DAY FIVE:

I suppose I've forgotten what I did before I went to sleep the night before. Ann and I (when faced with the prospect of an early bedtime and a late wake-up call) didn't go to bed, like normal human beings. Instead we talked all night about our miserable love lives. I discovered Ann had a boyfriend in third grade, and they were nerdy together. I found this idea irresistible, and reiterated it often throughout the rest of the tour. I told her about several things (including TU, which kind of just slipped out, but she won't tell. Neither will Kris or Lena, who I also told) and we laughed until 12:00. We were tired. Everyone else was fairly chipper; they'd all gone to bed at a decent hour.

Since we were going to go to a concert we all had to pack our concert attire in a trashbag. I was on the bus when Camp said "Okay, does everybody have their shoes." He looked pointedly at Tiger. He was referring to a time when Tiger had forgotten his shoes in just such an occasion, and had to borrow some from a member of the adult choir. I gasped. "I don't," I squeaked.
"Ha ha, Bard." He thought I was joking. I was already telling Mrs. W the bad news. We hadn't pulled out of the parking lot yet, so it wasn't so bad. Mrs. W rolled her eyes heavenward and said, resigned, "Run fast, Bard. Run."
Here's what was so bad: I had to run in front of the other bus, so they all saw me. I was wearing pink head to toe, too. A bunch of us girls were; we'd planned it. I took off back into the hotel, and managed to just catch an elevator. Dr. Jay was in it.
"Hey, Bard, what's up?"
"I forgot my shoes."I gasped for breath.
He smiled a little bit. "Run fast." I did so readily. I grabbed my shoes and was running pell-mell out of the lobby when I dropped one shoe. Actually, it was the restaurant section of the lobby. I was going so fast I accidentally kicked my shoe. "Shoot," I muttered, scampering after the wayward footwear. All the sophisticated Asians looked at my oddly. I smiled pleasantly, and took off again, feeling slightly like Resse Witherspoon. I entered the bus again, and Mrs. W announced my arrival with a happy "Our Pink Angel is back." I thought about bowing, but was too tired. Several people cheered. Kris and Camp later told me that the bus had been about to leave, and Adam Weaver saved me.

I don't remember breakfast that morning. It is quite possible I slept through it. It's also quite possible I stole some spring rolls from Marty, who I don't really like anyway. Not that I wouldn't have done so if I did like her. I like spring rolls more. I think I also stole some watermelon, but there was a lot of that, so no one cared anyway. It was only me being lazy again.

Have you ever been converged upon by 500 people speaking broken English, all trying to sell you something? I didn't think so. If you have, you've obviously been to the Silk Alley already, and I don't know why you'd bother to read this sorry account.

If you answered yes and haven't been to the Silk Alley, I don't want to know where you've been. It must have been scary.
If you've ever been to an indoor flea market-type place, that's kind of what the Silk Alley was like. Except it was huge. There were 5 (I think) floors of wonderful goodness. Clothes, jewelry, shoes, purses... You name it. It was incredible. Remember, this is coming from someone who doesn't really like to shop that much. It was a free market, meaning you were supposed to bargain for it. A salesperson would usually offer for 2 to 3 times what the item was worth in the beginning. Even that (because yen is worth less than dollars) wasn't a bad price at all. I ended up only getting a few things there (I wanted to get some camo pants, but we ran out of time).
The funny thing about haggling in China is this: they use calculators. They punch in how many yen they want you to pay, then you shake your head, look at your conversion sheet, and punch in what you want. Ash was REALLY GOOD. She kept telling them they didn't have that much money (which she didn't) and would get it down to a really low price. She walked out with TONS!

A few people had negative encounters. Will was buying jeans, and this lady in the next stall grabbed his bag from him. "You not have this back until you buy from me!" she squealed.
"My butt I will!" he answered. "Those things are 40 bucks!"
"How much you pay?" Then, Will did an immeasurably stupid thing.
He took out his wallet, and looked in it.
When he was telling us this, we were all listening quietly, until he reached this point. Other vendors were listening in, too, I think. We were in one of the aisles. When he said he took out his wallet all of us listening (5 or 6 girls) mobbed him. "How stupid are you? Why would you do that?"
He ended up having to buy the shirt. Botched job, beginning to end.
We also passed an underwear stall. We averted our eyes carefully (some of it was pretty weird). Too bad the owner saw us. "You, pretty girls!" he called "Buy for your boyfriends!"
*shudders*
Someone petted Ann's face and said "pretty girl, come buy!" Kris was dragged into a stall unwillingly. Midge and Tiger bought swords. Big ones, in Tiger's case. Camp said he liked to toy with the shopkeepers; they were his playthings.
I don't want to know what he meant.

The Silk Alley didn't actually sell silk. Figure that one out.

Lunch was fun because a bunch of us planned to wear pink (Kris, Ann, Ash, Lena, and me) as I mentioned earlier. We got a picture together. We also were served catfish with icing. They serve a lot of things with icing. They also serve things with heads still on the plate, which also described the catfish.

