Cody's in China!

Cody went to China on Monday and we started to get emails from one of the chaperons and they sometimes include photos! Oh what a joy it was to receive some pics right away. This pic is from their first day in China, and we got it emailed to us that night. What a surprise! They went to The Forbidden City in the morning and enjoyed an afternoon visit to one of Beijing's hotong neighborhoods (we were encouraged to look up, but I haven't, yet). * Please note that not all of these pictures has Cody in them - these are pictures that his chaperon has provided in email updates!

Here are some comments from an email that Cody sent from his ipod touch (they had wi-fi!):

So on day one we got on the plane heading for Chicago, then went straight to Beijing, which was the most insanely long flight everrrr. They had a screen in front of you for movies and stuff but they also had a gps thing so you could watch you progress -it was pretty tight. So then we finally got to China, in the next day, which was pretty wierd and trippy. So then we went outside met our guide named Steven, he rocks, got in the bus and headed to the hotel. Then we went to Tiananmen Square which was crazy huge, tons of pics, from everywhere, walked around then went to the Forbidden City, which was incredibly amazing, just awesome. We only walked like half or a quarter of the way through in a couple of hours. Then we had dinner and went to bed. That was day one, it was extremely tiring but it was insanely awesome.





These next pics are from their last day in Beijing. They spent the morning visiting a private school on the outskirts of Beijing. One chaperone reports that "Our students genuinely enjoyed spending time with their Chinese counterparts." They spent the afternoon hiking the Great Wall.

More comments from Cody via email, lot of "teenage" typing here:

Herro, were about to leave the hotel for Luyang or something, then taking a bullet train to Xian were the Terracata Soldiers are. So on day two we went to the Temple of Heaven and walked around and took tons of pictures. We saw tons of people playing with a badmitten like birdie like a hacky sack and some people bought one and we played with it fo a while, and got a large crowd watching and joining us. Its really funny and cool how all the chinese people love americans, running up to us taking pictures wih us and video taping us, its funny. But then we went to the Birds Nest which is amazingly huge and awesome. We got to go onto the track and were able to run on it, and I cleared a height at high jump it was sweet. Then we went to dinner and went back to this awesome shopping place with shady streets full of stands to barter with, which was super fun we called the place gehtto alley which was my favorite place. The next day we went to a private school associated with MA, which was super sweet and the kids talked really good english and were really cool. After the school we went to the Great Wall of China which was one of the best parts of the trip. I think that I gained a fear for heights there cause I was just terrified going up the wall which was extremely steep and unimaginably long. We finnaly reached one of the ends of the wall then Khale and I followed Tony and Cripe up and down all these diferent branches of the wall and by the time we made it back down we were all disgustingly sweaty and more tired then I can remember ever being. Then we went to dinner. Then back to the hotel for a break before going out for the evening adventure. We were going to go to Ghetto Alley but we just walked around away from the hotel until I saw a lambo dealer which was CLOSED but we kepted going and found the insanely rich part of town wih huger hotels and Ferrari dealers. Oh g2g now to the airport, I'll email u later.




I think this is the group with some of the kids from the school they visited.



Here one of the students is encouraging a Malaysian woman on the way up the Great Wall.



The day after visit the Great Wall, the kids went to the Longmen Buddhist grottoes - we have no pictures of that experience!

They then flew to Luoyang (north central/east China) to visit an ancient Buddhist monastery - the Shaolin Monastery, the greatest of the Chinese Buddhist monasteries. It is still a functioning monastery. One of the chaperones commented that the commercialization of the place seemed sad.

They also visited some Buddhist cave statues. They have had the students spend some time on a train ride (the Bullet) writing and talking about these experiences. We have been told that Luoyang is much more of a provincial backwater than was Beijing. That means very few Westerners and more of a "developing country" atmosphere. Unfortunately, no pictures.

Here are the last comments we have received from Cody via email:

Yesterday we flew from Beijing to Louyang which took around two hours and arrived in Louyang and headed straight to the Longmen Grottoes, which are a bunch of caves in a cliff area with tons of carved out statues, which was really cool. Then we checked into the hotel and went to the market area by the hotel and got a snack for today.
Right now I'm in the hotel at Louyang, getting ready to check out and head to the Shaolin Monastery were we're going to watch a kung-fo preformance and also get a lesson from some shaolin monks. Then were taking a bullet train to Xian where were going to just check into the hotel and probably check out the area around there. Im not sure when ill be able to send another email, but hopefully the next hotel has computers for use or wi-fi.

The following is a shot from the Shaolin monastery.



Farmers drying wheat along the roadside (they also saw this on roofs, too).



Just as I was adding Cody's comments to this post I received another email from one of the chaperon's. He says:

We've enjoyed our day in X'ian, a city that the students seem to really like - it's big (8 million) with lots of street life, but it has a compact historic city center (inside Ming Dynasty walls) that makes it seem manageable while giving it a historic atmosphere. The terra cotta soldier museum was a highlight of the day, as was a dumpling dinner in the evening (I would say that as a group, dumplings are our favorite food). As I'm writing, most of the kids are getting massages at some out-of-the-way spot in the city. After one more day in Xi'an tomorrow, we'll have a major change of scenery when we fly out tomorrow evening. This is a hot, dusty part of the country, and we'll exchange it for the wetter, rice-growing south. It will be interesting to spend time in the rural areas there. The photo is from our bullet-train ride yesterday.