Walking

We've done a lot of walking, more than anything else.

My uncle that lives in China, Josh Steimle, is a trail runner. He writes articles in magazines about running. We walked a trail that he climbs weekly. My seven year old cousin, James, told us that there were about 1,700 stairs on this hike. I tried to go ahead because it's fun, but I'm not as fast as James and my brothers. Kai, Renen, and James would go quickly and get far ahead, then wait twenty minutes until Mom, Lily, Magdalena, and Josh caught up. For most of the day, I ended up somewhere in between with butterflies as my companions.

This butterfly is bigger than my hand. I saw
 it somewhere else,but it fits best here.

When we reached the top, Mom bought us each a popsicle. You don't know what flavor you're going to get, there are only pictures and Chinese characters to guess off of. Most of us got a possibly lemon flavored popsicle, but Kai and Renen got a candy bar inside of vanilla ice cream inside of chocolate.

On the way down, I decided to take more breaks. When I stood still, everything below my knees would shake rapidly. I sat down, waiting for the slower group to catch up. After ten minutes, I texted Mom: 'What if I get lost?' They then showed up above me. We finished the hike together.

I take panoramics on my phone, and it makes straight railings look very curved.

I was tired. I was waiting. So what did I do? Sit on a turtle.

The walk increased my stamina, gave me some good pictures, was hot, and was fun.

Airplanes

Thursday, the plane flew into Shenzhen, China after a long couple of flights. It started on Tuesday when Dad found out that our flight to California had been delayed. A few minutes later, it had been delayed ten more minutes. In the end, the final departure time was two hours later than it was first scheduled to be. The plane finally left at 10 P.M., and we arrived in LA at midnight.
Before that flight got delayed, we had a three hour layover to get to our next gate. Now, we only had an hour. We sprinted and jogged and ran and panted and dashed all the way to the desk, where we learned that our flight had already left. It was scheduled to take off in thirty minutes. Our flight was the last flight that night from the airline. We sat down, grateful that we could, and explored our options. Dad called the airline. After a while, Mom went to the desk and asked a different airline if they had a plane leaving to Shenzhen soon. They did, over a different route. The flight we missed stopped at Chongqing, and this one stops in Beijing. We bought tickets, hoping insurance would pay for them, and used the rest of our energy to run to our gate on time. This flight was sixteen hours and included the major time change. That means, if you think about it right, that the only thing I did on Wednesday was run.
The international plane flight was not as good as the one that we took to Peru. The seats weren't very comfortable, and the touch screens didn't work well. I changed my screen to show the information about the flight, and kept it that way. Once we were allowed to, I pulled down my tray table, set the provided pillow on it, set my head on the pillow, and slept. I spent about eleven hours of the flight sleeping. Before our first meal, I told Dad that this airline would be 'okay' if the food was good. It was, with the exception of the weird cooked green vegetables. Some other things in the meals were rice, noodles, chicken, beef, melon, yogurt, rolls, and even Milano cookies for dessert. During the last three hours of the flight, I couldn't sleep any more. I read a new book I got from my library's reading program, Mark of the Thief by Jennifer A. Nielsen.

My first view of China

When the plane landed, we tried to find out what we needed to do next. Our flight to Shenzhen from Beijing was on the same plane and in almost the same seats, but the flight attendant said we had to get off of the plane. We deplaned and, instead of a jetway, walked onto a staircase. We then took an extremely crowded bus that we could barely fit on to the terminal.

This is the bus we took from
the plane. It was really
crowded. The bus held half of
 the people on the plane and
their luggage.

Once there, we found out where we had to get our passports and visas checked. We waited in the line, and then we waited more. We moved forward 100 feet in ten minutes. There were 1,000 feet more to go, and we only had one hour to catch our next flight. Dad asked an immigration agent if we could somehow go any faster, and he said we would just have to ask the people in front of us if we could pass them. We were halfway through the line in another ten minutes. Someone in the line showed us the express line, which was right next to the line were in. Someone working at the airport had just kicked everyone out of it and closed it off. Then Dad showed him our next flight's departure time, and we were suddenly the second ones in line. All six of us got through with time to spare. We asked four different people if we needed to get our luggage or not. One said yes, another said you shouldn't have to, the third said ask the airline, and the last one said no. We guessed that we didn't, and hoped we were right. We ran to where we had to take another bus. There was one there, but the driver had just left the vehicle. Dad stopped him and showed him our departure time. We were on the moving bus, waiting and waiting, which was the worst part for me. I was stressed about missing our flight, and I couldn't do anything about it. I was just sitting. Waiting. Hoping. We arrived at the next place in the process, waited in another express line, ran to the right, found out it was the wrong direction, sprinted to the left, panted, got a cramp, tried to run, and reached our gate, which was still open. We walked down the jetway, stopping and enjoying wherever we could feel the air conditioning. We found our seats.
On our Peru flight, Kai took the window seat on the way there. He told me I could have it on the way back. He slept the entire time, except for when he looked out the window and SAW AN ISLAND. I was determined to have the window seat on our way back.
Kai took the window seat on the return flight.
I have never forgotten.
On our flight to China, I had claimed the window seat months ahead of time.
Unexpectedly, we missed our flight and got seats on a different plane. Our seats were spread out, two together and four together. All our seats were in the middle row, with an aisle on either side. No window seat, or seat even close to the window.
On the flight from Beijing to Shenzhen, Kai sat down in the window seat. I provided my lengthy argument for why I should have it, including that I would give him some of the candy I bought for the flights. He kindly changed seats with me, and I got the window seat!!
Even though they had fed us breakfast on the previous flight, when it was around seven in China, they fed us breakfast again on this flight, at about ten. On this flight, I read past the halfway point in my book, and took enough pictures out the window to justify my sitting there.

