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I volunteered at a summer camp in the Club this week. There I met QingQi, Dandan(Danny), Offek, Kele, Lele, and Emma. QingQi is 19, Dandan is 21 and we watched the kids together. Offek is eight, and he’s from Israel. He speaks Hebrew at home, Chinese with his Ayi or nanny, and English at the international school he goes to. He’s pretty good at swimming and can eat five slices of cheese pizza at lunch. Kele (cola), Lele, and Emma are all three years old. Emma looks a bit older than Lele and Kele looks the youngest. Kele is pretty mature for his age though. The three year olds speak amazingly fluent Chinese. Emma’s dad is American and mom is Chinese, but she speaks mostly Chinese. All three know a little English. Emma doesn’t like cheese or anything on her pizza while Lele likes the cheese so we give her Emma’s cheese. They all ate cheese pizza for the whole week, though the first day I was there, the pizza had olives in it. None of the kids liked olives though, and well, I don’t either. So the next day we specified not to have any toppings other than cheese.

The classes are as follows, Kungfu, drawing/crafts, and swimming on Tuesday. Aerobics, Chinese, and swimming on Wednesday. Tennis, crafts, and swimming on Thursday, but tennis was cancelled because of the rain. Kongfu, crafts, and swimming on Friday. The classes are each an hour long with a break between lunch and swimming.

The three year olds were afraid of Kungfu because they were afraid of the loud sounds the teacher was making and the loud music he was playing. The first time they had kongfu, they went outside to play on the playground instead. But the second time, Kele wasn’t present because he got sick with a cold and fever and the girls were brave enough to try it. Offek was the only one who did aerobic exercises, but everyone enjoyed hitting giant bouncy balls back and forth afterwards. Kele didn’t like swimming. It took a long time to persuade him to go. He’s super adorable though. On Wednesday, instead of playing tennis, the kids went to the basement to play pingpong, color pictures, and dance.

We also played pingpong and badminton this week as well.

I found out Beijing has blue sky days after it rained on Thursday.

Dad had a business trip from Thurs-Sat.

:: Short update ::

This week our air-shipped stuff arrived. This includes plates, bowls etc, clothes etc.

I also permed my hair straight. It used to be really frizzy and now it actually feels soft, but it’s not as black as it used to be. I used to be against perms because they damage hair, and now I think I won’t ever perm it again because it did damage my hair to a certain extent. But don’t get me wrong, I do like the result overall. My hair looks a lot better after the perm  than before it but perming hair is expensive and time consuming.

We played badminton and pingpong at the club a lot this week as well as doing things in the workout room.

Weekend Trips

• XiangShan Park (Fragrant Hills Park) – XiangShan is a park that is said to be best seen in the fall when all the leaves turn hues of warm colors. There are lots of pine trees, maple trees and other trees as well as hills and a mountain. My dad and brother, Tony, hiked halfway up the mountain while my mom, other brother, Alan, and I stayed at the bottom. I was really tired that day, but hope to go there another day to climb. Next time we’ll climb to the very top for sure. Maybe.
• HuanLeGu Amusement Park – This is a typical amusement park, only you have to wait around two hours for probably every ride. We went on a rollercoaster and then saw a performance and watched a 4D movie. The lines for the performance and movie weren’t nearly as long as the lines for rides.

Overview – My dad works for Caterpillar and he was sent to Beijing to work on developing relations in China, India, and I think Singapore, but mostly in China. My family will be living there for at least two years. I’m keeping a record here of my time in Beijing and other places we’ve visited in China this summer before I go back to college in the States.

Plane ride – During the 13 hour plane ride I watched Alice in Wonderland, Dear James, and How to Train a Dragon. I also attempted to sleep several times, but knowing me, I couldn’t fall asleep while sitting even if I tried unless I took a sleeping pill. This is good for not falling asleep in classes, but sometimes I manage to doze on and off during a class period if it’s a really boring class with about 100 students.

