Weekend in Guangzhou

            This weekend was full of activities! Yesterday morning us 10 teachers, all of our teaching assistants, and a handful of the camp staff took a charter bus to Guangzhou, the capital of the province Guangdong, which is where the town we are living in (Dongguan) is located. We first went to the Canton TV Tower, which is now a popular landmark of the city. It was 114 floors to the top, plus a big antenna thing on top. We first went to the 107 and 108 floors to view the city. I sent a couple postcards home from floor 107! Hopefully they get to the US before I get back. 

            After about 20 minutes, a few of us got the idea to ride the World’s Highest Vertical Freefall, which was on the top floor on the big antenna. After jumping off the World’s Tallest Bungee Bridge in South Africa last summer, I couldn’t turn the opportunity down! The drop was about 10 meters, so not too tall, but it was pretty frightening at the very top before being dropped because you could see the whole city for miles and miles and miles. The second drop was terrifying. The hydraulics of the seats shifted us forward so we were face down looking at the ground before dropping. Yes, I screamed. Yes, I cried a little. Yes, I am a bit of a daredevil. No, my parents didn’t know until after. 

 View of the city from the 108th floor. 

 The Canton Tower :) 

            After the Canton tower we went to a shopping mall and had McDonalds for lunch. It is so popular here and a little bit different than the US. The university paid for our lunch and our TA’s lunches, so it was more a treat for them than it was for us. In the afternoon we went to a “theme park” called Lingnan Impressions. It was kind of like a park with a few streets of old buildings and lots of shops and a few shows. It was cool, but it poured down rain on us and the Chinese TAs and staff did not understand that we did not need to stay together as a big group of 30. It was a little stressful, but the buildings were beautiful and we saw a lot of the older Chinese culture and traditions.

The 10 UNI teachers

            Today, Sunday, us teachers and three TAs went into the city of Dongguan and went to a market called Lady’s Park. There were multiple streets and alleys of shops and stores that we walked through. Most of the stuff was not touristy stuff or things to buy as gifts or souvenirs, but a few of us girls got really cute backpacks. There was a lot of clothes and shoes. We ate at Pizza Hut for lunch and went to Walmart, which was similar, but had a lot of different things, then came back to our campus. Tonight we are getting ready for the second week of camp and trying to recoop from our experiences of the weekend!