Second Day at School

  Beijing, China
Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Today was a lot less nerve-racking. my classmates came in today, armed with gifts for us. As we sat down at our desk, people came up, one by one and layed two identical gifts on our desk. We got rubbers shaped as pigs, bookmarks and lots of chinese lollies. Today was easier as we knew what to expect. We had two exams, Chinese and maths in the morning. We had mornign aerobics again, but today our teacher was taking lots of photos of Laura and I. This was kind-of embarrassing because we were so out of sync with everybody else. We had PE where we ran laps of the basketball court, then we climbed on the climbing wall. The climbing wall was not high, so it took me about two steps to reach the top. From a distance, it looked like any other mural, but all the animals, clouds, trees and houses were actually 3-D, climbing grooves. Class ran quickly and before we knew it, it was lunchtime. While at school
Dad with the others visited a military museum and met up with Ian Knowles, Today we travelled to Tiananmen's square during our two-hour lunch. It was a huge place, just infront of the Forbidden City. We saw the place where the founder of the communist party was buried, although we did not go in. We had countless photos taken of us again with random chinese people. There was one professional photographer who would always come up to us; "Excuse me, I have another person who would like to take a picture with your kids" he would say to dad. We took Jodi's good advice and after one man had a photo with Elyse, dad asked him to pay 5 yuan. The man looked at him with disbelief and was not sure whether dad was serious or not before dad burst out laughing.
Dad was joking around alot, one time grabbing the women who had just asked us for a photo and posed with her for a photo. We headed back to school early because we didn't want to be late like last time. We got back with heaps of time to spare. We had maths straight away, with a short intermittal when we walked outside to see some people get presented with certificates for great acamdemic achievements. After more maths, we had homework time again. Nanna explained to me that many of the children's homes would be hard to do homework in, so they need to allow time to do homework. After school, Laura and I walked around the school for a bit, taking pictures. The little kids loved us, running up to the camera and shouting "Hello!", the only English they know. Each time I waved to them, they would blush or giggle, like I was some celebrity. We caught a taxi back to the hotel, where we enjoyed some rare free time. Our tickets to Xi'an arrived, which was a relief because for awhile we were afraid that we would never get them after the website we bought them off closed down. We had dinner at a pizza buffet (I know, we come all the way to china to eat pizza) where the food was alright, but definately not great. i certainly miss our junk food, back home! We came back home and went to bed.