finale to the trip was after dinner. Our last activity as a group was to specially attend an authentic Chinese Acrobatic show. The show was held in a theater much like you would expect to watch a Broadway show in. Okay these acrobats made the Kungfu dudes (which were wicked sweet) look lame. They were doing things that were amazing!! A couple of people in our SAS group had seen Cirque De So Le before and they said it didn’t even compare to what we all saw. They said that these acrobats made the Cirque De So Le people look like amateurs. I personally don’t know about that but because I haven’t seen Cirque De So Le, but all I know it that whatever I saw was outstanding. We were all sitting on the edge of our seats the whole time just waiting to see what they would do next. It was the perfect ending to the best SAS trip we could have ever asked for!!

Looking at the Great Wall, I couldn’t help but think about my tower and source of protection…Jesus Christ. Compared to Christ, even something as Immense and Incredible as the Great Wall is reduced to nothing. The protection provided by the Great Wall pales in comparison to the protection provided by our Lord and Savior. “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe” Proverbs 18:10. “Jesus, Jesus, you are my tower Lord. Jesus, Jesus, the rock I stand on. Jesus, Jesus, there is no other name, like Your name…there is no other name, like Your name…ohhhhh Looorrrddddd and, I am weak, but, YOU are strong, and, I know I must learn to wait on YOU!!!” Brad Kilman. Christ will never leave us nor forsake us and His power is second to no one.

Love you guys and hope all is well back home!

T

Beijing - Where to Begin...

Yo Yo Yo!!

How are you all?!?! I know I am posting these super fast but I am getting the chance to use free internet so I figured I would just load all the China blogs that I have typed in the past 2 days. After this it will slow down for awhile because I will be living it up in Vietnam. Enjoy!

Shout Out Comments – JT – Haha yeah I got really lucky and got to see a ton in China! That market was crazy cool and they were really good with their English. It’s weird to think that we probably bartered with some of the same people haha. Yeah I am actually uploading these blogs from a hotel business center in Vietnam while waiting for the War Museum across the street to open. I already love Vietnam and can’t wait to spend the next 5 days here taking in the culture. Vietnam is beautiful and the people are awesome!

The picture I chose for this section of the blog is of Kara and I in front of the famous gate separating Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden Square (read on for a better description). You can see the famous picture of Mao Zedong in the background. Kara and I were in front of this little dragon/lion figure (it is over my left shoulder, kinda looks like it is biting me actually) so we decided to give our best impersonation attempt. Got some weird looks from people but it’s whatever! Not like we will ever see those people again right lol.

Hope you all enjoyed the first couple China blogs. As I start to write about the rest of my journey I am overwhelmed by the fact that I have no clue where to begin. Guess I will just start writing and see what happens so here goes nothing!

Alright so day 3 of my China tour trip (overall it was day 4 in China and February 19th). The morning consisted solely of transferring to the airport in our buses and taking a 1.5 hour flight to Beijing. All three groups were together on the same flight this time so that vast majority of the plane was all the SASers traveling in a huge group. We flew with a different airline this time but the experience was pretty much the same. The cabin crew was excellent and the food was even better! They definitely blow the American airline companies out of the water as far as good food being served. Upon arrival in Beijing we were transferred by buses (still in the same 3 groups as in Xi’an…Bus C for life!!) to our hotel for the duration of our stay, the Courtyard Marriot Hotel. On the way to our hotel we stopped for lunch at a local restaurant. Very similar to all the other Chinese meals up to this point: family style food (lots of it), chopsticks only, and your basic meats and vegetables.

After eating our group meal we proceeded to the hotel to drop off our suitcases (wait didn’t have suitcases, basically just our backpacks lol) then we had the rest of the day to do as we wanted. This was the only part of our China SAS trip that we had as free time and they chose to give it to us at the beginning of Beijing so that if there was anything specific we wanted to see we could do it first. The group I ended up hanging out with for the remainder of the day was Kevin, Jeremy, Jose (my roommate for the 3 nights in Beijing), and Gabby. So the five of us took off as soon as we could because by the time we got to the hotel it was already close to 3 and we wanted as much time as we could while we had freedom. For the first couple hours we wandered around the city trying to make our way to the local market district. This was actually quite entertaining because we definitely got lost. Jeremy was the one who “knew where we were going” but this didn’t turn out to be true. Somehow we ended up at Tiananmen Square which was where we were going the next day so we didn’t want to waste time viewing it when it was built into our tour later on. We also ran into another group of 3 girls (Stephanie, Lauren, and forgot the 3rd girl’s name) who were trying to make their way to the same spot we were. We spent time trying to find someone who spoke English to give us directions and ended up finding a group of tourists from Iran who took some time to point out the right direction. They told us to go south of the Square for about half a mile and then head east and we would run into it. So off we went, blindly following some random tour guide’s advice and hoping that Jeremy would get us there. Kevin and I were convinced that we needed to head north despite what the tour guide said but our advice fell on deaf ears. Well I don’t know what kind of tour guide this guy was or if he was just a major rookie but he sent us in the totally opposite direction. We walked for about a mile and a half in the wrong direction before realizing that Kevin and I had been right all along. It actually ended up being quite funny and we had found some random shops to head into on the way so we didn’t really care but it was fun giving Jeremy and Jose crap the rest of the night and bragging that we (Kevin and I) had been right. At this point it was getting close to 6 so we decided to take a taxi to where we wanted to go instead of backtracking what we had just walked.

We ended up at the right place somehow after a taxi ride (split into 2 groups of 4) that included us passing the exact same spot we were at Tian’an men Square which gave us more ammo to hassle Jeremy with lol. Okay this night market was so legit!! There was a giant avenue that was closed to traffic. On one side there was a 21st Century mall with all your high dollar stores then on the other side it was like a totally different world with all these little allies filled with street vendors selling everything from fake hand bags to every type of street-fair-food imaginable. We headed for the vendors because that was just way more appealing to all of us. Okay the food was dirt cheap so we decided to try all sorts of things. I tried the Chinese version of a Gyro (nothing compared to a Gyro in the Muslim quarter in Spain), some basic pork buns which were INCREDIBLE, these candy coated strawberries which were like little drops of heaven on a skewer stick, then for the best item of the night…SCORPION ON A STICK!!! Alright I definitely had to try that, I mean how many chances do you get to try scorpion on a stick?!?! The scorpions on a stick came with 4 on one skewer for like $1.50 which was perfect because I wanted one, Kevin, Jeremy, and the other girl whose name I forgot wanted one; which was a perfect 4! Oh and I should also mention that the scorpions are alive and squirming on the stick and then when you pay for it they fry them in front of you and season them with something. So that was cool seeing them squirm and then eating them 2 minutes later. No one wanted to be the first one to try it so I was like shoot I’ll do it! So I did and it wasn’t bad at all, definitely had worse things before lol. With the seasoning and it being fried it was nothing we couldn’t handle. Jeremy and Kevin did fine with theirs too but the one girl struggled. She did not like it at all!! I actually have a video of all 4 of us eating it for all you doubters back home; just made sure I would have proof! Sampling the street food was awesome; I’m actually surprised it didn’t get sick the next day because they were like legit back alley street fair vendors. Oh well I guess Pepto really does work!

After our experience travelling through the various vendors it was closer to 8 and we were ready for dinner because we had all just snacked on the various small vendor foods. The three girls that had met us at the square earlier went and did their own thing because they weren’t hungry enough to eat dinner yet. We headed back out onto the avenue in search of a restaurant. Nothing was close by and eventually we settled on McDonalds because there were no legit restaurants anywhere close and Jeremy and I wanted to try a Chinese Big Mac to compare it to an American one. Honestly I didn’t think there was much of a difference except that the American Big Mac is definitely greasier. Jeremy swears that the Chinese Big Mac was better so I mean who really knows. Another bonus was the fact that the Olympics were on so we were able to enjoy some Women’s Snowboard Super-pipe while we ate which was nice cause it was a sport that was actually fun to watch, unlike curling that always seemed to be on at the hotels. It was nice having an American meal after 4 straight days of Chinese food and everyone enjoyed their meal. Afterwards we walked around the hotel a little more, found a nice tea shop where Jeremy bought some tea (I found cheap loose leaf tea the day before so I had already bought my bag of tea for China). Then Gabby got a Starbucks cause of course there was one of those in the mall. By the time we left the mall and walked around the city for a little longer, it had gotten pretty chilly so we grabbed a cab and headed back to the hotel. We hung out for another hour or two in the hotel before calling it a night.

Day 5 in China (4 of the trip, February 20th) was jam-packed with sights to see and things to do. Breakfast was served in our hotel like every other morning and then we loaded the buses for transportation to our first stop of the day – Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City! I was really excited for this because whenever you see pictures of Beijing or hear about people going to Beijing you hear about the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. The Square was huge!! We found out that it is the largest public square in the world. It is famous because on the north end is where Mao Zedong gave his famous speech founding the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. We spent about an hour getting a tour of the square, a history lesson from our tour guide Jason, and then taking pictures with all our friends in front of the famous gate on the north end.

