So this past May I had the incredible opportunity to go to Beijing, China with the choir I'm in at School. It was
exactly what I needed and it could not have come at a better time.
So much happened in the 9 days we were there so I'm going to give it to you little by little.
Let me tell you about some friends that I made:
Meet Wendy (in the hat) and Judy (in the pink).
Story time:
Kacee and I were walking around the area close to our hotel. There were beautiful parks and old people doing Tai Chi and little kids all over the place. LOVED it. We went to this one park and found this lovely pond with a bridge and waterfall. There were tons of people surrounding this pond and taking pictures of it. We couldn't really tell what was going on and so we took a closer look.
They were looking at ducks.
They were going crazy over a family of ducks like they've never seen live ducks before in their life. So of course we got in on the hype. We took some pictures and as we were moving closer to the pond we heard someone behind us say in broken English "go down there, you can take better pictures down there." We turn around an see this smiley little woman. She heard us speaking English and started to talk to us. We found out her english name is Judy and we chatted with her for about 45 minutes. Judy just glowed. She told us about how important being happy and making others happy is and how we should have charity and show that to everyone. This woman was the most positive and pleasant lady I've ever been around. As we were talking with her I kept thinking about how much I wanted to share the gospel with her, but it's illegal in China right now.
The longer we talked the more people would stand around and listen to us. This one lady came up to us and couldn't speak a word of English, but it was clear that she and Judy were friends so Just translated for her. She was loving us! We got a kick out of her and she asked us to give her an American name. So we named her Wendy.
Then we noticed this mom and her little son standing nearby watching us as well and they came up to us. The little boy wanted to "communicate" with us so he told us how old he was in English. I'm pretty sure that's all he could say.
Here is my buddy. I named him Ping because I couldn't pronounce his Chinese name. So fun.
The last little friend we made was this darling baby girl whose grandparents brought her up to us and had us hold her. She was a doll. She was also really interested in my nose. Probably because it's huge.
Such an awesome day being with these people and it set the tone for the rest of our time there. I loved the Chinese people and was so impressed by so many things.
I love traveling to different countries, and I've been really blessed to have been to some incredible places.
Bottom line: I have learned that if you want to get the most out of where you are, go be with the people because those interactions are what will stay with you long after you have left.
There's more to tell:
Forbidden City
Summer Palace
Tienanmen Square
The Great Wall
Jade Factory
Sheldon Poon and the LDS branch.
Lots.
