Waking up to the loud sound of the Chinese man speaking over the microphone speakers accompanied with some lovely soothing elevator classical music… We had a western breakfast this morning featuring lots of pancakes and scrambled eggs. The breakfast this morning was a buffet. All of us have really developed the Chinese way of eating, using chopsticks and we are eating at least 20kg of rice a day. Very nutritious!
Before getting off the boat to do our on shore excursion, we did a small Remembrance Day service which included a few students talking about world war 1 at 8am which would’ve been 11am in Melbourne. During this service Cooper said some really meaningful words about what happened, which moved students but also teachers to tears. He said
“The significance of Remembrance Day to Australia now is to remember our grave, fallen heroes and to appreciate their sacrifice for our privileged way of life. Although we are on a foreign country, our home is Australia, and even when we are abroad, we must remember that without our ANZAC’s sacrifice, we may have never been able to travel in the first place. Luckily, the ANZAC’s sacrifice has been able to sustain our extremely privileged way of life. Today, we are truely proud to say that we are Australian. Thank you.”
After the minute of silence and a reflection, we had free time to stay on the boat and do whatever we wanted to for almost 3 hours. We then went into the theatre to watch the most exciting documentary ever… nobody fell asleep and we were all very interested in the Chinese documentary… after the sleep sesh we went down to eat some really yummy Chinese food for lunch and then made our way off the boat to do our shore excursion. We went to the Shibaozhai Pagoda and it was honestly beautiful. It was so interesting that there was just a mountain with a gorgeous red temple on one side.
After the temple we went into all of the little markets and bought lots of little gifts for family and friends. We all practised a bit of bartering and we are quite talented… There were lots of little children roaming around and there were also older adults, but their weren’t many students our age. Personally, our favourite part of the day was when all the Chinese people were taking photos of us and not the surroundings because we must look like aliens. After the shopping we went back to the boat and ate dinner, then we had a lecture from our Chinese tour guid, Shua Fung (Stony). Now ready for a nice sleep; we have a 6:30am start in the morning.
Juliette B and Millie D