After the tour of the square, which was mainly spent walking across it, we entered the Forbidden City through the Rostrum (Tiananmen Gate) which is the big building connecting the north side of Tiananmen Square to the south end of the Forbidden City that has the giant picture of Mao Zedong on it. The Forbidden City was created in 1420 by Emperor Yongle and was home to 24 emperors after him. The entire complex consists of 8,706 rooms all within 170 acres that are surrounded by walls more than 30 feet high and within a 160 foot moat. The Forbidden City is split into an inner courtyard (where the emperor used to stay) and the outer courtyard which was for public events, guests, and the governmental leaders at the time. No one has lived in the Forbidden City since 1924 and its purpose now is a cultural landmark open to tourists and interested Chinese visitors. Like I said the city is situated on 160 acres so it took us awhile to cross from the south end to the north end while constantly stopping for pictures and explanations of the purpose behind certain building and/or structures. After 2+ hours of taking in the Forbidden City we exited through the north gate and walked a little ways to our buses that were parked down the street.

The next part of our day was truly as treat for everyone. We were split up into small groups of about 15 people and taken to individual families to experience a customary meal that would be served to visiting family and friends. It was awesome to get to see the inside of an average Chinese household, meet the family, and experience the famous Chinese hospitality firsthand. Before the meal we were given a private lesson on how to make Chinese dumplings (Jiaozi) by hand like the Chinese people have been doing for decades. The lady was very patient with us despite our inability to do it right; eventually we finished our lesson and were served all sorts of veggies and then the dumplings! They made us SO much food!! Chinese custom is to always make more food than is necessary to show that you are capable of being hospitable and providing enough food to satisfy your guests. It was very different from the customs of countries like Mexico where leaving food on the table is a sign of disrespect so it was a unique experience to me and I was privileged to have gotten the opportunity. The family also had a talking bird hanging above their doorway that would say “knee-how” (hello) back to you if you said it to him. That was also entertaining because the bird spoke more Chinese than all of us haha.

After spending time with our individual families and eating more dumplings than I could count, we were met by a fleet of Trishaw for a Trishaw tour of Hutong, a narrow network of lanes created by closely built quadrangular homes. The Trishaws were much like what you would find in New York City with a bicycle that was attached to a little carriage that could hold 2 people. We all paired up and went for our little tour of Hutong area. Mom it wasn’t quite as crazy as our ride through NYC as we didn’t have to dodge taxis, just other trishaws that our friends were in. My driver was named MAO and he was legit! I was riding with Ali and we would cheer and stuff and he would cut the other trishaws off and pass them if they went to slow. It was fun riding around and saying “knee-how” to the people as we drove by. It was cool seeing a more relaxed area of the city with fewer people and no traffic because the streets were too narrow for cars. Our trishaw tour was followed by a short stop at a local silk factory. Alright the silk factory was the biggest waste of time EVER and was totally unnecessary. It was just a modern tourist trap where they gave us a short 10 min talk on the process of getting silk and what they do with it; then they expect you to buy stuff at the store like scarves and blankets that were ridiculously overpriced. I think only one person bought something and it was a life-long learner so that doesn’t count. No one really enjoyed it and we were all ready to leave as soon as we got there lol.

The last stop of the day for our group was the Beijing 2008 Olympic Village. Alright that was way cooler than I thought it would be! I was looking forward to it but once we got there and were staring at the Bird’s Nest, Torch Tower, and the Bubble Aquatics Centre it really hit me where I was!! We got to walk down the streets where the marathons were held leading into the Bird’s Nest for the finish line. We weren’t given a tour of the village but simply got free time to explore the Bird’s Nest and surrounding area. The Bubble Aquatics Centre where Phelps won all his medals was undergoing renovation at the time so we weren’t allowed to tour the inside. Definitely a bummer but at least we still got to see. Ok so the Bird’s Nest was incredible!! We weren’t allowed to go on the floor because there was a winter festival going on and it would have cost a lot of money to go onto the floor which was covered with fake snow for the kids. So a group of us did the next best thing…we went all the way up to the far corner of the building on the top row to get some sweet pics! It was quite a hike up there but well worth it!! The architecture of the building is insane and it was just cool to know that so many Olympic events were held in the building, especially the amazing opening ceremonies with all the lights and drums. Very, very cool and we were all stoked to see the Bird’s Nest in its entirety. Just something about being there were so many people were a year and a half ago and imagining what they saw and the excitement in the air, it was so tight!!

Following our time at the Olympic Village, we loaded up and headed to our dinner location. This night we got the privilege of enjoying a traditional Beijing dinner…the Beijing Duck Dinner. We were taken to the Tangyuan Restaurant which specializes in preparing this duck. The customary way to cook this duck consists of slow roasting the duck in an oven at a certain temperature for a certain length of time in order to get the outside crispy but the inside extremely tender. I really like duck so I thoroughly enjoyed the dinner. Some people at our table weren’t too crazy about the duck meat which was fine because Chris and I did like it so we ate all the leftovers. The chef also was standing in the middle of the room constantly carving more strips off the duck to disperse among the tables. That was cool too because we got to see the entire duck before he started carving it, not really anything new to me cause I am around dead ducks all the time but it was cool to see their method of cooking and serving the duck. Much different than we do it at the ranch, but tasty nonetheless. Although I will definitely stay with the way we do back in Oklahoma pops. Nothing like a good marinade, so says the good Doc himself! Oh and I won’t go into detail right now, but there was also an incident between me and a waitress due to a language barrier but I will save that one for this summer. Just ask me about it when you see me if you wanna know. Dinner went late and afterwards I decided to call it a night after briefly chilling with some people in the hotel when we got back.

Well I just wrote 5 pages about 2 days in China and I feel like I didn’t do it justice. I could write so much more about what I talked about and then there are probably over 100 smaller stories that I could spout off but that would take FOREVER!! So this will just have to do for now I guess. Hope you all enjoyed it!

In Joshua 1:8-9 it says “For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Wherever I go. Even in China, surrounded by over 1 billion people, God never left my side. Little, insignificant me. God was with me. How flipping crazy is that?!?! One in a sea of many and God never took his eyes off of what I was doing. This truth is so incredible to think about, yet something that we so easily take for granted as we go through our daily lives. Think of how differently we would lead our lives if we dwelt on the fact that Christ was always right by our side? I guarantee you that it would make a difference! A drastic difference! Think about it, I know I did when I was overwhelmed by the mass of people everywhere in China.

Miss you all and hope everything is going great! Love you guys!!

T

Xi'an - I'm so Excited, I Just Can't Hide It!

Hello again!

Guess I was able to post this a lot quicker than I thought haha. I’m taking advantage of some free wifi in Hong Kong. I’m actually posting this at the same time as the one before it so if you are reading this one before the first China one I would recommend going back one blog so that everything makes sense. The Shanghai blog is the first China blog and you will be able to find it by just going back one blog.

No point in Comment Shout-Outs because I answered the previous ones in the Shanghai blog that I just posted and no one has had time to comment yet lol.
The picture I chose for Xi’an is of me standing in front of the terra cotta warriors!! It was the highlight and main attraction in Xi’an so I definitely wanted to make it my pic! You can read more about the warriors below so I won’t ruin it. But yeah it was SICK!!

So Day 2 in China (February 17) was the beginning of my 6 Day/5 Night SAS trip to Xi’an and Beijing. Everyone on the trip was required to meet in the Union at 830 am to acquire our itineraries and check in. Once everyone was there they split us into 3 groups alphabetically and these were the groups we would be with for the rest of the trip as far as being assigned to a tour guide and bus. I was in the 3rd group…the one and only group C! We actually had a really bomb group and I am glad I was in Group C! We loaded up in the buses and headed to the airport. On the bus my friend Ali started singing “I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it,” which was true for everyone so we made that our motto for the beginning of the trip. Groups A and B were both on the noon flight to Xi’an while Group C was on the 1 pm flight to Xi’an an hour later. Some people in our group complained about this because their friends were on the other flight but I was the opposite and was excited because then we didn’t have to keep track of as many people; and we had assigned seats anyway so it’s not like you could choose to sit by your friends. I really like to travel so it was exciting flying on a Chinese airline for the first time and seeing their way of doing things on the plane. Honestly the plane was the exact same, the majority of stuff was in English; the only major difference was the food and beverage service. The Chinese know how to do it man, their airplane food was bomb!! It was actually real food and I didn’t hear anyone in our group complain.

Something you all should know, this was a 6 day/5 night trip and we were all only allowed to bring carry-ons. On all SAS overnight trips you are only allowed carry-ons so that we don’t run the risk of losing bags in transit and being slowed down at the airport. This of course did not sit well with some of the girls, because they were limited to either a backpack or small duffel, and then their purses. Haha it was really funny to see what some people considered priorities for a 6 day China trip, definitely had people from all ends of the spectrum as far as what was packed. I didn’t think it was that bad, but Mike Wall prepared me for this 3 years ago when we all just had a carry-on for the Nicaragua mission trip. Thank you Senor! And of course we had people who didn’t like flying but you always do in big groups.