Rehearsals: long and tiring.
Dress rehearsals: Longer, more tiring, hot, sometimes boring, often hurtful, always hectic. Try getting 300 kids in order. There were actually probably more than that, even. Not to mention some people in our choir didn't feel good. Mrs. Jay kept telling us to keep it down when she was talking, but we weren't saying a word. It was ICC sitting behind us (who were really loud). The rehearsal was okay, except Mrs. Jay had me in different parts for every song, but I couldn't move between songs (a lot of people in my choir had this problem. She moves us around a lot). Midge got sick right before the concert. We all missed him; he's really cool. Plus REALLY tall. It's hard not to miss him (unless he's there, when it's very easy indeed). The concert went well. It wasn't the best concert, and we could see the people in other choirs mocking our song (we had to dance to it) but I met some really nice kids. Too bad we had to leave that night. Icc was leaving for good. Back to the states.

To be Cont'd....

DAY FOUR, PART THREE:

After we all recouped from our various near-death experiences we took a trip to the Cloisonne factory. Some of us were slightly unpleased about the schedule (we wanted to go to the hotel and shower) but the factory was really cool. They made enamel-ware. At first I was thinking vaguely of Tupperware stuff coated in some sort of glassy stuff, but I was pretty much wrong.
You see, it was actually brass things (vases, statues, bowls, anything) covered in designs. They made these designs by taking what looked like metal filings and making tiny shapes with them. The filings were (of course) tiny, so the workers had to use tweezers to attach the stuff. In the next room there were other employees filling the tiny shapes with colored enamel. In the next building they sold the art.

Our guide for the factory told us how you could tell a Cloisonne from a fake, but I'm afraid the only way I could tell would be if I actually had both a fake and an original at the same time. And already knew which was which.

The art was amazing. I took a picture of the most gorgeous peacock figurine ever. It was really expensive (I think $500, but I could be wrong.)

Dinner was, as I remember it, uneventful. Sleeping was wonderful (after my shower). Before my head hit the pillow I made a mental note to myself not to wear the green shirt until I got home. That was the shirt I'd worn on the great wall.

DAY FOUR, PART TWO:

Note: I'm going to just post pieces when I have time. This is the next part of DAY FOUR, but it isn't the rest. Sorry for the wait! I'm getting so far behind!

We started up the Great Wall. And climbed.

And climbed.

And climbed.

And climbed.

And climbed. Until finally we climbed some more. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture. You look at the thing and think "Hey, that's not so bad. It's just a bunch of stairs." Hohoho, my friend are you right on the second, but depressingly wrong on the first. It's a enormous, uneven bunch of stairs, and it's anything but "not so bad" as you naively put it (if you did indeed think that). The first bunch wasn't so awful, but unfortunately there were about 50,000 more where that came from. While you contemplate that, I'll tell you something that will disappoint you; you can't actually see the Great Wall from a satellite. It's all a big myth.
We climbers tried to cheer each other up by making light of the situation.
"This isn't so bad," I told Ash, breathing hard, face purple.
"Not at all," she shot back breathlessly. "We could make this a workout routine."
"And one, and step, and two, and step. One more time!" I said with a gasp. I tripped over a slightly taller step.
"We just need some lame music." Suze passed by.
"Hey, Suze, isn't this a piece of cake?"
"Oh, yeah," she responded.
"I mean, I do six of these before breakfast." I could feel my lungs explode.
"Twelve before lunch," she continued my idea weakly.
"A couple before bed to cool down," Ash finished for us. Even the really fit kids in choir were having trouble. I was dying.

We stopped to take a break, and I realized I'd left my water back at the table. I moaned in abject despair. Ann, being in a similar position, moaned as well. "Here," Ash said, "You can share mine. We're only supposed to take little sips." I took as small a sip as my thirsty body would allow and handed it back. Ann took a small sip, and sighed.
"Okay, I'm ready to move on," she said brow furrowed in determination. I nodded as well, too weak to speak because my life-blood was dripping from my pores; that was the only liquid left in my body.

I believe I skim over the part where I nearly died, and the part where Ann dropped to the ground, telling us bravely to go on. I'll skip the part where Ash proclaimed "No one gets left behind!" and urged me to help her carry Ann up to the summit. I'll simply have you picture us all, brows wet with perspiration, shoulders thrown back in victory, and arms in various strong-man poses.

We rested for a little up at the top, and lifted our jubilant voices up to God with the Irish Blessing. It was a moment I'll never forget. Not to mention the view. We wandered around on top for a while feeling like pretty hot stuff, and we saw Camp, ecstatic about being able to juggle on the Great Wall. I took a video of him, and he was happy. And I saw that it was very good.

