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Published: December 31st 2008
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ZACK
So far in China I have not seen much more than the inside of my hotel room at the Courtyard Marriot Forbidden City. Christmas in England was fun, except for the “Kill Santa” campaign. To my horror my aunt and uncles neighborhood was filled with people hanging model Santas by nooses out of their windows to protest the commercialization of Christmas.
Christmas day was quite interesting. It started off by me being woken up on the couch by my two cousins (obviously) freaking out because it was Christmas. I was pretty impressed with some of the stuff they got. They got a Wii, a trampoline, a steam engine, and a bunch of other stuff. I mainly got a bunch of candy from my aunt because anything I got I would have to carry around the world. After we were all dressed, my dad, my uncle, and I went outside to put the trampoline together. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. We totally messed up like 8 times and it took us like 4 hours. It was basically dark when we were done, but jumping on it was definitely worth it. We had a really Christmas Morning
My cousins tearing into their multiple gifts! big dinner with the family, and it turned out to be a really fun Christmas, probably because I got to spend it with a lot of members of my family.
Oh yea, my dad bleached his hair blonde when he got to England and then shaved most of it off. I don't know why? Anyway, it looks cool and for a short while there will be two blondes in the family.
The day after Christmas I started to feel pretty sick. When we flew to Newark it was the worst flight I have ever taken. We started the day off by taking a taxi to the airport. When we got to the gate I went to the bathroom and threw up. I felt really bad because there was an Indian guy in the next stall who cleaned it up as I walked out. By this point I was really feeling terrible. Getting on the plane made it a lot worse. When we were up in the air I had a window seat so it was super hard to get out. At one point I ran to the bathroom and they actually had to shut it down. I had thrown up
and a lot of it got on the floor. The rest of the flight was terrible because some of it had got on my leg and shoe so I changed seats and sat next to my mom. When we got to the Newark airport we said our goodbyes to my brother who was flying to San Diego. My mom took him to his gate while my dad and I waited for the shuttle that would take us to our hotel. When we got to the hotel I literally collapsed. I fell asleep for the rest of the night, every once in a while waking up to cough really hard.
The next day we flew to China and the flight was crazy long. My mom got sick at some point and we have spent our first few days in China mostly in the hotel room. Last night I did get to go to an interesting vegetaraian restaurant and there are a lot of interesting aspects of dining in China. For one, there are constantly 20 people standing around, catering to all your dining needs. Because it was a vegetarian restaurant, it was nice knowing that you could order anything off the
Courtyard Marriot Forbidden City
"You can check out any time you like...but you can't ever leave." menu. They had some pretty crazy fake meat. They even had fake jellyfish. It was probably just jelly wrapped in some weird seaweed innards. The food we got was really good. I learned how to say “thank you” in Chinese, so I thanked our server (more like servers) and then we walked back to the hotel. My God was it was freezing. Living in Southern California has really softened me up. When we walked outside the cold air hit my face like a glove. We raced back to the hotel.
Tonight we celebrated New Years with some weird CCTV show. That stands for China Central Television. We watched the countdown in Chinese. I think it was in Hong Kong. There were fireworks coming from all the business buildings, even the ones that just got bailed out (hmm… now why are they spending their money on fireworks?) I ate some leftovers from my parent’s breakfast in the morning. Today really has been boring. It was hard going to sleep because I had basically slept all day. Lets hope 2009 brings good health, unlike this “year of the rat.”
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Christina
non-member comment
Thank you and rats
Aaaactually, you're not supposed to "say" thank you in a Chinese restaurant. You're just supposed to tap the table. If you say thank you, that means you're not eating and is actually considered rude. If I learned one thing from my Chinese medicine education, it's how to thank a server. Totally worth it. Ha. :) And the year of the rat is awesome. I'm a rat. Don't judge me.