My birthday--Alia

On December 2, it was my fourth birthday! I had a pink cake that Seth and I decorated with skittles--we might have eaten some instead of put them on the cake--and I got a pink and yellow kitchen set! It is so much fun being four!

THIMUN Singapore--Maddie

Hey everybody!!! So very sorry that we haven't been able to post for a long time!! Things around here have been so unimaginably busy!! Last month I got back from THIMUN Singapore, and right as I finished the week of make up work, it was time to study for unit tests, then finals! Now I'm on winter break--THANK GOODNESS!!-- and can post!

Ok, so here are a few pictures from THIMUN, there is only four because most of it was the same every day!

Here is a picture of the last night at THIMUN. I am on the left--I mean, really, who else could that be?--and my friend Angela is on the right. She had bought that sparkly dress the night before at one of the malls. When everyone says that Singapore is expensive, don't just think that is an excuse for why they didn't get you anything. Singapore really is REALLY expensive! I don't know the exact amount she spent on that dress but it cost an arm and a leg, to be sure!

This is the view from where I was sitting, WAY in the back. I couldn't hear much and called quite a few point-of-personal-privilege-due-to-audibility-s which translated from MUN language into English is the same as saying, "I can't hear you. Please talk louder." Being in the back also was a plus when the debate was boring, so you could play tic tac toe with UK who was also really bored and conveniently sitting next to you!

Here you can see on the left, Holly, who was the delegate of the Dominican Republic. I didn't actually learn her name until she friend-requested me on FB. We just referred to each other as the delegate of (insert country name here). I was the delegate of the USA, which was extremely stressful, since everyone wanted your opinion on everything and expected you to be the expert on everything. Anyway, I was at the mall after debate that day, looking around a store with Angela, and I heard, "USA?" Yes, the delegate of Turkey from ECOSOC recognized me, but we didn't even know each other's names, just their delegations!

This is what my "desk" looked like if you scrunched down in your chair. Right next to my amazing purple pen is a stack of notes and notepaper waiting to be responded to. On the right is the resolution that was being debated. And at the top is my placard, which is now sitting on my bulletin board. 

Wall Photos -- Tate

Hi again! I found pictures from my classmates of the section I hiked on the wall.

-- Tate :]

Weird Candy -- Tate

Hello Everybody! Happy Halloween! Here in China, you can find some weird candy from Halloween like:

- Jujube Cake
- FRUgurt
- Something Gooey
- Expired Candy (I didn't even know there was such a thing)
- Chocolate Koalas (Koalas?)
- "Cream Egg Cookies"

So, who wants to Trick or Teat in China? :)

-- Tate

BeiJing Trip -- Tate

Last week on Friday, I came back from BeiJing. I want to tell all of you about what a fun school trip I had. Sorry if my pictures are bad, I don't have a good camera at all. It runs out of battery in a snap and doesn't take good pictures and won't focus very well. I am hoping for a good one for Christmas.

We had a really boring flight after leaving Concordia, my school, at 6:00 AM on last week's Sunday. We arrived in BeiJing and drove to the hotel. When we got in the hotel, me and James (He was my roommate) put our stuff away, but James found this sign by our beds that I think will only be necessary in China.

We then hopped on the bus to go to a restaurant. It was the first traditional Chinese restaurant I have been to, and I am now believing Chet when he warned me about dizzying and spinning food. It is hectic. You try and spin the table one way, but your classmate is still trying to get food off of the table when it starts spinning away from them unintentionally. They either stop the table and I have to wait, or they hurry and grab as much as they can unsuccessfully with their flimsy chopsticks before they can't reach. The food was not worth it either. Maybe that is just because I am picky.

We then went to some BeiJing urban planning museum. This is some museum that has a bunch of cool maps of BeiJings and a slideshow of the future of BeiJing. I almost fell asleep in the middle of the showing I was so tired. Here are som of the maps and models at the museum.

This model was completely made of wood.

This 3D model continued into a printed map under glass on the floor. Way cool!

The teachers and the tour guides then announced that we were going to Tiananmen Square where the forbidden city is. I got excited until we got there and we just walked in a giant concrete circle around the outside of the walls. Yay.

We then went to a really good Brazilian Barbecue restaurant. Yum. Then I found that James was sick. He threw up afterwards. We then drove to the hotel, and I made him go to bed early. I was exhausted anyway.

In the morning, James didn't show a trace of illness, so that was good. We ate breakfast at the hotel then went to this Chinese park. These are some of the things I saw there.

This was the entrance to Ditan Park.

This man was painting water calligraphy on the ground.

These people looked like experts. They were playing a hackie sack thing with feathers.

We then were going to do a competitive scavenger hunt. We divided into teams and we went into the Hutongs, a maze of old homes with narrow alleys and roads. Here are some pictures.

