Goodbye China

Today is my last full day in China. It is also my birthday today! I am 11 years old, but mom tells me it will not be official until right after noon today since we are 13 hours ahead.

I had a great time in China. I wish it was longer. I can't wait to see my friend. My class called me and we were able to talk on skype last night. That was fun! Thank you Mrs. Breidert and Mrs. White for doing that!

Today we go to the US Consulate. What a birthday present. We take some kind of oath when we get there. We can not take anything in with us so my mom will not be able to take pictures.


Oh, I thought this was funny:

Shopping and Such

This is my knife that I bought here in Guangzhou. It is made entirely of ox bone. The sheath has a dragon on one side and a phoenix on the other. The dragon and the phoenix together means good luck in Chinese.

These are 3 short swords. The handle has an eagle head. They are mine!

Here in Guangzhou it feels like the middle of summer. It was 77 degrees today. We found a park that has a playground, in fact it is the same playground we played on 3 years ago when we were here before. It was not just playground stuff, but there is workout equipment too and there are always lots of people doing exercises there. There is a track that I ran around ten times in 8 minutes and 49 seconds.

Almost all of the shops here have the persons name who owns it and then place. Example "Michael's Place" or "Andy's Place". We shopped at Michael's Place when we were here before and I remembered him. He says he remembers me too and thinks I have grown a lot but I wonder if he really does?

Rebecca and Emma are getting along really well. Rebecca always wants to hold my hand or my dad's hand. She likes to sit with me on the bus too. She is really cute and sweet but she likes to run off sometimes.

There is a 12 year old boy in our travel group who lives in Crestwood whose name is Devin. We have been hanging out a lot together. His family is here adopting a 14 year old boy and he is a lot of fun too. The family bought him an electronic translator so he can talk to them in English. His name is Nick. He lived with a foster family before he was adopted.

In China, it's not unusual to see friends holding hands or having their arm around each other. I don't think Devin likes holding hands (I don't blame him), but he doesn't mind his brother putting his arm around him.

Dinner in Guangzhou

We left Xian on Friday and we are now in Guangzhou. The weather is really warm, a lot like Florida.


We had dinner at a really nice restaurant tonight. We had a great time until we left and saw this! There were also things like worms, snakes, lobsters, crabs and of course fish. But you would have never guessed they were all alive except this poor aligator. It's a good thing we ate before we saw this!

The City Wall of Xian

Today we visited the City Wall. Our tour guide and I raced to the top! If you are wondering who won, it was me.

It was so cool looking out over the wall. We saw an old cannon. There was a drawbridge that was drawn up during war time and at night time. The slits for the arrows were 120 meters from where the enemy would shoot arrows. At one time the city wall circled the entire city but now part of it is destroyed. A long time ago it was guarded with archers, cannons and slingers.

By the way, on the 25th their Chinese New Year will begin, it will be the Year Of The Ox.

Chinese Fast Food

Have you ever had Chinese fast food? It is really good! Our guide told us about some really good sandwiches here in Xian. She says when she comes here she buys some to take back to Beijing with her. They are called "Meat Bread". They were the best! We have had some several times and have devoured them really fast.


Here is one of the sandwiches.

Here is me eating it.

Terra Cotta Warriors

Today I visited the Terra Cotta Warriors and a recreation factory. At the recreation factory I got to make my own line warrior! It was a knealing archer. The pits that they had dug up were awesome. Pit 1 was huge! They found 6,000 warriors in Pit 1.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shaanxi/xian/terra_cotta_army/

See you in a week and a half,

Ryan

Sightseeing in Xian

Here we are in Xian. Yesterday we visited the history museum and the Wild Goose Pagoda. The history museum was very ineresting it had a lot of things I didn't know. Did you know that the silk road was started by a man named Zan Qian who was sent to the west to find allies. The Wild Goose Pagoda was really cool! I got to climb the pagoda. It wasn't actually that hard.

See you in a week and a half!

Oh, I forgot to tell you that the nihgt before this, we got lost. Well, my mom and I did. We were going to the super market which we never found and and the way back my mom made an earn turn and that's how we got lost. We were wandering around the stress of Xian for about and hour and a half but I finally saw the hotel. There are 4 million people in this city!

If you want to read more about the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, go here:

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shaanxi/xian/bigwildgoose.htm

Rebecca & Xian

We came to Xian on Sunday. We were just getting to the hotel when Rebecca came in too. We were very, very, very excited! She is so cute. She looked like she was really scared at first. I hope Emma and Rebecca get along better than me and Emma do.

Here she is!

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while, I’ve been really busy.
A couple of days ago we visited The Great Wall, The Birds Nest (home of the Olympics) and the Forbidden City. It was very cold. The Forbidden City was huge! When we went to the Great Wall, I went the highest. I was on the steep side too. The Birds Nest was really cool. Yesterday, we went to the Civil Affairs office to make a promise that we would take care of Rebecca for the rest of our lives. We also went to the Police office to make Rebecca’s passport. We also got our picture taken as a family. It was a very busy day. For supper we went to a McDonalds, it was different than American McDonalds. Instead of apple pies, they had red bean pies. After that my mom and I went to find a supermarket and got lost trying to find our way back to the hotel. But I saved the day because I remembered where our hotel was using relative location. LOL. Today we are going to the Wild Goose Pagoda and the History Museum. I will post more later.
See you,
Ryan

We're Here

The plane ride took forever! 13 hours of sitting in a seat with hardly anything to do and that was on the longest plane ride. We left Louisville at 8 a.m. Thursday morning Kentucky time and we're just now getting here. 28 hours of travel time! I got probably got 5 minutes of sleep. I really wished I could sit in first class but I didn't.

For dinner the food was actually pretty good. For breakfast I had fried rice. I can't wait to get Rebecca. She looks so cute. Emma is excited too. j

I had to get up at 2 a.m. yesterday morning. You betcha I was tired. I hope you are feeling good. Last but not least, use the email link.

See you in two weeks!

My Sister Rebecca

Here's my sister Rebecca. I can't wait to meet her. She looks so cute in all the pictures we have of her. I've also been able to talk to her on the computer using Skype a few times! She calls me her guh-guh (I don't think that's how you spell it, but that's how in sounds in Chinese).

We are leaving early in the morning for China. In fact I have to get up 4:30 a.m.!

To Mrs. Breidert's class, thanks for following my blog, email me if you can!