On Wednesday, May 31, 2006, six of our group graduated from Saugus High School in a lovely evening event. At 5:00 a.m. the next day we met at LAX to begin our great adventure. Most of us had little sleep but we were excited! For Eric this was to be his first trip by plane, while neither Eric nor Adam had been out of the country, and this was the first trip to Canada for Emily, Anna, Jackie, Eric, Edward, Adam and Eli. For everyone but Mrs. Stephenson this was their first trip to China. (The trip started out a little complicated when LJ forgot her backpack at home. Her incredible father with some help by LJ's brother managed to race home and get back in time for LJ, Jackie and Ms. Mullen to jump on the plane before the door was closed.) We flew from LAX to Vancouver and then on to Beijing, arriving the next afternoon. Our time in Beijing was an introduction to China where we had to wait in numerous lines to pay for our overweight suitcases, and then run across the airport in order to get to our gate. After about 20 minutes there was an announcement to change gates - so we hiked to the other end of the airport. We finally got to the plane where most of our group fell quickly asleep. We arrived in Xi'an, where we left the plane on the tarmac just in time for the start of a full day of rain. We had to wait for a bus to take us to the terminal, and then we collected our suitcases. Everything arrived safely! As we walked toward the exit we saw Meng and Li Yuan (f) waving at us! Madame Wang and Jane were also there. Within 10 minutes everyone left the airport with their host families for the 30 minute drive to the High Tech zone. The lack of sleep was catching up with everyone but all of our host families seemed nice, even bringing us flowers to welcome us to Xi'an. We also met the parents of Meng, who spent the fall semester at Saugus.

Today, June 3, we all met at a very nice restaurant where we were welcomed by Madame Jiao, the principal of Gao Xin No. 1 High School, and by Madame Wang, the assistant principal. Also there was SheYing (Jane) the lady who runs the international programs of Gao Xin. AND we saw Ms. Ma, the exchange teacher from Xi'an who spent the fall semester at Saugus High School. We were all very happy to see her! We ate a meal of many courses in a private dining room, and even the guys couldn't finish all the food! It was delicious, even though we did not know exactly what everything was. Jackie noticed the Chinese customs of having a sweet dish in the middle of the dinner, something that we are not used to. At the luncheon each of us were given a catalog of pictures of Gao Xin No. 1 High School (where we saw Mr. Bolde's picture - it's almost like all the pictures of him around school at home!), a tee-shirt from Gao Xin No. 1 High School, and a cell phone to use during their stay in Xi'an! On Monday we will go to the China Mobile store for each student to buy minutes for their phones. After lunch the school bus drove us each to our homes and our hosts met us at the gate with umbrellas for the pouring rain. (All of us live in multi-story appartment buildings in gated sections of the High Tech Zone.)