The way down, unexpectedly, was almost as harrowing as the way up. Because, you see, someone had stolen the bones in the choirs legs. If you just so happen to see someone with a lot of leg bones, report them. I grew more back, but it wasn't fun at all. Ann discovered at the top that she had to pee. I started to go down with her until someone stole my bones, Apparently having to pee makes you invulnerable to such nuances of China. I met up with Jewel and Will. They were holding hands because the bone thief had struck. I told Will (the main victim) that linking arms with both of us would be better, and he listened. We proceeded to go the rest of the way down in that fashion. At one point he felt pretty comfortable and started to take a step without looking. "WILL!!" Jewel and I both yelled. He looked down.
"Oh, Lord." The step was about three feet tall (no joke!). He was a bit more careful after that.
We finally got to the bottom, and I got Edison a shirt that says "I climbed the Great Wall of China." Who cares that he didn't actually do it?

DAY FOUR:

Hoping that this day would be luckier for me than the last, I awoke. Of course I was tremendously excited about the itinerary for today; we were going to the Great Wall of China! Although we were supposed to go there first, our itinerary proved to be false (as it did on a few other occasions) but, as Adam said, "With Adam Weaver as your guide, nothing can go wrong. You can always trust Adam."
I think I forgot to mention Adam's introduction of himself. When we first got on the bus, he noticed that there were fewer of us on Bus 2 (23) than on Bus 1 (29, I think). He commented on this by saying "I see I have the smaller group. That might be because you see I am younger, and younger is not always better. I have to tell you, though, Adam Weaver is the BEST tour guide." We all clapped, and he looked a little embarrassed.
Anyway, we ended up going to the school first. It was really interesting. When we arrived, the first thing we saw (apart from the gorgeous scenery) was a bunch of little Chinese kids waving at us and grinning ear to ear. Actually, before we saw that, we saw the principal's house, which looked something like a cross between and embassy and the White House, but that doesn't sound as welcoming, and not nearly as cute. We learned that it was the principal's house later; there wasn't a sign on it or anything.
We all paired into groups of three (my group being Ash, Ann and me) and one student came up to each of us to be our guide. Our guide's name was Winnie. She was really nice, and answered all of our questions. We talked about basketball for a little bit, also swimming. They had two swimming pools at the school; a really shallow one inside and a normal-sized one outside. She told us that when the teacher was in a good mood, they got to go swimming. "When the teacher's in a bad mood, we don't go anywhere." The was telling us about how Hangzhou was known for their dumplings, and I said that the dumplings had been pretty good here. "You don't know how bad things are in Beijing." I laughed, but it turned out to be true. Not that Beijing was bad (that came out sounding wrong). It was pretty cool. Just Shanghai and Hangzhou were way nicer. The weather in Beijing was the best, though.
As we were passing one of the girl's dorms we met up with another group. The two guides rattled stuff off to each other in Chinese (or something that sounded like Chinese. It could have been some other Asian language). Winnie paused, gestured toward a little alley, and said "That's where the lovers go." We laughed as she and the other girl told us about one couple who had been spotted by security guards and had to run away. "It's hard to find a place where there aren't any cameras. They'll stop you." Ash said that in most schools in America couples are allowed to kiss all they want in halls. One of the chaperones told us in the bus that her guide had been exceptionally good at English. "She said that she was really surprised she was chosen as a guide. She leaned forward and said 'The food really sucks.'"
Yep. Good grip on the English language.
After the tour we gave a concert for the Chinese schoolkids. It was okay, except the director wasn't as good as Mr. Leck or Mrs. Jay. I'm not just saying that out of pride. She really wasn't. To be a director (or a singer) you have to do more than just beat out time; you have to sort of...
Geez. The only things I can think of sound really dumb. They're true, though. Might as well say them.
Become the music, let the music flow through you, let it guide you... I sound like I'm talking about the Force. I think I mean that it's kind of like wind. You can't see it, you can't hear it, you just have to show it. That sounded dumb, too. Anyway, whatever you have to do, she wasn't really doing it. As a result, we weren't quite up to par. Not only that, the Hawaiian choir did two songs alone, while the rest of us only got to do the combined numbers. What is up with that?! Not only that, the Hawaiian choir had already gone to the bus and we had to wait for them to even start.

We waved farewell to the school, but we weren't too upset because we were headed for the Great Wall. Talk about cool!
Before we attempted the climb we had lunch. An exceptional lunch it was, too. It was SO good. I could have eaten a horse, I was so hungry. There was so much to chose from so that even though I only got a little of everything my plate was overflowing.
We had an informal concert after lunch, but apparently TU and a couple other people didn't hear about that, because they were way up on the wall by the time anyone noticed. I don't think any of the choir managers knew, but a bunch of us (Ash, me, Ann, Kris, Will, and a couple other people) had to yell up. On three, we all yelled "COME DOWN!" at the top of our lungs. They didn't respond, so we did it again. Faith yelled "WE ARE!" We didn't, however, see TU. He had gone around the corner. Faith turned around, and next thing we saw was TU, running down at breakneck speed. Have I mentioned that the stairs were uneven? We all expected to see him fall down the entire way. He didn't. He's lucky like that.
Mrs. Jay decided there was only one song we could do without a piano, so we only sang one. It kinda stunk (there being only one song, not the actual performance). Fortunately for us the trip up the Great Wall was awesome.
More about DAY FOUR in the next post.