Registration

The next day, we woke up and went out to get breakfast on the street. There was a vendor selling these crepe-like things, but super Chinesified. My roommate bought one, and I just had a bite because I wasn’t very hungry. It was pretty good though!

Later, brother Galer took us all out on a little walking tour. We went to the Wumart (basically the Chinese equivalent of Walmart) and checked it out. Later, we went to a little restaurant for lunch. Brother Galer ordered a bunch of stuff and we split it up, and it was sooooo good! There was a dish of green onions cut up and fried in something and it was really good. And we also had something that was pork and some other stuff and some other stuff. I didn’t try everything, but I tried most of it. Yummy!

We had to go through registration at about 1:30. It was suuuuuuuuuper disorganized. They crammed everyone into a little room with 8 stations. Every station had a different purpose, but you had to show basically the same things at every station. Everything was done by hand and took a really long time and they kept losing things, so you had to wait in the lines for a long long time. It was such a relief when it was over about 2 hours later.

But at 5 or 6 or so, brother Galer decided to take us all to a place, I forgot what it’s called. It’s like a big outdoor mall kind of. We were going to take taxis to the subway station, but we couldn’t flag one down. So we all walked a few miles to the station, through a big giant park.

We got our tickets and got on the subway. It was soooo crowded! We had to really pack in, every space was filled.

We rode to another station and then switched subways and rode to another station, then got off at the market place. We walked around and looked at what there was. Then we stopped at various places to get food. I got a super yummy cherry smoothie.

We walked around a little more, and then took taxis back to the school.

I got home and got straight onto skype. Talked for a little bit, and then went to bed at like 9pm. I was still a little jet lagged and had been wanting to sleep pretty much all day.

I am in China!

So, blogger is blocked in China :/

A lot of sites are blocked. More than I expected. And those that aren’t blocked are really funky looking, like something is wrong with the script.

I’m writing all my blogs down in a word document for now. Hopefully I can find a proxy or something, a way to get around it so I can let you guys know what’s going on.

So, Tuesday I left around 4:30. I got to the airport and through security and everything and got to my gate. There, I ran into Abby, Emily, Josh, and Brother Galer. Abby is my roommate. She’s super nice, and the absolute epitome of a Mormon girl.

The flight left around 7:15. My seat was next to an 18 year old Australian boy. It was really interesting to talk to him. He’s been travelling all over the world since he was 4 years old, and it blows his mind how so many Americans never really leave the country.

The flight was about 12 hours long, but it really didn’t seem that long. Probably because I listened to my ipod for the first 4 or so hours, and then was in and out of sleep for the last 8. It was funny, though. The guy next to me kept falling onto me when he fell asleep. Like, he’d doze off and slowly and start falling until most of his weight was on my shoulder. I didn’t want to wake him up or anything, so I just let him sleep there ._.

But it was awkward when I turned to look at him, because his face was like 3 inches from mine, so I tried to keep my face turned away and just listen to my ipod o.o

It was a weird feeling during the flight, because it took forever to get dark. We were basically chasing the sunset, so even though we left when it should’ve been getting dark, it was still bright for several hours.

We touched down in China and went through customs and everything. It was weird to see all the billboards and advertisements in Chinese.

I converted $200 into RMB, which ended up being over 1,000. I still haven’t gotten the conversion down in my head, so every time I pay for something, I think of how expensive it is, but then I remember it’s RMB and not USD, so it’s actually really cheap. Like I bought a bottled water and it was 3rmb and I was like wow so expensive! But then I did the math later and it’s only like 50 cents.

We took a bus from the airport to the school, which brother Galer had lined up for us. I kept falling asleep on it and having dreams that I was at home, so I was really confused every time I woke up and realized I was on a bus in China.

We got to the school and it looked exactly like it did in the pictures. We all went in and checked in and got our rooms. Brother Galer bought us all bottles of water and warned us again to never drink water from the tap, not even after brushing your teeth.

So we split into our rooms. They also look exactly like the pictures I saw before. I took me forever to figure out how to turn the lights on though. You have to put your key card into a slot before you can turn the switches on.

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Leaving Today

Sooo I'm leaving in about an hour to head over to the airport.

I've felt sick for about a month, making me unable to eat just about anything. I figured it was just nerves, because whenever I get really nervous about something, I feel really sick.
Mom insisted that I go to the doctor, so I went and saw him today.
The first thing he asked me when I told him what was going on was "are you pregnant?" I told him no.
When I told him I was feeling really anxious and nervous, he found it hard to believe because I "looked so chill", haha. And after talking more about my nausea and everything, a few minutes later he asked "...you're sure you're not pregnant?" Hahaha. I was like "no, I am absolutely sure I am not pregnant!" XD
After further discussion, he decided that I most likely had something called Gastrointestinal Disease. At least that's what I think he said. It means that when I get stressed out, my stomach starts to overproduce stomach acid. It makes me much more prone to stomach ulcers. No fun :/
So he gave me a prescription for an antacid and an anti-anxiety medication.
Boooo, no more piiiilllsss please.

I was really hoping to say goodbye to some of my friends today. We were planning on meeting for a bit, but I couldn't go because I felt too crappy and also because my doctor appointment was during that time.
I got to say goodbye to Ashley and Jason yesterday, but the people I really wanted to see and say bye to I didn't get to see. :(

And now I'm leaving for the airport soon. I'll try to update as soon as anything happens to me in China :)

More Movie Reviews

Transformers3:
It's long. Even if two and a half hours doesn't seem long, it will feel long. I loved the first Transformers movie. The second one was...okay. But I didn't really enjoy this one at all. The decepticons have returned, surprise surprised, and they're still looking to take over the Earth. The first successful mission to the moon back in whatever year that was was actually a secret mission to investigate an alien shuttle that had crash landed onto our moon. The cargo of this ship is the focus of the Decepticons, they want it no matter what so they can take over the world. And blah blah. And two hours go by without any action, and it's slow and frankly pretty boring. Sam, the main character, has a new girlfriend, who looks pretty much the same as his last one. He's extremely insecure and jealous of everyone who even talks to her.
You could probably come into this movie two hours late and not have really missed anything.
Only see this movie if you have a lot of time on your hands, or if you're a hardcore Transformers fan.