The flight lasted 2.5 hours and was uneventful for the most part. No one really slept because we were all so stoked about the awesome trip we were starting!! At the Xi’an airport we met up with our tour guides and headed to our respected buses. The first stop of the day was to the Tang Dynasty Art Museum where we received personalized lessons in the art of Chinese calligraphy. Okay I didn’t expect it to be easy or anything but calligraphy is NOT easy. It took me 15 minutes just to get one symbol to where it didn’t look like a baby wrote it (Daryl I’m pretty sure Logan could do this stuff better than me haha). We were told it takes years of constantly writing the language to perfect it. The cool part was that there are only 8 basic strokes that are combined in various ways to make all the symbols; what they don’t tell you is that 5 of those 8 strokes are ridiculously hard. It was really cool getting a calligraphy lesson and a nice little surprise to start our trip off with.

After the art museum and calligraphy lesson we headed to our first meal of the trip. Every meal on this trip was included in the prepaid price and they were all much better than any of us could have hoped for. This first dinner was a Dim sum dinner at De Fa Chang. Okay so De Fa Chang’s is the most famous dumpling restaurant in all of Xi’an and is a multiple story restaurant. We met up with the other 2 groups and sat down to enjoy our meal. We didn’t get to order anything but our drinks and literally as soon as we sat down food was brought to us and placed in front of us. In China all the meals are family style except for the Westernized restaurants so the food is just placed on platters in the center of the table. Our dinner consisted of 18 different types of dumplings with fillings ranging from duck to pork to veggies. I every dumpling I tried which was 17 of them (I gave my buddy my vegetarian one for his spicy chicken one). It’s amazing how unique the different ones were and how awesome they all tasted!

The restaurant was located in the center of the inner city of Xi’an (Xi’an is formatted exactly like Jerusalem with an inner and outer city separated by a wall) and it was crazy! Like I said previously it was the end of Chinese New Year so they were people everywhere. Fireworks were going off like every other minute and the coolest part was the lanterns. They were all over the place, just floating up into the air with the little flame inside. It was like we walked into a movie, I can’t even describe was it was like to see the sky lit up with fireworks, building lights, and hundreds of lanterns. How did we get so lucky? We didn’t expect any of this and it was just good timing that it all happened when we were there. Crazy huh?!?! We had the option of returning to the hotel with the buses or heading out on our own and finding our own way back. I headed off with a group of people to wander around the inner city while the festivities were going on for about an hour then we headed back to the hotel to call it a night. We stayed the night in the Xi’an Jianguo Hotel which was insanely nice and none of us really expected to be staying in such a nice hotel. I fell asleep to the sweet sound of fireworks which is something that was quite alright with me even though some people weren’t okay with it the next morning haha.

Day 2 in Xi’an (February 18th) was packed with stuff. Like I said earlier there is no way I can describe everything in as much detail as I want to but I will do my best. We ate breakfast at our hotel then headed out bright and early to start our day. The first stop was the Xi’an city wall that separated the outer and inner city. We were given free time to hike around, take pictures, and climb one of the bell towers that was used as a guard tower back when the city wall protected the city. There was also this really cool bell we were allowed to ring with the old wooden pendulum that you swung into it. That was cool cause the bell was really loud and it was cool cause it was still mounted on the wall! We were only there for about 45 minutes so we didn’t have too much time to really walk along the wall but we were all able to see enough of it to get a feel for the history and significance behind the wall.

After the Xi’an wall, we headed to the Muslim district of the city to see the Great Mosque and Old Bazaar areas. The district was nestled into a corner of the city and it was weird going from the busy city streets to this religious area within just 25 yards. The Mosque was situated behind the Bazaar and was comprised of rectangular courtyards lined up in a row. Each courtyard contained some sort of wooden or stone alter/statue in the middle with buildings lining the sides and gates separating the courtyards. After touring the Mosque grounds we headed through the old Bazaar area on our way back to the buses. The Bazaar was lined with vendors trying to sell all kinds of stuff. We had some free time to shop around and see what we could find and then try to barter for a lower price. It was really cold in Xi’an that day so a lot of people were buying fake name brand gloves for extremely cheap and warm, fur-lined hats to wear around. The atmosphere was fun because we were with all 100 SAS kids and adults from the trip and everyone was bartering and trying to get the best deal.

Once everyone was assembled back at the buses we made our way out of Xi’an an hour or so to a restaurant on the way to our next destination. The lunch was another traditional family style setting but the food was totally different. Pork and chicken are the main meats served in China and are accompanied with various forms of vegetables, and of course, RICE! I have never been a real big fan of sticky rice but I sure am a fan of Chinese sticky rice! It was so good! Oh and did I mention that we ate every meal with chopsticks?!?! Yeah there is no such thing as western silverware at the places we went to. It took awhile to get good enough to pick up some of the stuff but after 8 days of chopstick usage I can honestly say that I can now eat a meal using only chopsticks! The best part of this specific meal was these potato lumps that were glazed with honey, and not just a hint of honey, like a legit honey coat over them. SOOOOOOO TASTY!!

Everyone was full and satisfied heading back to the buses as we made our way to the highlight of Xi’an…THE TERRA COTTA WARRIORS!! Ok they were indescribable! I don’t even know where to start. Basically everything you have ever heard about them is true. For those of you who don’t know, the Terra Cotta Warriors were constructed by the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (no relation to Jimmy, sorry man haha), Qin Shi Huangdi. They were buried with him in order to protect him after death as well guard his tomb. The estimated 8,000 terra cotta soldiers are a testament to his power and megalomania. Each figure is the same height and every face is constructed completely unique. Our guide told us that if a carver made the features of any face even remotely similar the carver would be killed on the spot. The warriors were discovered by peasants in 1974 while trying to dig a well. In the main and most impressive vault (Pit 1), the majority of the warriors has been uncovered and remains in their typical battle formation in 11 columns comprised of officers, soldiers holding spears and swords, and others steering horse-drawn chariots. The pit is huge! My best guess is around 7-9 football fields lined up like hotdogs (which by the way sounds amazing right now), and a building has been built around it to protect the warriors from Mother Nature. In addition to Pit 1, there is also Pits 2 and 3 which are at different stages of excavations and then a 4 building called the treasure room which has smaller artifacts that were discovered intact with the warriors. Including two bronze chariots consisting of 4 horses each and unique chariot styles. It’s crazy that these were just discovered only 36 years ago?!?! Considered by many to be the “8th Wonder of the World,” it was truly a treat to get to experience these warriors and view them in person. I don’t really know what else to say about the warriors except WOW, I still can’t believe I actually saw them a couple days ago. It’s insane!!!! I will be able to go into more detail in person when I see you all and have pictures but for now hopefully this gives you an idea.

After spending a couple hours taking in the warriors and everything associated with them, we headed out into a small village for a visit to one of the Xi’an Orphanages. The orphanage was very nice compared to some places I have visited and the kids actually had beds with sheets and blankets as well as indoor plumbing in each building. This specific orphanage is currently home to around 100 orphans whose parents are either in prison or who abandoned them at an early age. Two young boys that I met had been found last year around New Years by a police man on the street. The boys were abandoned by their parents and their names and ages are unknown. The best guess by the orphanage is that one is around 6 and the other around 3. It was heart-breaking to see these kids who were simply left by their parents. Just makes you appreciate what we have and the amazing parents God blessed us with. We were giving a tour of the orphanage and then they put on a little show for us. It was really cool to see these little kids excited that we were there. The hardest part was the language barrier. I have dealt with language barriers in Mexico before and usually sign language was enough to get by. Man not with these kids, I have never had such a hard time trying to communicate simple things. It was difficult and frustrating but eventually it got easier.

We had to leave the orphanage shortly after arrival which was lame, we all wanted to stay with the kids! The drive back to Xi’an took around an hour and a half and most people either slept or listened to music. Tonight’s dinner just happened to be the Tang Dynasty Dinner Show. The meal was first and was a 7 course meal served in a Westernized fashion with our own individual plates. Okay this was the best food I have eaten since I left Oklahoma. We had everything from soup to duck to some sort of really tender beef. It was sooooooo good. After enjoying a more relaxed dinner and chilling with traditional Chinese string music playing on the stage, the show really started. The performance consisted of Chang’an music and dance with originated in China’s Tang Dynasty over 1000 years ago. The show was rich with tradition and truly unique to China. It was Crazy Cool and just another example of something cool that none of us expected 2 months ago when we signed up for this trip. The dinner and show lasted around 2.5 hours and afterwards most people decided to just chill at the hotel because we were all beat from walking around all day and seeing everything. It was also nice cause we got to catch bits and pieces of the Olympics in the hotel which made a lot of people extremely happy lol. And this concluded my second day in Xi’an.

I know I could have said more and was really vague in some points but I promise I will explain more this summer when I see you all. If there are any specific questions you want answered just comment and I will do my best to answer it in one of the next blogs.

Love you guys and wish you were all here with me!!

T

“The greatest and best man in the world must say, ‘By the grace of God I am, what I am,’ but God says absolutely…‘I am that I am.’” - Matthew Henry

Shanghai in a Day

Knee-How! (Hello in Chinese…not how you spell it but this gives you a better idea of what it sounds like)

First and foremost, we have a birthday to celebrate. For those of you that didn’t know, my dad (also known as “Slick Willie” to some of you) turned 50 on Sunday, February 21, 2010. I want to wish you a very happy birthday dad and I am sorry I missed your party. I wish I could have been there! I still can’t believe your 50!?! Not many people have dads like you and I thank God each and every day for you! Love ya more than you know pops, I couldn’t have asked for a better dad and I am who I am today because of you. Love you and hope you had a great birthday!!

