Let The Practices Begin

Well today was the first day of what will be many practice sessions. The humidity here is awful and I do not envy the kids having to stand out in the heat some of them with big sousaphones and bass drums. They broke off into sectional such as low brass, drum line, woodwind and cymbals. No matter where you where the various sections sounded amazing. The sheer numbers of kids from all over the world is almost overwhelming. I know our kids are definitely having an experience they won't soon forget. I have heard different stories from the kids as to the different people they are meeting and the different countries that they are from. I even hear the on of the cymbal instructors is a "Cute guy from Australia".

At the beginning of the practice today Mr. Price with Beyer High School took the bass drum line quite a distance from the hotel for their warm ups. Before they could begin practicing though there was a troop of Chinese performers on stilts. They were performing dance and acrobatics for a Japanese Tour Group. After the performance my wife Joanie and Jenn Henry became quite the celebrities. Just about every Japanese person in the tour group stopped them and wanted their pictures taken with Joanie and Jenn. Every man, woman and child had a blast having their pictures taken. Some even had their grand parents take their picture with "The J's" as I like to refer to them now. The photo shoot lasted about 30 minutes. We circulated around the grounds and listened to just about every group. I will try and post a video on the photo site when I tape the entire orchestra performing together.

This is also the monsoon season here in China and has been raining at least two times a day. That does wonders for the humidity. I know if I was a plant or a flower I would be loving' life, but no such luck. We explored some more of the grounds today. We visited the sports center. They have bowling, archery, billiards, ping pong, rock climbing wall, video games and a swimming pool. While we were walking past the archery part of the center it was apparent the Sky Harvick was not too familiar with archery. He did however successfully kill a light fixture in the ceiling. These are definitely the things that memories are made of as everyone had a good laugh over this.

We had the pleasure of eating our dinner tonight with our guide John. We had some interesting conversation about the cost of living here in China. The average annual salary here for your standard laborer worker is equivalent to $117,000.00 Per year. Doctors and Professors and Lawyers make around $3,000,000.00 That's right three million dollars. John was complaining that gas was so expensive and has doubled in the last two years. It now cost the equivalent to $0.90. He almost passed out when I told him that it cost about $120.00 US to fill my truck back home. He also told us that only about 10 to 15% of the population of China are communists. He told us that there are four different parties in China and you can belong to whichever one you choose. John owns four apartments himself. I'm thinking China has come along way in the last 25 years.

The last of the musicians arrived today and the real big practices will soon begin. The first scheduled practice where everyone will be together, will be this Saturday, Friday your time. Like I said earlier I will try and video tape the practice and post it on the photo site. The following people received the comments that you have posted and send their love and thanks for the sentiments:

Bobby Jordan - "Hey mom I love you guys and I'm having fun"

Crystal Rizzi - "How sweet of my Grandma to leave the comment" (Awwww)

Dennis And Ashley Crow - "Hi everyone that left us comments on the blog" "We are fine and having fun"

Everyone in the group - To everyone back home "nin hao" . . ."Hello"

Well I had better go and upload the pictures from yesterday onto the photo site until then don't take any counterfeit yuan. (Chinese money. . .I know I'm such a world traveler now)

One Word . . . HUMIDITY ! ! !

Well we all arrived safe and sound and most of us have contacted our loved ones back home. As I said in my last entry if there is anyone that needs to get a hold of a member here post a comment and I will get them the message.

Well it was a very nice day here in China. The weather was that of, for lack of a better word " Humidity Hell". The temperature was about 85 degree with about a Kabillion percent humidity. That's right I said a kabillion as it's a scientific term I picked up when I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express on time. We got to have a free day to explore Grand Epoch City where we are staying and where the hotel is located. The grounds are HUGE with a capital HU. the entire city is surrounded by what ca only be described as a mini great wall of China. Everyone here is very polite and very hard to communicate with (I know. . . What did we expect?). Joanie called the front desk last night and asked for a washcloth and finally after repeating it four times really slow they delivered two bathrobes. We got one hell of a laugh about that one. We walked all over the city and took picture of just about everything. It is very beautiful here and it seems that you walk about five feet and see something else that you need to take a picture of. There were about eight of us walking around together and I uploaded everyone's pictures from today alone, and the totaled right around one-thousand pictures. I have uploaded new pictures of both the farewell concert as well as our first day travels to Beijing. I will be uploading a few pictures every day but not every picture that we have. We will try and set up a killer slide show of our adventures when we get back, so everyone has a chance to see the thousands upon thousands of pictures that will be taken over the next couple of weeks. I can't stress enough about the humidity here. I honestly don't know how some of the people here in china walk around in Suit Jackets and Ties without passing out. I'm afraid I would have to find the job where you could be naked all day. This must be the reason that there aren't very many fat Chinese, they live in a Freakin' sauna! The food has been interesting to say the least. Their Idea of "Western" cuisine is a little different than ours. Okay lets not bullshit each other it's a lot different than ours. They had corn on the cob, which you would think you could mess up too bad. Well we fondly called it "Chinese Rubber Corn". You can probably guess why we call it that. The next interesting thing was the chicken. They need to warn a person that the little pieces of cut up chicken is like eating shards of glass. They cut the chicken up into little tiny pieces and leave the tiny bone shards in the meat. . . Surprise!!! They also seem to think we love bread with little tiny raisin in it because they serve it at every meal. Thank god that as a group we probably have more food than most of the Chinese Supermarkets. I did manage to find Chips A-Hoy chocolate cookies that hit the spot. Well the kids have their first practice at 8:00am in the morning tomorrow, or should I say today as it is 12:40am right now. They received their uniforms today and I am sure we all will be taking another thousand pictures tomorrow. Along with the thousand if Olympic Orchestra member that are here there is a Dutch contingent on a "Walk China Tour". They are apparently into walking and they plan on walking everywhere, even though it's "Humidity Hell". At any rate I am very tired and need some sleep for tomorrows activities so until then. . .Goodnight John Boy. . . Goodnight Maryellen. . .Goodnight Ma. . . And So On And So on And So On.