Move into Beijing Yaoshanmeidi (Yosemite) – The neighborhood is about a 15 minute drive from the Beijing airport. There are some stores nearby but it isn’t as convenient to go shopping as back in America. I had jetlag the first week I was there and woke up really early for once but I was tired really early as well.

We have a driver who drives us around on all days but Tuesdays. He has Tuesdays off. We call him Li Shifu or Master (of the car) Li. He’s pretty nice and he doesn’t smoke or drink so that’s a plus.

There are about 20 other Caterpillar employees living in this neighborhood.

There is a really good international school right next to this neighborhood for grades K-12.

House – Our house came with some furniture for the family room, living room, basement, eating area, two of the bedrooms, one of which is the guest bedroom. It’s a four bedroom house with four bathrooms, a study, a living room, family room, dining room, kitchen, family eating room, and several rooms in the basement. The basement is pretty big with a pool table and two sets of couches in two locations. There are several rooms that can be used for recreational or storage places.

It’s fancier than our old house and somehow I feel like we’re living in a hotel when I live there. I guess it’s too fancy in terms of home décor and other areas as well. We have a huge chandelier in our foyer/living room area. All the rooms have tall walls and some have decorated ceilings. There is a spiral staircase that leads from the top floor to the basement. Three bedrooms on the top floor have balconies. One of the bedrooms has two in fact. The bathrooms are fancy but don’t have drawers for putting stuff in. Each room has its own air conditioner setter. Each room has its own lock and key so we have a lot of keys. The front door locks automatically and is hard to open even from the outside. When pushing the door bell, a person from the inside can pick up the phone near the front door to see who’s there. There’s even a camera for seeing who’s there. There are security guards at the front gate so only people who live there can get in the neighborhood.

The kitchen isn’t as nice as our old one in that there are fewer places to put food, utensils, dishes etc. Also we only have one small trashcan in the kitchen and we produce a lot of trash each day, thus it isn’t big enough to fit all our trash. The family room also lacks places to put stuff, but the couches are large, big enough for two people to sleep on. The family eating room isn’t as good as our old house but we plan on getting new furniture for that room.

They have trash service daily though so that’s nice, and our house came with a garden with a rose archway leading to our backyard. The yard isn’t big but it’s symbolic of a yard and not many people have yards or houses in China so it’s pretty nice.

Club – There is a club within walking distance of our home that belongs to Yosemite. The club has a restaurant, though the service is kinda bad and the food is expensive. There is an indoor pool and an outdoor pool and a hot pool as well as a small pool for kids. I like their pools though I haven’t been in any of them. My brother tells me they’re great. They also have pingpong tables, a pool table, a badminton court, a tennis court, and an exercise room. There’s also an aerobics room for dancing, martial arts, and other recreational purposes. There is a small playground for kids, though the swings are not soft to sit on. There is a nice lake overlooking the area with ducks and fish. There are nice plants growing around the area. There are events for children such as summer camp.

We played pingpong, pool, and exercised there. My brothers and my dad went swimming.

Walmart – We went to a Walmart inside a mall like place to buy some stuff that hasn’t been shipped yet or stuff that we couldn’t bring like food. It located on the second and third floor. Food is on the second floor and appliances and other objects are on the third floor. There are inclined conveyer belt that take you from floor to floor within Walmart and elevators for other stores and restaurants in the mall. There is a parking lot in the basement. Talk about saving room. The shopping carts are different from the ones in America too in that all four wheels can turn and there are magnets on either side of each wheel that stick to the conveyer belt. There are groves in the wheels that fit snuggly into the groves in the conveyer belt, so it’s safe taking your cart on the conveyer belt. Remind me to take a picture of that and post it if you’re interested.