The picture above is from our day of shopping and walking around (you will read about all of this below). From left to right you have Austin, Me, Kevin, and Buddy. The picture was taken right before another one and we were all cracking up at something Austin had said so one of the girls took a pic and it turned out to be a really good candid shot. Behind us is Shanghai harbor and you can see some of the giant buildings on the other side of the water in the distance.

Comment Shout-Outs!! – Everyone from Henderson Hills. I was thinking about you all a lot last weekend during Big Weekend, and it killed me to not be there with you guys. I pray that God spoke to each and every one of you and that your weekend was incredible. Love you and miss you all!! Nat – sorry about the sushi thing, guess we will just have to hit up the other normal food places haha. It’s amazing how much I miss the Norman food joints, I will just have to come up during finals week and distract you! Hope all is well in Theta world…miss ya girl! Logan – Brotha what’s up?!?!? So since I had some free internet time in port I was able to go back over the past blogs and I noticed your one from like 5 posts ago that I must have just barely missed. My bad man I feel bad, but I get really limited time on the ship so I just log on long enough to check the comments from the last blog and then post my new one. I didn’t hear that you all had switched to middle school worship leaders but that is really cool! I know it might be weird at times cause you miss the high schoolers but that is another area that you will have experience in that God will use to help you in the future. He is preparing you man! As far as Valentine’s Day goes, I’m sure you didn’t have 1 date but more like 8, and don’t lie to me because I will find out. If Natalie Parker and Hollis are reading this keep it up! Alex I know you are bugging him so just do it double and blame it on me haha. Dude that is sick that you guys got a 6 day weekend. I bet that was much appreciated by all you guys. Dude N64 is where it’s at on snow days! That’s awesome! Never saw Up, heard good things tho. Star Trek is so tight, glad you finally experienced it! And Book of Eli was so freaking good wasn’t it! My second favorite Denzel movie behind Remember the Titans! Heck yeah you are still being harassed! Because it is true and there is no escaping that reality!! Know I am messing with you in spirit every time Alex says something! Dude God is mysterious but it is a wonderful type of mysterious! I wish I was there to talk about it too man…but we got all summer coming up! Hope you are enjoying school (as much as you can lol), love ya bro!

Alright so I know it has been awhile since I last blogged and I am sorry about that! I have been on the China trip of a lifetime the past 8 days and haven’t had access to a computer until yesterday. As I sit down to write about my time in China I have no clue where to begin. I have literally been going non-stop for the past 7.5 days and I am worn out in the best way imaginable. Seeing that I have 8 days worth of stuff to tell you all about there is no way I can fit it all in one blog without writing an overwhelming amount. I have decided to simply split my China adventure into 1, 2, or 3 day segments as I see fit and upload the posts as quickly as I can get them done (after all I only have 2 days until I reach Vietnam). So basically what I am saying is that I might be posting 3-5 different blogs about China I just don’t know yet; and I don’t know how fast I will be able to write them so I might upload more than one in the span of a day or it might take me a week to finally upload everything about China. Just have to wait and see I guess haha. Alright no enough talk…let me tell you about China!!!!!

I didn’t make any expectations going into China because I didn’t know what to expect in a country that is so diverse and different than anywhere I have ever been. Definitely a great idea!! China was awesome and mainly because I let myself experience it for what it really was, not what I wanted it to be or expected it to be. Another big bonus was the fact that the first couple days we were there happened to be the last few days of the Chinese New Year celebration. Yeah I said Chinese New Year, and you know what that means…….fireworks!!!!!!! During this specific span of time you can set off fireworks anywhere in the city and it is completely legal! So we would be walking or driving down the street and all of the sudden a strand of blackcats would go off or a mortar would explode right over your head. Definitely something I could get used to!! Jarrett let me just tell ya, we definitely could have gotten into some serious trouble together!! America needs to take notes and allow this kind of behavior in our city streets…I mean only like a couple days around the 4th of July…think of how awesome that would be?!?!

China was a unique country in many ways. First off the food is absolutely incredible! It wasn’t hard at all to simply eat the Chinese food. A lot of the dishes we were served/purchased were similar but different enough so that we didn’t get bored. Second, the air quality in China is pretty much what you hear about on the news. Every day there is just thick smog hanging in the air which prevents you from seeing the blue sky and sun. Think of a real thick fog right above the building that doesn’t leave and is constantly there. I personally didn’t like this and would rather have an Oklahoma sky any day; and since none of us were used to it we all had really runny noses the whole trip because of the amount of dust and crap in the air. Another thing was the people. They were way friendlier than the Japanese as far as simply passing someone on the street. If you smiled and waved at someone they would smile back and acknowledge you instead of avoiding eye contact. It was also cool because we were at a lot of the big touristy spots in Xi’an, Beijing, and Hong Kong (you will read about these cities in the coming blogs) so we also were running into Chinese tour groups. It was fun waving to them from the buses and seeing them get excited to see American tourists doing the same thing as them. The Chinese people were amazing, hospitable, and considerate which makes leaving China even more difficult.

Day 1 in China was so much fun! The morning started with a mandatory diplomatic briefing at 8 am where two members of the U.S. consulate in Shanghai came aboard to brief us on certain Chinese customs, rules, regulations, etc. that we should be aware of as Americans traveling throughout the country. Some of the information was helpful but most of it was routine stuff that applies to traveling anywhere and not just China. The briefing lasted a little over an hour and afterwards we sat around the ship waiting for the customs/immigration process to begin. We were called according to our seas starting around 10 am and the ship was cleared (we were allowed to get off) around noon. Clearing customs/immigration was very easy despite having to get our temperature taken to get off. The group I hung out with for the first day consisted of Austin, Buddy, Kevin, Natalie, Abby, Allyssa, and Mem. Our first priority was to get Yuan (Chinese Currency) and our second priority was to get food…I mean the food was really priority numero uno but to get food we had to have Yuan to pay with so getting money became priority number one by default. There was a ton of SASers at the ATMs so that took awhile but eventually we were able to get cash and start our search for an authentic Chinese restaurant. We walked up to this one restaurant and realized that it was a hot-pot restaurant; the only thing written in English on the outside of the building was a sign that said “Come a pot of lamb spinal cord” so we were like “Yep, we have to eat here now.” Two of the girls weren’t too excited at first because of the sign but soon realized that it was a normal restaurant. We walked in, got a table, and luckily our waiter spoke a little English. He was really cool and was more interested in where we were from and what we were doing than taking our order. It was nice seeing hospitality like that in a waiter right off the bat and made the experience much more enjoyable. The restaurant was very traditional and our meal was awesome! It was a huge pot of broth with mutton (lamb), cabbage, yams, potatoes, some random Chinese veggies, and then we added some dumplings and beef for good measure. You let everything boil in the pot in the center of the table and then help yourselves as you get hungry. Ahhhhhh it was soooooooo bomb!!! Then I got this huge 1.5 liter coke with my meal that was less than $1 U.S. In total, when it was all said and done, we each paid around $6 U.S. for the whole meal and our drinks and we were stuffed!!

After lunch we headed out into Shanghai to do some shopping. We started out just walking around aimlessly and seeing what we could find to do. After seeing the port area and some random stuff we decided to take these motorized rickshaws to an area called the Tao Bao Market. Okay so these motorcycle rickshaw things were intense!! There were 8 of us so we split up into 4 pairs and headed off. The part where we sat was facing backwards so we couldn’t see where we were going. Austin and I were in the front so I was able to get a really cool video of us swerving in and out of traffic with the other 3 rickshaw things (don’t really know what they are called cause they are definitely not traditional rickshaws) trying to keep up. That was a cool experience and I’m pretty sure I could have died because we were cutting off buses and other cars and since we were facing backwards we didn’t even know it until we were passing the bus that almost hit us.

Anyways we eventually made it to the Tao Bao Market safe and sound and without getting lost. The market was indoors and consisted of a 5 story building that was full of individual vendors lined up in rows with escalators in the middle. You could barter for everything in the market and most vendors sold the same things so you could shop around till you found the best deal. My favorite was finding people close to each other that had the exact same stuff and pitting them against each other to see which one would give you the best deal. We all bought souvenirs…oh and Daniel, if you are reading this I got you the SWEETEST gift ever!! Like I almost got myself the same thing but I didn’t want to spend that much. After shopping for a couple hours we walked around the streets a little more before starting a search for a place to eat dinner. We were set on finding another authentic Chinese restaurant and refused to eat at one of the numerous KFCs or Pizza Huts we passed. We decided to try our hand at a version of Shanghai “fast food.” Luckily they had picture point menus so we were able to order by pointing and holding up fingers for what we wanted and how many of each. I got this teriyaki chicken with steamed rice and Chinese Mango Tea. Everyone got various things and Kevin even got a plate of pig’s ear for all of us to try; everyone tried it and was able to get it down, but some people definitely did not like it. I on the other hand actually thought it tasted pretty good…oh well, guess I’m just weird (but you guys already knew that I’m sure).

