A Day (Month) in the Life of Daniel #3 CHINA

Hello Steemians,

It's time for a bit more of an interesting travel story, rather than, stepping into my local Adelaide playgrounds, I'm taking this journey overseas. I've also noticed a lot of Chinese bloggers on here, so I hope to connect with some of you after this post!

So here it is... In December 2010 I embarked on a five week school exchange to Xi'an Middle School, China. Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi Provence and is located in central China.
THEWORLDOFTRAVEL, 2015 "Xi'an China" www.youtube.com

The school I was attending was enormous. It had many access points and guards at all the entrances, checking school ID's so that none of the 4000+ students were illegitimately attending school. I forgot to mention, the school was only a middle school. So this was only for students in years 10 - 12.

Out of the six fortunate students from my school in Australia, I was the only Caucasian. Guards quickly began to recognize me and let me through their access point without presenting my card haha!

Xi'an Middle School - Main Entrance

Back to front, left to right; Daniel, Frank, Gordon, Chantelle, Rachel, Cherie.

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My Student ID

My host sister was in the level 1 class for her year level. This class was very serious and even had cameras recording each class for training and quality purposes. (Writing that made me feel like a telemarketer hahah) Anyways, it was difficult for me to keep up with these classes. Besides the serious stresses and dedication to studying these students have, they had time to catch up on sleep or have some fun between classes. Back then, my Chinese on a basic level was about a 6.5/10. I did not understand much in the classes and spent most of this time writing in my journal.

Host sister and myself

Classmates fooling around between classes

When lunch break hit, I liked to go out and play table tennis on one of their hundreds of tables around the school or play basketball on one of their 6 courts. After a while, it became a bit of an attraction to play with us exchange students and we even had other students watching us from building windows, sharing glasses to get a better glimpse of the 外国人 (wai guo ren) ((foreigner)) ((('white boy'))).

Gordon draining buckets

Being watched from afar, even in the windows ^.^

Besides school life, Xi'an has many wonderful places to visit. Whether its the City Sport Park, the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, the City Walls, or the world famous Terracotta Warriors, there is always something historic and beautiful to visit.

Frank and myself on Xi'an City Walls

All going well until Rachel broke her bike pedal

Highlight Story
As our trip was at the end of year, I was fortunate enough to have a Christmas in China. We decided to do a performance for the heads of school and host families. My fellow exchange buddies were all musically talented and played many instruments, I however, was not. We did a performance which included Frank doing a bit of a piano solo, Gordon hitting the bass and Cherie killing the drums. I got by with some mediocre singing and playing the triangle or something. The school loved it. In fact, they invited us to play in-front of a few hundred students from another school. Being a bit hesitant, but appreciative of the time spent in their hands, we accepted.

Over the next week, the number of students attending rose from few hundred, to a thousand, to THREE THOUSAND. Never had I or the others imagined something like this. Long story short, when we arrived, The students observed us very closely, it's like they could smell the nervous in my foreign skin. Many began to come up asking for my 'QQ' which is like the MSN messenger over there, and plenty of photos too. When we went on stage and introduced ourselves one by one, I only managed to say "大家好" (da jia hao) ((hello everyone)) before the entire room irrupted in screams and cheers like I was Justin Bieber (fortunately I'm not, just sayin'.) I was very excited but also very embarrassed knowing I was about to half mumble some song in the background hoping that no one would look at me.

We got through the concert in one piece. I began to help Cherie pack up the drum kit when the crowds swarmed for more photos. By this stage, we were separated from our group and began to panic. In a non-violent, but semi-desperate manner I began to use the drum kit as a bit of a ram to get through the crowd and onto the bus. Once Cherie and myself got on the bus we froze to our awareness of all these random students staring at us.. WE WERE ON THE WRONG BUS. As we turned around, the crowd was already there. We then had to push our way back off the bus. Eventually we took a few more photos and managed to part from the crowd and find the right bus. It was a very thrilling experience, to feel like a full-blown celebrity, but I'm glad that isn't a reality.

Overall, the entire trip was amazing. To experience authentic Chinese living was very eye opening . The differences in family living, lifestyle, education, food, hobbies and everything in-between is so vast it makes you appreciate the simple things and I have utmost respect for the hard-working Chinese people. I would love to visit again!

Thank you for your time reading, I hope you have enjoyed my journey! :)

photobomb at school assembly :P

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