This is one of the nicer streets in the Hutongs. I think the Hutongs are interesting because everyone has bad houses but nice cars, like the rest of China.

This is an alleyway entrance to the back of some of the homes.

This is a random sign on the wall of a run down bar. I thought it was pretty funny.

This is a nice bicycle shop in the Hutongs where you can buy different parts for your bike.

After the scavenger hunt, we had lunch at another restaurant. Another activity followed, but this one was super cool. Our tour organization owns a Hutong, so we went into the Hutong and learned how to make jiao zi, or dumplings. It is easy!

To make the outside, you mix flour and water. To make the filling, you can chop up veggies and maybe some egg, then cut the dough in circles and put the filling on top. Fold them in half and seal the edges, boil them, then eat! Simple!

Anyway, we then learned how to do the water calligraphy and we learned about Chinese idioms. What I want to tell you is about the dinner that day. WOW! It was so good! We had original BeiJing Peking Duck. Amazing.

The next day, we drove out to the countryside and did some climbing activities. This is what I climbed.

It is called the Via Ferrata, a French style of climbing. Before then I didn't even know there were different types of climbing. I thought there was just climbing!

We then had Subway on the ride to a farm. We were going to do some farm work, but it was raining, so we couldn't do that. So instead we did an indoor mini olympics. We had a plank competition, a pushup competition, and other stuff like that. We had more spinning dinner then went to the hotel.

In the morning, we had breakfast, then went to The start of the Great Wall, where my camera ran out of batteries. Great. I will go verbal from now on.

We were going to hike 8km on a section of the wall that tourists don't normally go. It was a part of the wall that has not been redone or changed from it's original position. It was really crumbly, so sometimes we had to cross parts on 2 feet wide stone by the edge of the wall. That was scary. We saw the insides of some of the watchtowers  and the storage parts. To get to different floors, we sometimes had to descend steep stairs that were as thick as the width of  my shoe.

At the end, we got to repel down the side of one of the watchtowers. I wasn't a fan. The harness hurt! The straps dug into my waist and it wasn't a tall watchtower.

We then hiked down a path to the center where we would stay the night in tents. The food was superb! They made lots of Western food, but they made them with chinese styles and seasonings! Yum!

We then did some team building activities to get to know each other like the human knot and other cooperation games. We went back to the center and camped in the courtyard in tents. Surprisingly, I wasn't cold even though it rained.

In the morning, we packed up, had the first disgusting bacon I have had, then did some more team activities. We had lunch in a plaza by the airport. They also announced there was a store near with the best candy in China, so that was a hit. Some kids spent more than $45 on gum alone! Are they full of money? I'm not sure. I bought some candy for Maddie, Larsen, Cole, Rebekah, Emma, Seth, Alia, and some Andes mints for Mom and Dad.

We then drove to the airport, where we found that our flight was going to be delayed by a total of 3 and a half hours! That was pretty boring.

When we finally arrived at Concordia again, it was 11:00. I drove home with a headache and a cold and then went to bed, so tired not event bothering to go to school the next day.

That was my trip! Thank you if you read the whole thing, and sorry I rambled on for a long time. I think that this is the longest post in Our Smash Blog! Yay! A new record!

-- Tate ;)

Preschool Safari--Alia

At preschool we made binoculars and looked for bugs and animals and birds and fish. I also like to throw rocks in the pond while Mom and I wait for Seth and Reb to get off the bus.

Saving the day--Cole

When we were playing frisbee I was totally awesome and ran and got this giant humongous fishing net to get the frisbee out of the pond. Everybody else was being cuckoo and using sticks. I knew where to find the big bamboo net.

Frisbee--Larsen

While Maddie and Tate were on their school trips, we played frisbee with the rest of us. And like always has to happen when you play frisbee, someone has to get hurt. I got smacked in the head with the frisbee, Seth got hit in the ear, and Emma had it ricochet off her stomach and then hit me. But we all got over our injuries in a few minutes and had enough fun that we begged to do it again the next week.

The three ten-year-olds. 

Interim--Maddie

Hi! I can't remember the last time I posted, it could be a few weeks ago for all I can remember! =] I really can only remember the last week or so. And just remembering that much is a stretch! Don't even begin to talk to me about two weeks from now, I am just taking it day by day. =]

I just got back from a school trip on Thursday. We each got to choose what trip we wanted to go on our of the fifteen or so choices. I chose to go to Yunnan. Yunnan is a rural, poorer province in China. The trip I was on was a water project. We dug trenches to provide a poor village with water. The trip was a week long.