After our Chinese fast food adventure we headed back to the ship to drop off our souveniers and meet up with more people who had done different things during the day. Oh and sidenote about China – taxis were so cheap! For a ride across town back to the port it was less than $3 U.S., AND we got to split it between 4 of us (8 people, 2 cabs) so we all ended up paying less than a buck when it was all said and done. Much better than Hawaii and Japan…I never even took a cab in Japan cause it was so expensive. Anyways, after meeting up with more people on the ship we headed out into the city to see what we could find to do. We ended up at a nightclub called G2 that was in this shopping mall. I stayed long enough to try duck tongue (which was actually good too believe it or not haha) then I left because I didn’t want to spend my time in China at a club. I would rather walk around and see the city in a different light (literally haha). I wandered around the city for awhile enjoying some time to myself, took some pics, then hitched a ride with one of the cheap taxis back to the ship to pack and get some sleep for my awesome trip to Xi’an
and Beijing the next day!!

I could write for the next month and not even scratch the surface of the things I witnessed, the friends I made, the adventures, the laughs, the close-calls, the breathtaking scenery, the indescribable experiences, even the traveling from place to place. Like I said earlier I didn’t really know what to write and this is just a taste of what I did. When I see you all in person and I have pictures I will be able to go into greater detail but this will have to do for now.

As I look back on the hustle and bustle of China, one thing constantly sticks out. The immense amounts of people everywhere! Everyone knows China is the most populous country in the world but I guess it finally just hit me as we were squeezing through the crowds and making our way through literally millions of people. The coolest part for me was the fact that each and every one of those Chinese people was individually created by Christ. I mean God knows each one of them by name, millions and millions of people, think about that for a second. It’s crazy cool!!!!! Even in something seemingly tiny and insignificant such as a name, God’s omniscience and glory are constantly on display. Just some food for thought.

I will post again ASAP. This is just the start of my China blogs. Hope you all are doing awesome! Praying for ya!

T

Kobe - Time to Try Something New

Watashi wa Nihon ni korarete totemo ureshii desu.
Roughly translated – “I am so happy to be in Japan!”

My time in Japan has come to an end and I could not have asked for anything better. The weather was wonderful every day; we didn’t get rained on once. It was cold but as long as you dressed appropriately it was fine. I saw and experienced everything that I wanted to and can honestly say that I have seen the ins and outs of Japanese culture, daily life, and tourist destinations…all in 4 days.

The picture I have included is a group of us riding a cable car up to the top of Mount Rokko. As we were about to board a group of Japanese men who were taking a picture asked us to jump in the picture with them. I gave someone my camera cause we all wanted pictures with the locals too! From left to right it goes Natalie, Japanese man 1, Alyssa (Zoomba teacher), Abby, Amy, Japanese man 2 & 3, and then me on the end! The guys were really cool and very nice…they were sightseeing as well.

Shout-out time! JT – heck yeah we have the same hoodie! Great minds think alike!! Green is my sea’s color for the Sea Olympics so I got green for that reason lol. Esther – Hahaha I thought you guys would like the “Big Booty” comment, glad I could entertain! Shaun White is awesome! Can’t wait to see what he does. And thanks for missing me haha…miss you guys too! Dad and Mom – That is awesome about the volcano! Guess we both had really great luck with seeing mountains/volcanoes! As far as Kobe beef…we looked for it at one point but couldn’t find any good places to get it. I wasn’t too disappointed though because I did a pretty good job budgeting in Japan so it was nice not having to pay for it. Chris – yeah I really like Tao’s milk tea but I had to try the Japanese kind while I was here. Guess the Americanized version is more to my liking haha. Bro that is SAWEET about South Africa…God has amazing things in store for you brotha…you have a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am ecstatic for you!! Love you brother and praying for you continually!! Can’t wait to come home and eat some good ole fashioned American food with ya! B.T. – Girl you totally should have come to Hawaii!! You would have had such a good time with us!!!!! Yeah I bet you are glad to be done with all the greenery and Christmas decorations, you and Morgan are brave souls lol. Hahaha all I can say is “I told you so” about Dear John…and I don’t see myself reading that one…sorry sis. 3 tests! Yikes!! Hate it when that happens! Yeah I did OU’s version of VR last year so I’ve been there! Yeah I have no doubt you would wear the right foot gear…you are definitely an experienced traveler. Haha no I don’t have a Valentine. Didn’t even realize it was that time yet honestly. Wehunt – Dude congrats!! Hoooorrrraaaayyyyyy!!!!!! You’re a father!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And don’t you worry! I will be crashing your house ASAP when I get back to come say high to the little man! Miss all you guys and can’t wait to see the 3 of you!! Sara – yeah money belts are a life saver and a great investment when traveling abroad! There is nothing to worry about as far as losing important stuff or getting pick-pocketed. Haha you are playing powder puff? That’s tight but I also kinda feel bad for you because my sister is on the other team and last time she played as a sophomore she dominated the other team!! Good luck with Quartz, I’m sure you will do great. Yeah you mentioned choreographing the dance…good luck with that! That is the most popular assembly (or it was when I was there) so no pressure haha. No promises on the safe part but I will do my best!

I mentioned briefly at the end of my Yokohama blog that it took a day to sail from Yokohama to Kobe. The way this works is that all the SAS students have the option of traveling independently from Yokohama to Kobe or sailing with the ship. I chose to sail with the ship instead of paying for a hotel and train ride. Japan was a country where I chose not to spend as much because 1) it is super expensive and 2) I am spending my money in other countries where I want to travel more. Out of 606 students less than 150 sailed with the ship from Yokohama to Kobe. Including faculty and life-long learners we had around 200 people. Okay it was so nice traveling on the ship for that day. We all got to sleep in, then all day everyone was just chilling around the ship. They had movies playing all day in the union on the big projector and various movies playing continually on the tv’s in our rooms. We all just chilled in our pajamas and sweats and watched movies and played cards. Okay but the best part was dinner. With fewer people on the ship they scheduled a fancy sit-down dinner for all of us. We all ate on the 5th deck dining room and received a 5 course meal. We got to choose between fried calamari or fruit, then we all got soup and a salad, our choice of 3 entrees, and cherries jubilee for desert. By far the best food I have had on the ship yet!! It was actually good meat, the salad was fresh and crisp (I don’t even like salad but I cleaned my late, I know you all don’t believe me but it’s true), and the desert was outstanding!! But…the best part…no dress code!! That’s right, we ate a five course meal in sweats. Sooooooo awesome!! So in whole, a nice relaxed day to just recuperate and eat some delicious food before spending 2 more days in Kobe.

Okay small story for all you SMU alumni that are reading this. I was talking to one of my friends (I’m not gunna say her name cause this story is pretty embarrassing and she would kill me lol) and she told me a story about a little trip she took to SMU a little while ago. Her brother goes to SMU and she was visiting him one weekend. One night they were out, (use your imagination) and she said that she really had to go pee. So she decided to go pee on the SMU pony statue. Haha small world huh? What are the odds that I would meet a girl that has done that?!?! I told her that like me mom’s whole side of the family went to SMU and we had a good laugh! So thought you all might enjoy that…whether you approve or not lol.

Day 1 in Kobe was a cultural experience for me. I attended an all day trip to Nara with Semester at Sea. I wasn’t originally scheduled on the ship but my buddy didn’t want to go and sold me his ticket for 75% off the original price. So I had a jam-packed day for super cheap. Nara used to be the capital of Japan way back in the day and is FULL of history. We hop scotched around the city and visited numerous Buddhist temples and Shinto Shrines. The biggest Buddhist temple we built was centered around a 49 foot tall Buddha made entirely of gold. It was crazy big. In the building with the Buddha there was this pillar holding up the building that had a hole in the base of it. Legend has it that if you can squeeze through the hole you “get a free ride to Paradise.” I’m not Buddhist and I don’t believe that at all but to me it was a challenge…can I make it through the hole or not?? And we are talking a small hole…like maybe 1.5 ft by 1.5 ft (I have pictures). So my friend Jeff was like “I’m doing it” so I was like “Alright I’ll do it too.” Jeff made it through successfully and I was able to conquer it as well!! Boom Baby!! And yes I have pictures to prove that I made it through for all you doubters back home. So that was probably the biggest/most cultural Buddhist place we visited. Oh and we got to see a group of Buddhist monks walking around in their traditional garb which was pretty cool. The highlight of Nara is the famous Nara deer park. When I say deer park that is literally what I mean…a park full of deer. The park contains numerous Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines but the main attraction is the hundreds of tame deer that call the park home. There are over 1200 deer currently in the park, and they just walk around and live in the middle of this tourist destination. There are places where you can buy crackers to feed the deer but you have to be careful cause the deer are smart. They hang around the cracker ladies and as soon as someone walks up they swarm the person. I have a hilarious video of one of our life-long learners trying to feed the deer and they are nipping at her clothes and jostling for position to get the crackers. So funny!! Then as you walk through the park there are just deer standing in the middle of path and sleeping on the sides…they are even deer up on the steps under shrines and stuff. It was a very unique place and I have never experienced anything like this at all. By the end of the day the temperature had dropped to I would say around 30 degrees Fahrenheit and some people on our trip were not happy at all. Kind of like the mountain adventure I told you guys about last time, people started complaining and I am just like “What are you all talking about? You’re in stinking Japan, people would kill to be here and experience this!” Ahhhh people just frustrate me sometimes haha. Oh well! Their loss and my gain!