There was a big variety of food there, probably more than what’s offered at the Super Walmart by our old house. There are so many snacks I haven’t seen or heard of. Also, like Sam’s club there are free samples, but the bad thing is it gets kinda annoying hearing people asking you to try their food everywhere you go. Walmart was pretty crowded as it is the days we went there. It’s probably like that all the time. Also, add to the noise, there’s music playing in the background as you shop.
There are a lot of different appliances, some I haven’t seen in the Walmart in America once again. The kitchen appliances are really nice. There are so many rice cookers, pots and pans etc. Supposedly

China’s kitchenware is better than America’s or so says my mom. Even though there’s a big variety of stuff in this very large Walmart, they don’t sell Internet modems, and their techie people don’t seem that great, at least not the one my mom ran into when trying to find Ethernet cords. The person told her the phone line cord can work, which it doesn’t.
The good thing though is since labor in China is cheap there are a lot of people to assist you so you don’t have to look far before you find someone in your area that specializes in that area to help you find what you need. Usually they’re pretty helpful.

Weekend visits:

• Summer Palace (YiHeYuan) – An Emperor’s Mother requested it to be built and that was where the Imperial family went for the summer because it was supposedly cooler there. We hiked on a mountain there, and at the top is a Buddhist temple. We went to the temple and back down along a different path. There’s also a lake there so we went boating which was fun. We rode a peddle boat where you peddle with your feet and pull a lever to navigate. There are some bridges that lead to an island in the middle of the lake. The water actually didn’t look polluted but it wasn’t blue because the sky wasn’t. I noticed Beijing has a lot of dust in the air and there are rarely blue sky days, though at the Great Wall and the emperor’s tomb the sky was blue, probably because these places were away from the city area. The scenery is nice but without a blue sky it isn’t breath-takingly beautiful. The palace itself is a series of buildings surrounding the lake as well as on the mountain connected by walkways with ornate roofs. We weren’t able to go into any of the buildings except for the temple and some shops.
• Great Wall – Climbing the Great Wall was kind of fun, tiring, and annoying. Fun because it’s like an adventure and you can see the scenery on the sides and the nice cool breeze and having the goal of climbing to the top, thinking about how fit you will be after you’re done is fun. It was tiring because it was hot and there were a lot of stairs and steep hills to climb and Tony just wouldn’t slow down, saying all the while “What? I’m just walking.” But yeah he’s really fit cause he’s on the swim team. It was annoying because there were so many people there and a lot of people had umbrellas which are hard to avoid and easy to bump into. If people would just think before they go and not bring umbrellas it would have been better. But yeah, the view really is amazing up there. We didn’t bring a working camera with us though unfortunately because our camera was out of batteries when we took it out to take pictures. -__- We’ll be going again though so hopefully next time there will be nice pictures.Most of the people who went to the Great Wall are Chinese, though there are a few foreigners. There’s some restaurants and shops below the area around the Great Wall. There’s even a KFC. That’s where we went to eat lunch. I’m not sure where the highest point is, but I think we climbed for about an hour climbing there and back. I’m not sure though cause my watch broke. The umbrellas were all modern day umbrellas, but yeah they’re great for places that are spacious with not that many people, but not so great on the Great Wall.
• Ming Tombs – We only saw one burial site among 12 others in that area. I don’t remember which emperor’s tomb we visited, but his wives were also buried there. Visiting the emperor’s tomb was kind of boring. The place had been ransacked before, or so my dad said, and things had been stolen. The tombs were about four stories underground and there were a few different sites but we only went to one. The burial tombs made of jade I think. We saw them but we couldn’t see the bodies since the lids were closed. Also, many of the artifacts were exported to
• Bird’s Nest (Olympic stadium) – The Olympic Stadium wasn’t that exciting to see. There were some dancers performing and a tightrope walker though. The tightrope walker was who impressed me the most. He walked across the very top of the stadium back and forth forwards and backwards. He’s probably the bravest person I’ve seen and he’s very skilled as he never once fell. We were going to go to the Water Cube too, but it was closed so we’ll be going back some other time.