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Matthew Goes to China

April 3 - 20, 2006

Tomorrow I'm going to China with my parents and my grandmother. Mommy and daddy are busy packing bags. I tried to help by climbing into the biggest suitcase and taking everything out. Daddy said something about "sending me checked baggage."

During the trip I helped plan our way.

April 3 - 4
Xiamen

First we flew to Xiamen. Only because the plane tickets were free. The airline is so cheap they don't even assign seats. Having a plane full of Chinese and no assigned seats is dumb. But the plane was full so I guess they don't care. There were three other babies on the plane. Mommy and daddy and the other three sets of parents all pushed and shoved to get on first and we all sat in the front together. Whenever one of the babies would start to yell the rest of us would yell, too. We had fun but mommy and daddy had a headache. The flight crew had even bigger headache. Not from us, but from the other 100 passengers who yelled, pushed, and acted like they were still babies like us.

When we got to the hotel I helped unpack because I already knew how.

Xiamen has a lot of tall buildings.

And a Wal-Mart. Daddy says that when Wal-Mart moves in somewhere, the old downtown shopping areas suffer. I didn't see anything old in Xiamen so he must be right. Daddy thought it funny that Mommy has to travel to China to see famous American landmarks.

Xiamen is a great place to eat. Even the food courts in the shopping malls are good.

Grandma's parents came to Thailand from Shantou which is not far from Xiamen. Even though Grandma speaks the Shantou dialect, not many people in Xiamen could understand her. Still, we made friends.

Mommy and Grandma bought fruit on the street.

I played at the mall.

And went shopping at Wal-Mart.

Grandma came, too.

And Daddy carried me around a lot.

Girls in Xiamen are very friendly.

But Grandma came and took me away. Daddy said I should be left to enjoy it while I can.

Then we went to the train station to take a very long train ride to Beijing.

I got bored.

Mommy got bored.

Daddy got bored.

Grandma got bored.

I watched the view.

...For awhile.

And finally we reached BEIJING

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