We began the morning as we begin every morning here, with a delicious Chinese breakfast. Dave and I ate at the hotel, and Jia ventured out into the world in search of bubble tea. After everyone ate, we boarded the bus for a fieldtrip to "Splendid China," a theme park featuring miniatures of all the great sights of China and different shows by a variety of Chinese minority groups. So, we got pictures with us conquering the Great Wall, traipsing through the Forbidden City and having a dance party with some ancient Chinese warriors.
LTI crew with a miniature pagoda
Jia also braved a horse-ride on one of the war horses involved in a reenactment show and Dave danced with the Uyghers during their cultural dance performance. We also had fun, and got soaking wet right before our journey home, at a water splash show, an event whose only goal was to get everyone involved as wet as possible.
Fellow SLP member, Julian, mimicking a statue
On our way home, we took a short tour through the financial district of Shenzhen and took a stroll through the largest park in the city. The park was beautiful and also full of people exercising in whatever way came naturally to them. Some were swinging umbrellas as they paced back and forth in the shade, others exercised their minds through Chinese chess and yet others played a hacky sack / badminton combination sport. It was the coolest sport I've seen in a long time and Dave was so inspired that he bought the equipment to take home with him.
We grabbed some Congee for dinner, from what I understand, the Chinese version of IHOP at midnight, and then had a team meeting in which teams planned out more specific plans for their assigned days of SLP and everyone had a chance to reflect on the purpose of the activities and the flow of the week. I was concerned when I heard that we'd be having one less day than expected, because of a trip to the migratory school for which the students are preparing their final service projects, and that we'd have about an hour more than expected each day. But after everyone presented their plans and the teams worked together to redistribute the activities, we came up with what I think will be a fantastic curriculum that fits into the time we have and hopefully with the needs of our group of students as well. All of the planning got me really excited for the program, so while I greatly look forward to these next 3 days of seeing the sights of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, I'm also looking forward to meeting our students day after tomorrow and beginning the actual program on Friday.
-Taylor
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