After returning to Kobe from my Nara adventure I met up with Mem and Lettie who had been on a separate SAS trip and we headed into Kobe in search of a traditional Japanese dinner. Random Info - Taking the subway in Japan is a cake-walk. It is formatted just like most European subways and even if you can’t read any of the Japanese characters, all the stops have a corresponding color and number. Some people I traveled with throughout Japan couldn’t understand how I knew where I was going and I was like, you just have to get the hang of it and I showed them little short-cuts for getting around foreign cities. Anyways so we headed off to find dinner and found this underground strip mall area that had like 20 some odd restaurants. The first restaurant we tried didn’t have picture menus (which are very common in Japan) so we had to awkwardly leave because we couldn’t communicate what we wanted to order. Very awkward but also kinda comical looking back on it haha. We were more careful in choosing another restaurant to try. We made sure they had picture menus and were able to simply point and order. The Japanese people are amazingly friendly and very easy to interact with. As long as you say “Aragato” (thank-you) and smile, they understand that you are trying and will help you as best they can. It was a very traditional Japanese meal; I ordered some sort of chicken dish that came with sticky rice, some sort of thin salad, a type of seaweed soup (which was actually delicious, I ate all of mine and Lettie’s), a cup of green tea, and something closely resembling potato salad. The chicken was absolutely fantastic and I can honestly say that I ate/drank everything I just mentioned except for some random onions and sprouts I was given. Lettie ordered the exact same thing as me and then Mem ordered some sort of battered shrimp that she said was really good. After dinner we chose to explore around the city and see what we could find. We ended up stopping at a Baskin Robbins later in the evening cause Mem REALLY wanted ice cream. It tasted just like American ice cream so I wasn’t too impressed but it was still a fun experience! After wandering around some more we took the subway back to the ship and called it a night before starting early the next morning for our last day in Japan!!

Before I tell you about my last day in Japan I wanna tell you some more about the various foods I tried because some of it was stuff that I would never try at home; and I told you about the food I tried in Yokohama so here is what I tried in Kobe. I already mentioned my Japanese dinner where I ate seaweed soup and LOVED it! Ok I tried a chocolate Japanese doughnut, it was interesting and I liked it but nothing compared to an American doughnut. This one none of you all will believe. Vending machines are everywhere in Japan and they aren’t like vending machines in the States. You can get your traditional cold drink but they also server hot beverages like coffee and hot chocolate that come in cans and are super warm! There are these type of coffees called Café Au Late…I kept hearing people talk about them and Jeff finally convinced me to get one in Nara. Okay it was awesome! I ended up buying another one the next day because they were so good! I tried Coca-Cola brand hot chocolate cause I thought it was interesting and it was really good. Okay Chris…I tried Sushi just for you bro! I went into it with an open mind and I can honestly say I didn’t care for it. Maybe it just wasn’t a good type but whatever I had was not a good one. But I did it just for you brotha! Then Austin and Adam got these egg based dishes with like squid and shrimp and vegetables and spices on top that were very similar to pizzas. Austin didn’t eat all of his so I cleaned his plate for him and whatever I ate was SO bomb!! WE were told by one of the Japanese girls on the ship to “Eat first and ask questions later.” Best advice I was given in Japan. It was a time for trying new things and I don’t regret any of it, even the stuff I didn’t like.

The last day in Japan was spent traveling totally independently. I left the ship at 8 a.m. with Alyssa, Amy, Natalie, and Abby and we headed towards Mount Rokko. After a subway ride, transferring to another subway, and then a bus, we arrived at the base of the Mount Rokko cable car station. It was a 10 minute ride straight up the mountain on this cable car and it was full of Japanese tourists and their families who were headed up the mountain for the day. At the top of Mount Rokko we enjoyed a scenic view of Kobe, Osaka, and the port area. It was georgeous!! We hiked around the mountain for a couple hours and explored on our own. Natalie and I hiked down into this miniature gorge type thing just cause and had some fun hiking off the beaten path. The other girls didn’t want to get dirty. We headed back down the mountain around noon and trekked back into the center of Kobe to find somewhere to grab some lunch. Abby really wanted McDonalds so we decided to try the Japanese version of McDonalds. I didn’t want to spend that much so I stuck with the 100 yen menu (about $1.10 US) and just got a basic hamburger just to compare it to an American burger. Definitely doesn’t touch a home-grilled backyard burger with cheese! Oh and the best part was the music playing in McDonalds…as we walked in they were playing Lady Antebellum…in English! Country Music in McDonalds in Japan! Hahaha classic…good to know they have good taste in music! After lunch we walked around and who did we run into?!? Adam, Austin, James, Abby, Theresa, and Nicci! They were shopping in the huge mall that we happened to be walking through. The girls were looking for boots and Adam and Austin were hungry so we separated and went to go eat with the boys. Even though we had already eaten we sat down the Adam and Austin and I am glad we did cause I got to finish off their meals for them…that’s right I’m a mooch…but hey, I’m on a budget lol. After lunch we walked around Kobe a little more and headed to the port area to walk around before betting back on the ship before On-Ship Time. None of us wanted to risk dock-time so we made sure we were back to the ship with time to spare. In the terminal there was a money-changer so we were all able to trade in our extra Yen for American Dollars which was very convenient so that we didn’t have to go to the airport or anything to change our money. And that was the end of my last day in Japan!

I mentioned some overall opinions I had about Japan in my previous Japan blog so I won’t be repetitive for those of you that read both. Leaving Japan I feel like I have seen everything that I needed too. I had priorities going into Japan and I made sure that I saw/accomplished those things. Mt. Fuji was the highlight of my Japanese adventure and something I am so glad I decided to do. I hung out with a different group of people every day in Japan and made numerous new friends. I traveled with professors and life-long learners who provided different viewpoints in certain areas that added to the experience in irreplaceable ways. I cannot begin to describe all I have learned in 5 short days. The out of classroom experiences in these countries are filled with knowledge that I couldn’t get from a textbook or classroom lecture. I will greatly miss the people in Japan and I highly recommend travelling to Japan.

I have constantly been talking about nature and seeing God’s hand evident in so many ways throughout my travels. In his book, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers talks about using your imagination to fully experience nature. The problem is that we rarely use our imagination in the way God intended it to be used, something he refers to as a “starved imagination.” He writes “In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign in the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to realize it.” Wow….think about what he said for just a second. It is so easy to see God at work but how often do we simply go through life without taking time to realize it? Think about just a simple tree and imagine God creating that individual tree, from a seed, from another tree, from a seed, from another tree…etc. It is crazy!! Something as simply as a tree shows God’s grand design if you will just take your time to think about it! The trick is to deliberately turn our imaginations to God…is that so hard? Not at all!! Then why don’t we do it more?!? Chambers was on to something…by doing this we are recognizing what God has done and experiencing his creation in a new and humbling way. In Isaiah 40:26 it says “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things.” Pretty powerful stuff huh?

As you are reading this we are sailing from Kobe, Japan to Shanghai, China. The coolest part…we are only at sea for two days!! Two days and then we will be in China?!?! That is crazy!! It’s like the exact opposite of school back home…instead of 5 days of class and 2 days of freedom, we had 5 days of freedom in Japan…then 2 days of class (1 A day and 1 B day)…then we get 8 days of freedom in China!! Ahhhhhhh that is so awesome!! Okay so as far as my upcoming blogs, I am taking a 6 day/5 night trip in China through SAS so I will actually be spending all 8 days in China. Due to this I will not have a break in the middle to blog because I will not be taking my computer on my trip with me (need to take more important things). So…I won’t be posting for a little while and then I will try and post ASAP once back on the ship. I will definitely be splitting the blog up because blogging about 8 days in China will take awhile lol…so just a heads up for you guys on the time frame.

As always I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing from you all and reading you comments. You all make me smile and laugh every time! It’s a nice taste of back home and great getting an update on all you guys!! Thank you all so much for your prayers, they are constantly felt and greatly appreciated! I am blessed to have you all in my lives; you guys are so stinkin awesome!! Hope you all enjoyed the reading. Love you guys!!

T

Yokohama/Tokyo/Mt. Fuji!

Ko-nee-chi-wa! (probably spelled that wrong haha)

So how are you guys?!?! I hope you all are doing great!! So we just left our first port in Japan, Yokohama. We are currently sailing for one day to Kobe, Japan which is in Southern Japan and very close to Osaka. Okay Japan was way cool!! Gorgeous harbor and very unique cities. I will tell you all about it…just as soon as I respond to your-all’s comments first!

Oh I guess I should explain the picture too huh? This is me in front of Mt. Fuji! I know there is a big cloud moving in at the left side of the frame so the picture isn’t just great but this one has me with it. I have a ton of other pics that are much better with just the actual mountain that you all can see this summer when I get home.