 Here you can see one of the village women working alongside with us. They are SO STRONG!!!!!!! I would be working for 30 minutes to an hour to get a little section of hard dirt dug up and then this little lady who only comes up to about my shoulder came by, ripping up ground like you couldn't believe! All of these villagers are so strong! I would be digging in my little area when all of a sudden it would seem like there was a parade down the mountain! I would say, "What's going on?" and the reply would always be, "The villagers put us out of work." Five or ten minutes later I would look up and see the villagers making short work of our trenches, and I, too would get the opportunity to join the parade~

These are some of the village kids, they are SO CUTE!!!! They were watching us play catch with a tennis ball I brought. We would wake up, eat noodles for breakfast AGAIN, put on our gloves, grab our hoes, and hike either 1 km up or down the steep mountain. We'd work for about 4 hours digging, laying pipe, or burying pipe. Then we would hike back to the village to eat rice, veggies and about two bites of meat for lunch. After eating, we would have 1 hour to do whatever we wanted, whether we were playing with the kids or sleeping, the teachers didn't care. I played with the kids every day. At first they were really shy, but the end of the second day they were playing with us. After the hour was up, we would hike 1 km the opposite direction we went in the morning and dig for about 5-6 hours. Sometimes the ground was nice and soft, sometimes packed hard, sometimes rocky, and sometimes clay. It didn't matter what the ground was like, the villagers were still faster! We would hike back to the village and spend the better part of an hour trying to get clean with baby wipes. I would dump out a pile of dirt from my shoes, take off my socks, look at my feet and wonder how my feet got a tan! Three baby wipes later, my feet would be mostly back to their normal blinding white-ness. I got a tan, but didn't even realize it until I got in the shower when I got home and it didn't wash off! Anyway, for dinner we would eat rice, veggies, and about two bites of meat. After dinner we would play with the village kids, and when it got too dark to play, they went home and we played cards until it was lights out. We were so exhausted that I didn't even care that I was sleeping on a slat of wood and my sleeping mat didn't do much to make it softer. I didn't even notice that one of my roommates was shouting in her sleep. Then we woke up in the morning and hit repeat.

This is when we went to visit the village school on the last day. It was raining, so we are wearing rain ponchos. I'm in the middle with my hood off because I wanted my hair to get wet. We hadn't showered in a week, so my hair was pretty gross! On my left in the red poncho is Morgan, and on my right is Samantha. The school was pretty small, but they are building a new one. Most of the kids sleep at school.

Here I am unleashing my inner ninja with one of the village kids. The kids that have the red tie around their necks are the ones who go to school. We taught the kids how to play Duck, Duck, Goose and Red Light, Green Light. We had to come up with the Chinese names for the games, though. Duck, Duck, Goose was Ya, Ya, E. The E sounds more like uh, though. It was so much fun! Red Light Green Light was Hong Deng, Lu Deng. The e in Chinese pinyin sounds like uh, the o in Hong is long, and the lu sounds like something strange that I can't even pronounce correctly. It was still a BLAST!!!

On the last evening, there was a dance party with the villagers. We all stood in a huge circle and tried--and failed, for the most part--to do the traditional dance. There were several girls who would copy everything I did, and during an especially difficult dance, I taught them to say 'I love you' in English. I said, "zhong wen wo ying wen shi I. zhong wen ai ying wen shi LOVE. zhong wen ni ying wen shi YOU." I think they understood! So if you are going to tell some Chinese people how to say I love you in English with some very basic Chinese, there you go! That is the pinyin without the tones, so it might be sort of hard. Oh well!

Washington, D.C.--Tate

Some cool pics with Grandma Larsen when we visited in July.

Fruit Market--Maddie

These are two pictures from when we went to the fruit market. I LOVE THE FRUIT MARKET!! You can ask me what it is that makes me love it so much, but I wouldn't be able to pinpoint exactly one thing. You just walk in, see the fruit lady smiling from her fruit stand, know that you can't really communicate so you are about to play a very interesting game of charades, and just laugh out loud. I love it so, so, so, very much... =] The first food that looks like a shower head is what I call Shower-Head Fruit. I don't know the actual name because it is in Chinese and I can't remember it. They taste pretty bitter and I only sort of like them. The second picture is of lychee. That is the official name. The other name is Dragon Eyes. I like that name better. The name is fitting since you peel off the hard brown thing on the outside and underneath is a white, squishy fruit. You eat that and in the middle is a small black pit, somewhat like a pupil. Can you see why they are called Dragon Eyes, now? =]

Jumping in the rain--Rebekah

Every time it started raining we would hurry and go jump on the trampoline. It was a lot more fun than jumping with the sprinkler on.

Popsicles--Cole

Like my eyes? My favorite popsicle is the Melona Bar. It tastes like honeydew only frozen. We ate them all the time in Korea, and we were so excited that we could get them in China too.

Just Dance and Grandma Olsen--Larsen

This summer it was so hot that we spent a lot of time in the basement doing Just Dance on the Wii.
Grandma Olsen came to visit us in July and then came on the plane with us to the States.