July 16th

Today in class we talked about polypharmacy, how Eastern and Western medicine can be used effectively together, and finished up our projects. Polypharmacy is when somebody is taking a lot more medications than is really necessary. This will happen a lot when a person is prescribed a medicine for one condition, but the medicine has a side effect. Then the person is prescribed a different medicine to deal with the side effect, which in turn has a side effect, getting the person prescribed a third medication, and so on. When learning about polypharmacy we learned the phrase of “Start low, go slow” for prescribing medications. Start with a small dose, and as few medications as possible, and then work up to more medication only if it’s needed.

For talking about how Eastern and Western medicine can be used together we followed the same line we had for all of camp – balanced is best. Eastern medicine is usually better at keeping you from becoming sick, such as by boosting your immune system. Western medicine is better at treating a specific serious illness. So use both together as needed, because used together in balance they can be more effective than either one alone.

July 17th

In class we watched a Chinese movie that showed a bit what life and schooling can be like in rural China. The movie, known in English as “Not One Less,” is based on a true story of when the teacher in a rural Chinese village most go away for a month the only person the mayor can find to be a substitute is a thirteen year old girl, Wei Minzhi. It was quite a good movie, although I don’t want to tell more about the movie for fear of spoiling it, as I do recommend it.

After lunch we started on presentations. We only did one presentation which was on the Placebo effect. This is where people sometimes seem to be healed by just a placebo because they think they are getting the medicine, and the positive effect of it mentally helps them recover.

July 18th

Today class was completely taken over by presentations. We started off with Karson and Edwin doing a presentation on Tai Qi. There were a lot of us in advanced Tai Qi who were also in my medicine class, so at the end of the Tai Qi presentation they had all of us come up and do the Tai Qi set that we had learned in Tai Qi class. After that Melissa and I did ours on heart murmurs. It went pretty well, all though we had issues with the internet so we couldn’t let everyone listen to the sounds of different types of heart murmurs. However the week before Sara had had us listen to some recordings of heart murmurs she had, so in the end everyone did get to hear them.

After lunch we had Carrie and Kendrick’s presentation on stem cells. As part of presentation they split us up by whether or not we supported embryonic stem cell research. Then they made us argue the opposite point of view from how we actually felt in a debate. It was sort of funny how the sides were split. Almost all of the class was on the pro-stem cell research side, which made it so there were about a dozen people on that side, and only two or three on the opposite side. I ended up being the judge because I could see both points of view pretty well. Although after a little while the debate started to morph into a pro-choice/pro-life debate.

The last presentation of the day was Bran and Megan’s on insomnia. I found it interesting to learn that in Western medicine insomnia is a condition, but in Eastern medicine it is considered a symptom of many different types of conditions.

After classes today there was an all an all camp assembly because the night before there had been eight kids caught after lights out all in one dorm. It probably wouldn’t have been that big a deal, except that one of the people was a girl, and they were all sitting and talking in one of the guy’s rooms. They got in really big trouble for this, and had to spend all the rest of their time at camp that they weren’t in class together as a group under the watchful eye of the administrators. This included staying as a group for all meals and all free time.

When we left the all camp assembly everyone noticed that in the courtyard there were workers hanging big red lanterns on a cord strung between a bunch of posts they had just stuck in the ground. It was gorgeous, especially that evening when they lanterns were lit and it was dark outside.

July 19th

July 19th this year was my Grandpa Jack’s 90th birthday, so my journal starts off with a note for that that says “Happy birthday Grandpa!”

Today in class we finished off our presentations with ones on SARS, HIV/AIDS, and Avian Flu. Sourabh and Hikmet did the presentation on Avian Flu, and they made a rap for it. It actually was a good rap! It had a beat that was fine to listen to and for words in was Hikmet pretty accurately explaining Avian Flu. I think this is the only rap I’ve ever been known to say I liked.

Today was also the last day of afternoon activities. Along with my usual Tai Qi, some of my friends and I chose to make dumplings. They turned out to be just like the dumplings my 8th grade Chinese teacher had taught me how to make, except at camp we also got to roll out the dough. There is some difference between the dough we rolled out and the gyoza wrappers I’ve used in Seattle that makes it so much easier to make the dough stick together if it’s real dough, not the wrappers. With the wrappers you really have to force the dumplings to stay closed, where as with the dough it was really easy. All the dumplings we made were served as part of dinner, and they were very yummy.

Then in Tai Qi we convince the Tai Qi laoshi to let class run over about 5 minutes so that we could finish learning the sword set she had been teaching us the past week. Since we learned the last third of the dance all in that one hour I don’t think it completely stuck in any of our heads for more than a few days, but at least we had the satisfaction in knowing that we had finished it at least once.

After dinner Emily and I started packing. We knew that everybody would have to pack after study hall, and all of the next evening before the dance, so figured we should get a head start on it as we had no other place we particularly wanted to be. Our friends from the other RA group on the hall (Megan’s, which was also the one with most of Emily’s friends) and James and Danny’s RA group had all gone to the convenience store, so Melissa came down to our room and chatted with us while we were packing.

July 20th

The last day of class, and pretty much the last day of camp, as we all left camp very early the next morning. In Mandarin laoshi surprised all of us by giving us each a Chinese to English dictionary. She also gave each of the girls a little bracelet that’s made out of a knotted cord with beads. Mine is a lovely lilac color.