Cars2:
The story is completely different from the first movie. The only thing they have in common are some of the characters, and that it's a movie about cars. In this one, Lightning McQueen enters a world cup, and he brings along many of his friends from Radiator Springs to come along with him. The purpose of the race is to promote alternative energy. But then there's a group of old and fragile cars who will go to any extent to eliminate alternative energy and make everyone stay with big oil. And then there's this whole spy things going along, where Mater gets mistaken as an American spy, so he helps the British spies try to find the bad guys. There's also a lot of scary violence for a kid movie. Many have said this movie is enjoyable, but I was bored the entire time. The choice is yours whether or not to see it.

Larry Crowne:
This was an overall feel good movie. You don't have to worry about bad guys or much conflict at all. Larry Crowne is fired from his job at a Walmart like store because he doesn't have a college education. So he enrolls in some classes at his community college. He becomes friends with his classmates and joins a scooter gang and falls in love with his speech teacher. And that's about it. I couldn't really tell you any big spoilers because there aren't any. That's all the movie it about. It was a nice change from our usual fast paced, good vs bad movies. If you want to just relax and see a light-hearted, carefree movie, go ahead and see this one.

Summer Movies

I just realized that my last post was also about making a movie, haha.

Me and Will have been thinking about making a movie for a long time, and now we're finally getting the details worked out. We're working together with his friend Chris.
The movie is going to be about an online game that develops a virus which attacks the players. It probably doesn't sound too exciting, but that's just because I can't explain it very well!

I'm very excited about this ^^
In case anyone is interested, the three of us made a blog in order to share our ideas with each other and work out the kinks of the movie. Decoded Blog

Also, I figured that since I work at the movie theater, I should give my opinion on the movies that are out and give recommendations on what to see.

Thor - I didn't think I'd like it very much, but it totally proved me wrong. I loved this movie! It's about Thor, of course. But in case anyone doesn't know who Thor is, he's the son of Odin (would it be correct to call Odin the god of thunder?) Thor's people have been at war with the ice giants, but Odin was finally able to form a truce. However, Thor still distrusts them, so he attacks them, breaking the truce. Odin banishes Thor to Earth, and he spends the movie basically seeking a way to return home. It's a good mix of action, humor, and drama. The fantasy aspect is also very interesting. I totally recommend seeing it!

Priest - I tried to go into this movie without any expectations. It's about a world where humans and vampires have been at war for ages. And they're not Twilighty vampires, they're monstrous slimy guys without eyes. So the catholic church created a group of people trained for life in the art of killing vampires. After it is decided that vampires are no longer a threat, the church disbands the 'priests' and the group is ordered to return to society. However, the vampires are far from done being a threat, and one priest decides to go against the church in order to save his niece from the vampire who kidnapped her. This movie is alright. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure if everyone would. If you like dark, monster-hunter kind of movies, this is a good one to see. If not, you may want to skip this one. See Thor instead :)

Water For Elephants - This could tell you about all you need to know - the entire theater was filled pretty much solely by old ladies, generally age 70 or older. I think that many people would find this movie incredibly boring, especially guys. I enjoyed it, however. It wasn't a very exciting movie. But it was very interesting. You need to have more mature taste in movies in order to truly enjoy this movie. It takes a bit of patience.

Rio - This movie was advertised starting around LAST Summer. So of course I expected it to be an amazing movie. It was cute. But it was kind of a let down. It's about a bird who is part of an endangered species who was raised by a human. So he knows nothing of what it means to be wild. But when he's kidnapped by people who sell rare animals on the black market, he escapes and has to learn how to get by without his human. It's an entertaining watch. Go in without high expectations, and you'll probably enjoy it.

Chinese 101 again!

Last week, I helped out my friend Ryan with his Chinese 101 movie. (Remember the super epic one I made last year??)
He asked me to play the part of one of their blind dates.

When I got there, he introduced me to the other two guys in his group. It was decided that I'd play the part of Chris's little sister. It was a lot of fun! Chris was really cute :) (too bad the semester's over, right?)

I felt kind of bad because when I went through their script I had a lot of suggestions of how to say things better or more correct. They said they really appreciated it, but I felt like I was taking over! But they were happy that I could bring more vocabulary to the table as well.

Click here to watch the movie!

One Week to Go

School is almost over! I'm already done with three of my classes. Just four more to go.
Half of my dance final was performing at a formal. My group did a waltz routine. Kelsey went to the dance with me and she was thoughtful enough to go into my purse and grab my camera to record it. I hadn't even thought of asking her to do so, but I'm really glad she did!
You can watch it on my facebook here !

I don't remember when, but I went with all of my roommates to Wingers. I was going to ask the waitress to take a photo of us all together, but I forgot. But then I remembered in the car. So...it's not very good, but it's finally a picture of all of us together, haha.

Also, I'm big into youtube and I subscribe to a lot of people and try to keep up with viral videos and such. So I decided I'm going to try and share some of the funnier things I find on here. And today's fine was this cute video of twin boys having a very deep conversation :)
Twins
This one's a little more sad than funny. ...But it's still a little funny. A family of ducks gets blown away by the wind. But at least they all find each other again in the end :)
Ducks