Sara – Haha sis you good! I know how you like to stress for no reason, it’s no biggie! $6,000 for Swine Week…bahaha been there! Don’t worry, it will all work itself out. I’m sure you are doing better in Bio than you think, if I remember correctly this sounds a lot like last semester and you ended with an A. Just keep your priorities straight and it will all be good. That’s exciting about your Quartz audition…and yes I will definitely be praying! And you haven’t seen Top Gun?!?!!?!? What?!?!!? Yeah you need to fix that STAT!! Chris – Dude Edmond has been nuts with the snow this year. That is crazy!! I am so jealous of your Boston trip…you will have so much fun!! (Just not as much fun as we had in New York haha) And hey I actually looked for some sushi yesterday but none was fresh so I am waiting till Kobe. I’m gunna do it just to prove you wrong brotha lol. And yes I am already starting to go food crazy! Remember after Nicaragua how we all went nuts in the Atlanta airport cause we had eaten the same thing for a week? Okay multiple that by 3 and that is my current situation on the ship haha. Dude you will be one of the first people I call when I hit Edmond so we can go get some grub!! Alex – Bristow…hmmmm…been there!!! That sucks man, on the ship my teachers are like the coolest people ever and they don’t treat us like students. I actually was with a teacher all day yesterday and we talked frequently. No man I am not getting to watch LOST so don’t ruin anything for me…I will be watching it on DVD in the fall. Dude summer will come soon enough. When I get back I am bringing a summer’s worth of fun with me and it is gunna be Epic!!!!!! Uncle John – yeah we have been hearing rumors of the pro lockout and no-cap year. That would make for some interesting situations with a lot of teams/players. Thank you so much for the Jim Elliot quote. That is awesome and will be on my mind for the remainder of the trip! Mackenzi – I’m assuming this is Mackenzi Hargrove? What up girl?!? I didn’t know you were looking into studying abroad?!?! That is so awesome! You definitely need to look into Semester at Sea…it is the best experience EVER! You would love it girl!! And thank you so much for your prayers, they are very much appreciated!! Dad and Mom – that is so awesome about the zipline, although I am skeptical that mom enjoyed flying through the air haha. That is so tight about the volcano rumbling! Maybe it will erupt!! How sick would that be?!?!

So Japan!! First of all Japan is SO modern. Like it is one big city touching one big city, complete with subways, above ground train rails, and bullet trains. Honestly except for the signs in Japanese, you could totally forget where you were and feel like you were in LA or New York. Layouts are extremely similar to any other big city which is cool but at the same time nothing really sticks out as unique to Japan; although Japan was amazingly clean. I noticed as we were driving that there was no trash on the street whatsoever, so I asked my tour guide about it. Her response was very surprising! She said that Japanese people have a common understanding that everyone cleans up after themselves. There aren’t even trashcans except in the really big touristy spots. She explained that all the people simply carry around some sort of plastic bag and they put their trash in it as it accumulates throughout the day. Then they throw it away at home at the end of the day. This was one extremely respectable characteristic of the Japanese people; in addition, the Japanese people were incredible! They always smile and nod at you as you walk by and despite a language barrier you feel like you are still having a conversation with the person because they always smile at you and have very positive body language towards us. Some spoke very broken English but again it wasn’t really a problem because if you have ever travelled you know how to get around the city despite the language barrier.

Okay so the most amusing part for me was watching the other SAS students in port. I mean we had been to Hawaii but that was still America and no one had any troubles. Now that we were in a foreign country it was very entertaining to watch people in a foreign environment. The kids who had never travelled before stuck out like a sore thumb. You had your kids who were decked out in heels, skirts, and blouses (yeah I said heels) that didn’t understand how much walking they would be doing. Like on my tour (which I will tell you about in a sec) there was a girl in heels and by the second stop she was struggling hard-core. Then you had your kids who had travelled before, they were the ones in comfortable walking shoes, jeans, and shirts with a hoodie or light coat just in case. (Japan tends to be rainy in random spurts throughout the day) Oh and watching people put on a money belt for the first time is hilarious, this one girl thought that you wore in over your shoulder like a single backpack strap. I was trying to explain to her how to like tuck it in to your waistband like a fanny pack under your pants and she was like “Well then you have to dig in your pants for your money” and I was like “Yeah that’s the point cause then no one can pick pocket you.” Just another group of things that I owe to my parents for teaching me early on! Thanks MOM and DAD!!!

Okay so day 1 in Yokohama. The ship arrived at port around 9:30 (we were late due to the storm detour we took) and we had a little welcome reception at the dock for us! I was actually awake and was able to watch as we pulled in at the last second. There was a traditional Japanese drum-line on the roof of the terminal which played for like an hour or so and they were so good!! It was a pleasant surprise to start our day. For the next 3.5 hours we went through the extremely slow process of going through Customs and Immigration. The Japanese officials were very thorough. They even screened us medically and if anyone was feverish they were not allowed on the boat. I haven’t heard of anyone that was stuck on the boat yet but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. So after finally clearing customs/immigration it was actually time for my tour to start. I signed up for a Modern Tokyo City Tour. We boarded our bus with our tour guide and set off for Tokyo. It was about a 45 minute bus ride into Tokyo from the Yokohama which isn’t that far at all! Our first stop on the tour was an Imperial Garden in the center of the city. It was the spitting image of Central Park in the sense that it was this random garden in the middle of skyscrapers and the hustle and bustle of city life. The garden used to be a resort for the Emperors of Japan and there were some very cool looking statues and structures throughout various parts of the park, and apparently Clinton met with the Prime Minister of Japan several years ago on some famous wooden bridge in the park. It is supposedly a really famous picture but I had never heard of it, which honestly isn’t that surprising, I tend to tune people out when I hear them mention the name Clinton haha. The coolest part of the park for me was these two stations that were built for the sole purpose of allowing the ancient emperors to duck hunt in the park. I thought that was pretty cool to see an ancient method of something that I do regularly in the present. After the park we went to the Toyota Showroom. Okay that was way cooler than I thought it would be! They had basically every model of Toyota and Lexus on the market right now on display. It was like a high tech state fair showroom. And I say high tech because there was a test track thing that looped through the building and another one outside. We weren’t allowed to do this however due to time constraints.

The showroom was a building built into the side of a shopping complex and of course there was a McDonalds and Starbucks right outside next to the bus. Again you saw all the little American kids run into get their mochas, lattes, big-macs, and chicken nuggets. My friend Christina and I were like “Shoot we want Japanese food.” I mean c’mon, you are in Japan for crying out loud!! I’m sure the burgers and coffee were good (and I’m not saying I wouldn’t have enjoyed it) but you can get that at home!! How often are you in Japan?!?! So we decided to go into this little Japanese shop and pick some random things off the shelf to try. She got some kind of rice/pork roll wrapped in seaweed and I got a type of rice cake thing that I’m pretty sure was cooked in some kind of chicken broth or something at one point. She ate half of mine and I ate half of hers so that we could try different things. Okay both were really good. I actually liked the seaweed wrapped one better than the regular one (now that’s a sentence I thought I would never say). While I am talking about food I guess I will just go ahead and tell you what other Japanese things I ate. I had some sort of bread/pastry thing that was definitely cherry something. The best way to describe it was like a croissant/doughnut with about half the sugar. That was bomb!! Then I had these little wafer things covered in some sort of caramel milk coating, I mean I had to try something simple and snacky. A type of drink I tried was this milk tea drink that was chilled. I didn’t hate it and I guess I would drink it again if it was the only thing available but it was really the only thing I have tried so far that I didn’t really like. But I mean it’s all about trying stuff so I didn’t mind! Then for dinner one night I had this Japanese marinated Chicken that was very good…I also tried some Avacado Sashimi that I thought was going to be sushi but turned into just being a lumpy form of guacamole. Oh and these like ginger gummy candies and they were very interesting to say the least. Because of my tours and what I did in Yokohama I didn’t have too much time to eat meals so I was just trying to grab as much as I could along the way. But in Kobe I will have more free time and will get to eat more traditional food and hopefully sushi…just for you Chris ;).