In medicine class we all wrote one last journal entry (usually we wrote them in study hall), and then passed back all the journal entries we had written from all of camp. Then we played jeopardy about all the different things we had learned in the past three weeks. We divided into teams by guys against girls, and for awhile they were almost beating us, but then they bombed all of the daily doubles. This left the final score at something insane that differed by just a slight few thousand points...Girls (Team Yakanda) 7398 vs Guys (Team Nunai) -3200.

After class we had a talent show instead of the normal activities. There actually was a lot of talent in it, and in between each piece was a little skit done by the MC’s which were all hilarious. The “master of ceremonies” consisted of Jared, Amanda, Caty, and CJ, and the skits they thought up were really, really funny. My favorite of the skits was the very first one, because it really summed up the experiences in the courtyard perfectly.

This skit started with Caty as an RA who had come out into the courtyard for some peaceful relaxation and meditation time…except then Jared comes in whooping and hollering like some sort of crazed monkey, all the while swinging his lanyard. So Caty told him to stop swinging his lanyard and put it back on around his neck where it was supposed to be. He went whopping and hollering off stage. Then came Amanda and CJ, who were holding hands and pretending to be the cute couple. They sat down right next to each other on the edge of the stage. Caty rushed over and told them that they couldn’t sit that close, as they must always leave room for Jesus between them. All of us in the audience were already laughing pretty hard at this point, but then came Jared again. He came in just as loudly as he had before, but this time he dived into the “koi pond” (off the edge of the stage) and caught a cardboard koi down there. When Caty told him to get out of the pond, and to put the fish down, he climbed out of the pond alright, but instead of putting the fish down he took a huge bit out of it, and ran off stage. Oh the courtyard experience – lanyards, koi, and couples.

The talent show itself consisted a few singing pieces, two piano pieces one of which was a duet that was upside down and backwards, Bran playing the clarinet, two Gu Zheng pieces, Abby doing a hula-hoop routine, the advanced Tai Qi class doing our non-sword set, and Victor and Abby doing a contemporary dance.

Abby and Victor’s dance was amazing. I had seen them practicing parts of it out in the courtyard during that week, and it looked like it was a sort of funny, amusing dance. Instead it turned out to be this gorgeous, sad, serious, but still amazingly beautiful dance. They had a few issues with timing, but even still it was amazing. If they had had more time to practice and get the timing and the moves down perfectly it would have blown everybody over with how amazing and emotional it was.

After the talent show there was a little slide show of pictures taken at camp, and then immediately afterwards was dinner. After dinner everybody had to go right upstairs and pack because entire RA groups were being checked off by the administrators as being totally packed before anyone in the group could go down to the dance.

And so for the third dance, and also the last night of CTY… Once we all got done with packing, and finally down to the dance my evening was pretty similar to how the previous two dances had been. I thoroughly enjoyed myself by talking with my friends. It was quite a wonderful evening, and I have so many good memories from that afternoon and evening.

July 21st

This was absolutely the last day of camp. We all had to make up really early, about 4 or 5am because most of the camp was catching the same morning flight out of Nanjing to Hong Kong. However before breakfast there was a CTY tradition held that’s known as Passionfruit. I have no idea how this tradition got started, but at Passionfruit we all just gathered around the koi pond in the courtyard and gave toasts to all the different things we love about CTY. It’s a nice way to wrap up camp with all of its memories. Apparently Passionfruit is usually just for the kids known as never-mores or no-mores – those kids who do to age or whatever reason will probably never be coming back to CTY again as a student. However in Nanjing it ended up being anyone who wanted to come came to Passionfruit.

After Passionfruit, and a quick breakfast to go, all of the camp that was going on the flight to Hong Kong, so all but about a dozen people, headed out to the buses. For some reason for this trip they had split us up according to last name, with the last of us in the alphabet on bus one. So once again I was on bus one, along with James, Emily, Megan, Jared, Schuyler, and a bunch of other people I had gotten to know at camp.

When we got to the airport we filled out the various little forms that we needed to fill out for customs, stodd in line for ages to get our bags checked and then headed quickly through security to the gate. We got to the gate just in time to board the plane. Since there were so many of us from CTY and we pretty much completely filled economy class, and we were running a bit late they just let us sit wherever we wanted. The only rules were to sit down quickly, and get ready to take off. Although just like when we came to Nanjing the Shanghai airspace was crowded, so we were delayed by about an hour. On this first plane ride James and I ended up finding seats next to each other because we had been in the baggage/security lines together. We had a nice conversation on the plane, although just about everybody’s conversations were a little sad because this was getting really close to to the whole camp having to say goodbye to each other.

When we reached Hong Kong we were running late because of the delay on the first flight. This was especially important for the LAX flight because our flight departed first. As soon as we landed all of us on LAX went as quick as we could to our next plane, and made it just in time. The JFK flight had another hour or two before their flight left, so they didn’t have to rush like we did.

On the flight to Nanjing I slept a lot more than I did on the way to China. The half of the flight I spent awake I mostly just sat and read, listened to my ipod, and was lost in all the wonderful memories I had from camp.

When reaching LAX we all got off the plane and headed through customs. Right after customs was baggage claim, where I picked up my bags and said goodbye to Megan, Ian, and the other friends of mine who were on that flight. I headed upstairs to the loading zone, where I was met by my Aunt Suzie and my cousin Mitchell. I had finally arrived “home” and my adventure was over. My trip to Nanjing was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I learned a ton, met many wonderful people, and have a whole new collection of great memories from everything I did on my trip.