Chin Wa

I began my journey last Wednesday, August 20th 2008. I Flew out of SLC to San Fransisco. From San Fransisco I flew to Taipei which took 12 hours and I only slept about 6 hours of that. From Taipei I flew to Hong Kong; we spent two days there. Then this morning we took a train from Hong Kong to where ever I am now. We are spending a day here because only 1 train a day goes to Kunming and we missed it. But to get to Kunming we have a 26 hour train ride. Sounds like fun :o)

Ok so about my group. My Head Teachers name is Bonnie and she is 24. She seems like a lot of fun. Then we have a brother and sister combination. The brother is 22 and his name is Dan. He is pretty protective of us all. Its kinda cool. I think his nickname from me is going to be "big brother." The sister is Emily. She is really cool. She is only 17 but she is fun. She and I spent an hour talking in the airport about random things and now we are rooming together while we are here in this town. Next there is Chelsea and Kayla, both of whom are really cool and from Saint George. Kayla is actually Rulons cousin for those of you that know him. Then there is Abbey. She is my head teachers cousin. Then there is Sarah. I have not spent to much time with her but she did go out exploring with me and the siblings in Hong Kong. The last 3 I don't really know at all.

OK so finally to the story. A bunch of us went to the Hong Kong Temple. but me and two of the other girls did not have our temple recommends so we just took pictures of the temple. that lasted about a whole total of 10 minutes so we where going to go explore when we saw some elders. I personally was really excited so we went over to the elders and started talking to them. Two of the elders were American and the other was Chinese. The elders took us inside the chapel which was located on a floor of the temple. Inside we talked for about 45 Min's. The Chinese Elder acted like he didn't really know English but the American elders said he did. So toward the end of the conversation I shyly asked the elders what Chin Wa meant. The Americans said they did not know and the Chinese did not admit to knowing what it meant so I told them what I thought it meant and the Chinese elder admitted that it did mean "kiss me." It was so cute because he was shy and it was just so fun to talk to the elders. And it was fun to visit the temple. It was so pretty. We talked with the Temple President for a little. He was half Chinese and half Hawaiian; he was really cute. Its just so fun how cute all the people are.

When we arrived at this city there was a guy standing there and he said he was from our city. So immediately I was like "Colin?" And he said "yes." So I ran up and gave him a hug. And he asked me who I was. But it was cool to finally meet him. And yeah, thats pretty much how life has been so far. ILY all

Beth