A sample

When we landed, we got our luggage in a large, pleasant room where my family was six of ten people. Only ten people, in an entire room, in an airport, in China. Then we went through customs. Customs consisted of: put your luggage on a conveyor belt and let it be scanned for ten seconds, while you walk past it. No lines. Already we could sense that this would be a very, very rare occurrence in China. We rode an escalator up a level. We thought that maybe we had lost Kai and Renen, but logically, Dad suggested we look by the Ford cars on display, which was exactly where we found them. Then we walked to where my aunt would pick us up. Walked. We didn't run. We could go as slowly as we wanted.
Riding the metro to where we're staying was fun; we had to use cards to get in and out. The purple cards open these small red doors, but some of us were just a little bit nervous that they would close on us while we walked through.
For four days, pretty much all we did was run and sit on airplanes. Now we're here, and it's hot and crowded, but beautiful. And there's more to do than sit on airplanes.

China!

Next Tuesday, August 1st, I leave on a trip to China for five weeks. My entire family is going. We've never actually had an entire family trip that my little sister Lily can remember. China is our first, and probably last, entire family trip. (Mom and Dad had to make it a really big deal so that everyone would come.)
Mom, Dad, Lily and I will be there for about five weeks, but not everyone else can be there for that long. My older brothers, Talon and Kai, and Talon's wife, can stay for about three weeks. Kai will be staying afterwards to teach English to Chinese kids.
Mom's little brother Josh Steimle has lived in mainland China and Hong Kong with his family for five years. They will be helping us around, and we'll be staying with them when we're not seeing other things. They have a nine-year-old adopted daughter and a seven-year-old son.
School starts on August 18th, but we'll be back on September 13th. I'll be missing the first month of eighth grade. I missed the first four day of sixth grade for Talon and Maddy's wedding, and in seventh grade I homeschooled, so I will have missed every middle school year's beginning.
We are planning on traveling in a big oval around eastern China, and taking overnight sleeping trains. I'll get to see the Terracotta Warriors, panda bears, rice terraces, Tienanmen Square, the Great Wall, and other interesting things. I'll be blogging all of the way. I'm excited!

Book drive was awesome! Thanks everybody!

The book drive post that I posted a few months ago? (Oh, I am so behind.) So many people participated! Thanks everybody!
We brought down the box of books from upstairs, and told the kids that we had a surprise for them. The kids opened the books, and they LOVED it!

We also received money and used it to build a bookshelf and a reading bench for them. That made up their new reading corner.

We skyped my class, and the kids said thank you. In English! They were excited to meet an American class. I thought it was so cool to have my friends in Peru meet my friends in the U.S.

Church in Banos

Just like at home, our family went to church every Sunday. It took us about 20 minutes to get there if we caught a bus right away. We took a bus from our town, Puyllucana, to Banos del Inca. From there we walked a few blocks to the church. I wish I had better Sunday shoes!

Church was very confusing for me at first because I couldn't understand Spanish. At least I knew what was happening, because our church is the same all over the world, except for the language.  After Liz, another American, became my teacher, I could understand a lot more in my class. She talked a lot slower. 

Church was fun, sometimes, too. Sometimes we had fun activities. Our family helped out a lot. Kai played piano, and I played it (along with my mom) for the kids meeting (Primary). We were asked to do all kinds of things.

These are the kids that helped with a service project one Saturday. We were cleaning the church. We were going to mop the floors but there wasn't any water that day so we couldn't!

This is how we listened to General Conference. General Conference is when everyone in the world can listen to the modern prophet speak. Since at the church it was in Spanish, we stayed home and watched it on the computer in English. Renen and I are doing origami.

This is playing with one of my friends, Valentina at our All Saints Day party at the church. It's a national holiday right after halloween. She also barely moved in when I came. We're jump roping.

This is the lunch they gave us at the party. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day. We had rice, beans, and a piece of meat.

Since the only piano close to us at all is at the church, that's where I practice. NO PERUVIAN knows how to play, only us movistar gringos. (That's what they call white people.)

This is the Stake President's house and his family. They invited us over for family home evening. Family home evening is a weekly Monday night family gathering in our church when we talk about the gospel. In Peru, people have chicken and fries for dessert. (It's actually dinner. THEY MISSED DESSERT!)

We had a talent show for a ward activity. Valentina's family did a three little pigs play.

We taught the Honkey Tonk Stomp to anyone who wanted to learn. The bishop's counselor did pretty good.

This is the Primary Program practice. That's when the primary children come in Sacrament Meeting (the main meeting) and speak about what we've learned about in church that year and sing songs that we've learned. I knew all the songs, because I learned them in the U.S. before we left, but now I had to learn them in Spanish!  It was really hard, but I did it! Lily did too! EN ESPANOL!

We are so hard to organize.

This is my friend, Miguel. He's married to another gringa. She helped us out a lot, and Miguel is really funny.

This is the whole ward at the good bye party. See if you can find all 10 gringos! They don't have black hair. I miss these people.