14
Location: Beijing
This morning we started our day writing our journals; writing down ten things we have done, and ten things we still want to do. We decided it was easier to say what we want to do rather then what we have done. We then stepped outside in the parking lot to play a game luckily for us it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, and there was almost no humidity. We could all agree it was the nicest day yet! The game we played centered around what we had written down in the ten things we have done a column. We used these to see what more we had in common taking turns saying something we have done if another person also had that in common they would walk into the circle and try to find another place. If they couldn’t then they where next to go.
We then went on our bus over to Little Flower. That day we had people in the baby room and toddler room just to be with and play with the kids. The toddler became a singing session mostly, and the kids loved it. We also had a few people still working on interviews for our mini photograph project. For lunch, a few students volunteered to make sandwiches, and we ate them on the bus on our way to the summer palace.
The Summer Palace was beautiful. The weather was perfect; it was all we could have asked for. We were given a scavenger hunt to do which some kids attempted to do while on the peddle boat, but no one ended up finishing. The peddle boats were for sure one of the highlights while there. We all made sure to go through the middle of the bridge for good luck! Then we all got together for a mini photoshoot with some lily pads and took a cool group picture at some rocks. When taking that picture we saw a school group we had seen for most of our trip, so we got them into our picture for a huge group one. On the way back to the meeting place we decided to break out in the song, of course, singing our group favorite “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus. We sang, and we danced all the way back to our meeting place. Our time was over at the summer palace, but it was a memorable trip.
For dinner that night we had a bunch of veggies and overall just good food, which we all loved. We then headed over to the train station. At the train station, we met up with one of the toddlers we had been working with because he was going back to Balto and he was going to be with us on the overnight train! It was a great experience to help Joy take care of him and get to spend more quality time with him. This toddler loves to observe and just look at things all the time, so he loved the train station getting to look at the people and the signs everywhere. Our time on the train was long but the fun we braided hair, listened to music, and read our books for a little bit. We got off the train at around 8:20 in the morning excited for days to come in Baotou.