Holy Shit What A Day!!

Well we have officialy arrived in Beijing, after leaving on Sunday at noon. What a long journey to get here though. Our first leg of the journey started as I said in the previous blog entry in Modesto at the high school by way of Charter Bus to LAX. Well we arrived at LAX without a hitch and the representative with world projects (The organizers) met us there with our travel documents. Everything went smooth and actually very quick for a group of 38 all checking in at the same time. We only had one student have difficulties with the security check point and his luggage. We all thought that since he is one of the "Brainiac" kids that he may have brought a sience project with him in his suitcase, but it was only an issue with his latches/locks. After waiting in LAX for about 4 hours we were finally underway. This next leg was I felt the most difficult one and that was the one where we had to spend just over 16 hours on an airplane crossing the pacific ocean from Los Angeles to Bankok Thialand. There was no real comfortable place to sleep as the "Economy" class section has seats that only recline, and I use this term loosely, to a 36 degree angle. In other words they lean back they don't recline!!! We were on the plane what only seemed like ten minutes and they started the routine of passing out hot towels, beverages, and then feeding us. The first meal was served at about midnight, the second series of hot towels, beverages and food was at about 3:00am. Yes they work evryone up to feed us. then as you might have guessed it was about four hours later then they did it again. The food was actually not too bad and proves a good point about as human beings being condition to eat just about anything. We landed in Bankok at about 5:30am Bankok time, I have no idea whst time that is back home. All I know is that any way you slice it or dice it it was over sixteen hours (That's where the "Holy Shit" part comes in). We had about a six hour lay over in thailand airport where we learned about the Thia conversion and recieve some of the currency as change. With the lay over out of the way we were onto the next leg of our long journey. This consisted of a 4 and a half hour flight from Bankok to Beijing, them retrieving our luggage instruments and meeting with our guide John. We then had an hour and a half bus ride to the hotel in Grand Epoch City in Tianjin. We had fifty five minutes to shower and meet downstairs for a welcome dinner of local cuisine. Let's just say this isn't the "Chinese Food" that people from the states are used to. After dinner we had a quick meeting then we were released by Dan to settle in. If anyone is trying to get in touch with thier kids and can't, leave a comment to any of the posts at any time and I will get the message to them. Well I am wiped out so I will do more including pictures tomorrow.

We are outta here!

Well it's too late to turn back now. We have left Modesto. The send off was great and had various family and friends there to wish us all a safe trip (some more tear filled than other). I just want to reassure everyone who have family members traveling with our group, they won't have me watch your kids without Joanie being there to keep us safe and sane. On a more serious note I will try and give everyone a behind the scenes look at our adventures so this is the one and only warning that there could be some adult content on the blog as well as the photo site. I need to apologize about not posting the pictures from the farewell concert (Especially Mama Sandy Mills). I have been rather busy with last minute preparations for the China trip. The coolest part of this update it is being done from our charter bus in Chowchilla. Man I love technology!

Bon Voyage Concert Was A Hit

Well like the title of this post indicates the Olympic Orchestra was a hit at their farewell concert held in Modesto last night. They performed the various music that they will be performing in China before a packed stadium at Thomas Downy High School's Football Stadium in Modesto. This was a benefit concert to raise money to try and offset the cost for the various students going to China. I took my customary "Ass-load" of pictures and will post them on the photo site later this evening. The kids that are playing in the Orchestra are so calm it's kind of strange. The adults that are going are more nervous and excited than the kids are. I don't really think they realize how huge this really is. I know they will understand once they are there and it has had a chance to sink in. This will probably happen for most of them, some time during our 40 actual hours of travel time. that's right 40 hours with transfers, lay overs, bus rides and flights (Lions, and tigers, and bears on my!) what else can a person say except Holy Sh*t!!!!! I wish that every parent gets to be as proud of their child as we are of Joey. He had his moments last year but I must say he has turned out to be a very focused and driven individual. I feel this is primarily due to his hard work and perseverance. It also doesn't hurt that between me and Joanie and Dan his band director all riding his ass, making sure he was always prepared and he stayed focused on his studies and music and less focused on. . . .Well . . . Girls he is where he is today. It really was mainly Joeys hard work though. Well I guess I better sign off for now before I start crying.

The VERY VERY Proud Drumline DAD!