Hey guys! This is the conclusion the recap of my trip to China : )

Day 12: Day 12 was pretty much a travel day. We got up early to go out for dim sum with Elder uncle and then later on we (grandma, stepdad, dennis and I) took a taxi and bus to the airport. We flew to Beijing and met up with our tour guide when we got there. The driving in Beijing is pretty crazy as Sarah had mentioned to me before but since I’d been in Guangzhou, I was pretty used to crazy driving. The streets in Beijing were a lot wider than the ones in Guangzhou, though. Some of them had six lanes just for going in one direction! After we got settled in at the hotel, we took a taxi to Gui Gai (Ghost Street?), a famous late night eating area, and got a very belated dinner.

Day 13-15: For the next three days, we went to so many places that it kind of all blurred together and I can’t really remember anymore which places we went when. At any rate everybody in our tour group woke up early every day (6 am!) since we had a pretty full schedule. Our first stop was the giant museum where they keep a replica (it was initially the real dead body!) of Mao Tse Dong. The line was very long and everybody had out their umbrellas to stay out of the sun. After the museum we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was really beautiful and much larger than I had expected it to be. We also went to several different museums and temples as well as the house of a corrupt magistrate (his garden was even larger than the one at the Forbidden City!). Of course we all went to the Bird’s Nest and the Great Wall. The Great Wall looked really daunting! On our last day we went to a military museum.
In our tour group there were two kids who were around Dennis and my age that we ended up hanging out a lot with. We all even exchanged emails so as to keep in touch

Day 16: We all got on the plane back to Guangzhou on Friday. I had called Panda One the night before and he had boasted that he would be back in Guangzhou before we do and he would wait for us at home. HA! We got home and waited about three hours before Panda One got home. Since we were all pretty tired from travel, we had a big family dinner in that night and the Panda Family watched “Forensics Heroes 2″ (a show I picked up at a store that Dennis and Panda One are now obsessed with. Panda One had initially planned on pulling an all nighter so that he could watch the whole series before I took it back to Portland with me).

Day 17: Dennis had the insane urge to go see “Transformers 2″ so Panda One took us to get McDonald’s for lunch/breakfast (Panda One didn’t get up until around 11 since he had gone out the night before) and then we went to a theater to go see the movie. The movie was pretty good (it was in English with Chinese subtitles). The theater was really different from ones I’m used to in Portland. The seats were sets of loveseats and there were a lot of couples there. I’m pretty sure aside from us, everyone else there was on a date.

After the movie we went to RBT (a chain bubble tea restaurant place) and chatted while waiting for Panda One’s friend Siin to come. Siin came eventually and we chatted with her. Dennis ended up saying a lot of random stuff that made Panda One tear up from laughter. Afterwards we met up with the family for dinner at a hot pot restaurant. I had wanted to meet up with my friend Zoey that night to hang out but she couldn’t so after dinner Elder uncle took Panda One, Dennis and I to his friend’s bar. The bar owner and Panda One taught Dennis and I a few drinking dice games. The bar owner even gave me a few sets of dice to bring back and Panda One’s friend She-she (who met up with us later on) encouraged me to spread “chinese drinking culture” overseas.

Dennis and Elder uncle left after sitting for about an hour and left Panda One and me to our own devices. Panda One and I tried to team up against the bar owner in one of the dice games but we weren’t good enough to beat him. Instead of beating the bar owner, Panda One got really drunk and started saying some really random funny stuff. Around one, his friend She-she met up with us. Around two we left and met up with Elder uncle for a late night snack. She-she once again tried to talk to me in English and said the randomest funny things ever.

Day 18: Pretty early in the morning I got up to pack up my stuff since we were leaving Guangzhou that day. Grandma, Elder uncle, my stepdad, Dennis and I took the train to Hong Kong and after we went through customs we took a bus to Tsuen Wan (where the hotel we were staying at was). My friend Kit met up with us and we went out for lunch. After that Kit left and we were picked up by my stepdad’s cousins. They took us to a restaurant where we had dinner with my great aunt and the rest of my stepdad’s cousins. After dinner, one of the cousins took grandma and elder uncle to the train station so that the could go home to Guangzhou. Another cousin took my stepdad, Dennis & I back to the hotel to sleep and rest.

Day 19: Kit’s family took us to Ocean Park (Hong Kong’s version of Disneyland with an ocean theme). It was really big and to get from one entrance to another you would have to take a bus! Kit and his sister Lee kept saying they could go on more rides than me but the funny thing was that they both got dizzy before I did. Aside from rides, Ocean Park also had an aquarium that had a lot of really cool fishes and sharks and other sea life and a giant panda house where An-An and Jia-Jia are kept. Since Dennis is An-An and I’m Jia-Jia (Panda One is Lok-Lok), I wanted to go and take their pictures to show Panda One. Sadly, Jia-Jia was gone so I only got pictures of An-An sleeping in the corner. After Ocean Park, we went to Aunt Chung’s (Kit’s mom) store and met up with Uncle Fu. Dennis had been craving sushi so we went out for sushi that night.

Day 20: Aunt Chung, Lee and Kit took us out shopping and we also went to the Avenue of Stars (Hong Kong’s version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame). Kit eventually left to hang out with some of his HK friends. We went out for dinner again with Aunt Chung’s family, though. They went out for hotpot with us where Dennis and Sam (Kit’s brother who is Dennis’s age) decided they wanted to try Chicken testicles…. They had a bizarre obsession over them…. (>.<)

Day 21: Two of my stepdad’s cousins picked us up from the hotel early in the morning and drove us all over to tour Hong Kong. First we went to the Peak, the top of a mountain on Hong Kong Island. At the Peak you could see all over Hong Kong. After the Peak we went to Tsin Sui Wan (probably wrong spelling…), a famous beach in Hong Kong. At one end of the beach there was a Buddhist temple. We also visited the Murray house which is a house in Hong Kong that was moved across the city brick by brick. We were pretty tired by then so we went to Great aunt’s house to hang out with her until dinner time. For dinner we went out with all the cousins and Great aunt one last time. After dinner we went back to the hotel and packed all of our stuff which proved difficult since we had bought a lot of random stuff to take home to mom.

Day 22: One of the cousins picked us up in the morning and took us to the airport. Kit and his dad Uncle Fu met up with us there to say goodbye. The flight was really long and tiring. We left Hong Kong at 12:30 pm and arrived in Portland at 2:30 pm the same day. Time travel magic! haha just kidding, it was because of the time difference. We had actually traveled for about 20 hours (including waiting at airports). My mom picked us up and then we were finally back home

Me on the Great Wall (sorry I'm squinting... it was very bright!)

Me, Dennis & our two friends from the Beijing tour group in front of the Bird's Nest

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