Conference in Thailand

All right...the conference in Thailand was awesome...I mean, with 30 crazy teens all in the same hotel, all hanging out with each other pretty much all the time...how can you not have fun? Pretty much every morning we all woke up...or most of us woke up, and those that didn't were forcibly got up...headed down to breakfast and then went to the "Cave" (I think it was like a nightclub or something...but the youth did their stuff there) and listened to one of the youth leaders explain a spiritual discipline to us (fairly interesting, though I still haven't read the book I was supposed to...). And then after that was finished we generally meandered around for a while, got lunch, went swimming or some such interesting activity, and then around 2 or so we headed back to the cave for another lesson. This lesson was generally more interesting, not as serious, and didn't last as long. When it finished we headed to supper, and then messed around doing various random things. At around seven we headed to the cave again, had yet another lesson, but fortunately, when that one finished at nine we had 3 hours to play games, make loads of noise, and just generally be crazy. Okay...that was the general overview...now some specifics.
The second night I was there, I got to play Slap-happy. Past midnight. On the 17th floor, where supposedly the German chancellor was staying. Very, very loudly. It was fun. Announcement the following morning: teenagers are forbidden on the 17th floor past 10 at night. A very successful visit I would say... Then on Friday (I have no idea which day of the conference this was) we had a free day where some of us went and rode elephants. Personally, I prefer camels. A much smoother ride. The next we had a ball, which was interesting. Following the ball (which ended around midnight) about 10 of us went off and talked for a couple hours. It got silly, but was fun nevertheless. The following morning one of us failed to get up. The following night a bunch of us went off to the movie theater and watched the Bourne Ultimatum, which was kinda cool, though I was ready to kill the person who filmed it for making it shake so much by the time it ended. The taxi there was very full (there are strange taxis in Chiang-Mia, they are sorta like covered up pick-up trucks with seats in the back), and everyone freaked when I elected to hang onto the back rather than crowd into a space designed for 10 people that had 16 in it. Quite surprising to me, as I assumed most mks would be used to that. Anway, we had fun. The following night was the last night of the conference, so we all headed to Joel's room (one of the leaders...probably the coolest) and stayed up fairly late, intending to pull an all-nighter. I left at around 2:30 because all the people I liked to talk to had already gone to bed. I don't think anyone else bothered to stay up all night either though, most everyone went to bed by 3 or so. Anyway it was fun, I had a great time, and I only wish it had lasted longer.

The Ball

I will post more about the rest my time in Thailand later, but for now I will just concentrate on a single event that occurred: the Thailand Tahiti fun Ball (the name of which changed every time our youth leader said it). In the two days previous two it I must admit I was rather nervous, for two reasons: one, I had no idea how to dance, and two, I had nothing to wear. Fortunately, my older sister was looking out for me and took me shopping and got me a decent shirt to wear, so that turned out okay. And when the ball finally did come round, they taught us all a couple dances, and I think there were only 1 or 2 people there who knew those particular dances, so it was all good. We also did some freestyle dance, and that was fun too because nobody really cared how bad you looked as long as you were willing to try. The music was pretty awesome, except the waltz music, which was kinda blah. The waltz itself was cool though because it involved dancing with girls (much cooler than dancing by yourself). Anyway, the ball was awesome, and I can now claim that I know how to dance.

China

Okay...now to post about my adventures in China. I really should've done this ages ago, but I forgot to set up my blogspot account so I could do it in China. Oh well here goes...

Kunming:
My first week in China was spent in Kunming. This was quite a lot of fun, I got to watch a lot of cool movies and TV shows, and I managed to convince my parents that we didn't need to do a whole lot of sight-seeing. Also the food in Kunming was really good.

Xi'an:
Next I went to Xi'an. Xi'an was pretty boring, the only interesting thing there was the clay soldiers, and it was actually more impressive to read about those in the history book than to actually see them.

Beijing:
Beijing was quite unpleasant, at least the first part of our stay there. After leaving the airport, we tried to catch a taxi. We tried like 15 empty taxis, every single one of the taxi drivers was rude, obnoxious, and wanted an absurd about of money. The sights in Beijing weren't too terribly boring, but I still feel that looking at pictures of them would have been more worthwhile.

Guilin:
At the end of our trip to China, we went to Guelin. This was probably the most interesting portion of our trip, as we got to go spelunking in a really cool cave. This was a ton of fun, even though I had to wear a hard hat and hit my head about 30 times in the cave. Needless to say, I was very thankful for that hard hat.

All in all, the trip to China was quite a lot fun, especially as I got about 30 DVDs out of it. The food was good (though I got a bit tired of KFC by the end of it), the sights were boring, and the movies were cool.