Okay so the rest of my Tokyo tour. After the Toyota building we headed to the electronics district!! This place was mind-blowing!! They had everything. Dad I saw a camera lens you would have peed your pants if you had seen. It was $9000 US dollars and massive!! So for a mental image…think of a city block…20+ story building…all floors just decked out with everything electronics. Mike all I could think of was you walking around and finding the best parts to make the best computer ever. You would have loved it man! From high tech refrigerators, to home theater systems, to state of the art massage chairs (which we got in trouble for sitting in and taking pictures), this place had everything. We were also told by our tour guide that this is where the CIA comes to buy the pieces to their listening devices and transponders. Really really cool to think about huh?!?! Oh and while I was walking around, a guy totally tried to pick-pocket me. He did the whole, “bump into me on accident” routine. I totally felt his hand in my back pocket for a split second. Too bad for him that nothing was there but my big booty!! Money belt…boom!! So after the electronic capital of the planet, we headed to our last stop of the evening, Tokyo Tower!! I can’t remember exactly how high it was but it is the highest building in Tokyo, but ironically not the tallest tower in Japan. Anyways we got to ride up to the observation decks which were around 175 meters up. Some people were freaking out cause the elevator was glass and they did not like the fact that they could see out lol. On the observation deck there was this section of the floor that was glass so you could stand on it and just look straight down to the pavement below. It was intense!! Only about half the kids were brave enough to stand on the glass but it wasn’t scary at all. There was like 8 of us on it at one point and nothing happened. The coolest part of the tower was the views of Tokyo at night! Altho a lot of the pictures aren’t the best because of the windows in the way, but it was still awesome!! After Tokyo Tower our tour of Tokyo was finished for the night. The bus took us back to the ship in Yokohama and from there, Sarah, Natalie, Abby, and I decided to venture into the heart of Yokohama for the night and try our luck at finding an internet café. It was like 9:30 when we left the port area which was fine because the subways run in Yokohama until after midnight. We rode the subway a couple stops into the heart of the city and were able to find an internet café that Sarah had researched beforehand. The subways in Yokohama were amazingly simple, nothing compared to Barcelona or Russia. They made the Japanese Subway seem like it was in English, but it was fun riding the subway super late at night. Just another side of city life that not everyone get to enjoy…those are the experiences that I really enjoy. Internet Cafes in Japan are a really big deal and are a subculture of their own. All the computers are their own personal cubicles and it is common for people to spend the night in the café. We poked around for an hour taking advantage of amazingly cheap internet compared to the ship. I caught up on my OU email which didn’t take long and then caught up on the sports world news. I saw the video of Shaun White winning gold at Winter X a week or so ago and that run was SICK!! 95.whatever on run 1…who does that?!?!?! And that one hit on one of the middle tricks was so huge…ahhhhh it was really nice to get to watch that cause I was bummed I missed it. Oh and I also saw his wipeout video and that just makes winning that much more impressive after a fall like that in practice. He is a man among boys when it comes to snowboarding. USA all the way baby!! I also did some research about possible Brazil trips because I don’t really have anything planned and I wanted to use the good internet search engines to find out what I could possibly do. So after working on the internet for a little less than an hour we walked around Yokohama for a bit and then caught the subway back to the port area. We walked around the city some more and then decided to call it a night cause 3 of us had 7 a.m. trips the next morning that we had to wake up for. And that was what we did day 1 in Japan!!

Day 2 in Yokohama was just as crazy as the second! As I mentioned above, I left the dock at 7 a.m. for my trip to Mt. Fuji and Hakone. The bus ride was 2 hours Northeast of Yokohama in the opposite direction as Tokyo. So many people signed up for this tour that we had two charter buses. The majority of my bus (like everyone but 3 of us) slept most of the way there. When we got to Mt. Fuji, it was absolutely amazing! The tour guide had told us that the majority of the time you can’t see the mountain because it is always so cloudy or overcast, but it was clear except for one little cloud at the top which actually made for some really cool pictures!! I was sitting right behind the dean of students on our bus and she was telling us that this was her 3rd time to do this exact same SAS trip and the only time she had ever seen Mt. Fuji except being on it in a cloud. We got so lucky and it was awesome! Mt. Fuji was breathtaking to look at!! I have seen my fair share of mountains before but Mt. Fuji was one of kind for sure. It is a volcanic mountain so it literally stands off by itself which is a big part of its grandeur. The top chunk of the mountain was covered in snow and it was literally like looking at a postcard the whole time. We made a stop at the visitor’s center upon arrival and everyone was hurrying to take pictures of the mountain while we could still see it. There was a nice little second story balcony for picture taking and everyone went straight there (everyone except those with tiny bladders). After about 5 minutes of picture taking the clouds moved in and covered up the mountain almost instantly. We really did get lucky getting to see as much of it as we did because it was covered up within about 20 seconds once the clouds rolled in. Don’t worry dad, I got plenty of quality pics while I had the chance. After poking around the visitor center for awhile we headed into the national park and started our ride up the mountain. Like I said it was cloudy so the views at the various stations were hindered but we didn’t care cause we all realized how lucky we had been. The temperature got significantly colder with every station we went up the mountain and I felt sorry for my friend Cara because all she had on was a really thin T-Shirt. She said she had a hoddie in the bus, but for some reason she didn’t have it on and she was not happy at the 4th station (the highest point we are allowed to go in the winter season).

After driving around the various stations in Mt. Fuji National Park, we headed down the mountain and set off for Hakone. Hakone is a region of Japan near the Japanese Alps that is a more rural area of Tokyo. Although rural in Tokyo is definitely not what I would consider rural but whatever. In Hakone there are 5 big naturally formed lakes that dot the region and the big attraction for the Japanese are the hot springs that are abundant in the region. We didn’t get to see any of the hot springs in Hakone because it wasn’t part of our tour but our guide told us all about them. She also explained that a lot of the bigger corporations and extremely wealthy individuals had vacation houses in Hakone. Similar to American beach or mountain houses as far as vacation houses go. In Hakone our first stop was one of the lakes which we got to take a boat ride across. The lake was incredibly gorgeous and all the low level clouds just added to the incredible landscape around the lake and surrounding hill country. The boat ride took us to the opposite side of the lake where we transferred to a cable car (really big gondola) that took us up the highest mountain in the Japanese Alps. Okay I have ridden in ski gondolas before that seat like 6-8 people. Yeah we crammed over 100 in this gondola!! Actually it made for a really cool pic, but anyways, it was crazy with so many of us in this one cable car. And some people we had to convince to do it cause they were scared of heights. The cable ride was 7 minutes, although it got really awesome about halfway up. We started going into the clouds and all of the sudden visibility just dropped. We were literally in the clouds. I have never been in weather like this before and it was so intense, although the people that we had talked into riding with us were not happy that they couldn’t see the ground, let alone 5 feet in any direction. All the sudden we arrived at the station at the top, I say all of the sudden because we didn’t even see the station but rather felt the cable car enter the station. We all clambered out of the car and realized that the “scenic views” were not gunna happen. I mean it was just white cloud all around us! About half the group started having a little pitty-party in the station and saying that “this was the worst idea ever, we can’t even see anything.” I was like “shoot let’s go explore!” So the brave people went outside and started walking around. There were marked paths but the trick was remembering when to take a left or right because if you forgot you were screwed. We counted off the visibility so that we could tell you guys back home. My friend Natalie stood in one spot and I started pacing off the yards and she yelled when she couldn’t see me at all anymore. Guess how far it was…23 yards!! I am not exaggerating at all…at 23 yards you couldn’t see anything…just a white wall!! So we kept walking down various paths kinda just moving as a group when we happened to come across a Shinto Shrine. It was cool cause it all the sudden appeared out of the cloud, seriously like a movie. Really dense cloud/fog and things start materializing out of it. We took some pics (again really cool with the fog/cloud cover) and then started to make our way back to the cable car station. By this time all the girls’ hair was soaking wet. It looked like Natalie, Abby, and Cara had all just stepped right out of the shower. I had a hat on so just the sides of my hair were wet. As we were hiking back we noticed that the cloud had gotten thicker, so we decided to pace it off again to see what the visibility was now. Ok guess what it had dropped to…14 yards!!!!!!!! 14!?!?!?! That is like nothing! Ahhhhh it was soooooooo cool!! We made it back to the cable car station and rode back down the mountain to meet up with the rest of the group who didn’t stay at the top cause they were “unhappy and grouchy.” Well they missed out and we had a great time!! After a couple more minutes of walking around the little town we boarded the buses and headed back to Yokohama. We had worked our way farther north throughout the day so the ride home took 2.5 hours. After walking/hiking/picture taking all day most of the students crashed again on the way home. My ADD wouldn’t let this happen though so I enjoyed the scenery and had a nice conversation with my Politics professor about Moab, Utah and all the cool stuff to do. He and his wife live in Moab and he was very impressed that I had heard of Moab, let alone been there. Like I told Alex, my professors on this trip are so cool and treat us like equals so it is so easy/natural to talk to them. We got back to Yokohama around 5:30ish and some of us decided to head into town to grab some Japanese food for dinner. I tried the chicken and avocado sashimi (described above in the food section). The girls I was with decided to do some shopping before heading back to the ship and I didn’t really want to shop so I headed back to the ship to take a run before we had to be back on the ship to leave. The terminal that our ship was docked on was huge and the roof was a scenic boardwalk type area with random grass patches and a lot of wood planking which a lot of the locals used as a running track. I haven’t gotten to run in like 5 weeks because of the blizzard that hit Edmond before I left and then there is nowhere to run on the ship, and I wanted to run in Japan!! I just ran on the roof of the terminal in laps and had an amazing view of the harbor at night. One of the best runs I have ever taken! It was awesome cause the city was all lit up and it was a clear night (which again was really rare for Japan). After I ran a couple miles I returned downstairs to get on the ship and got back on for the night. And that concluded day 2 in Yokohama!

After seeing Mt. Fuji and experiencing something so magnificent, it gives a whole new meaning when scripture talks about mountains bowing down and rejoicing to Christ. It is humbling to see such a unique and breathtaking piece of God’s creation in such a setting. God’s creation is so incredible and I was blessed to experience it. Then being all alone on the top of the mountain in Hakone, (another example of such isolation, just like the cave in Hilo) but at the same time knowing that God is always with me and nothing can separate me from Him. He is with me always and there is no greater feeling in the world than having Him on my side.

I hope you all are doing well and I miss each and every one of you! You are in my prayers and I greatly appreciate your prayers as I go through this adventure.

In His holy and majestic name!

T