Peng's Family
Lucinda Peng
I’m sitting here, staring at a blank screen, faced with the daunting task of writing our annual Christmas letter. Truthfully, I love to look back at past years’ Christmas letters… but that’s just to see the younger versions of myself and my sister. This year I’m 15, a sophomore at Eastside High School with many activities to keep me busy, but these activities, for the most part, are things that I enjoy to do. I started driving this year as well, and will get my license in a few months. Everyone beware! Just kidding. My activities reflect the athletic, musical, and academic sides of me. I also have a love for traveling the world. I still love playing violin with my amazing teacher Kim. At the spring recital, I accompanied Naomi on piano, and at the winter recital, I played cello for Pachelbel Canon. This summer I traveled to many places in China, and I got to volunteer in Sichuan Province (四川省), China, the place where the earthquake hit in 2008. I also attended a summer camp at the University of Florida for a week. Very recently, I went to St. Augustine with Claire and spent the day with her at the beach.
Lucinda on piano accompanying Naomi
Lucinda on piano accompanying Naomi
Cross Country Race (Districts)
We decided to split up this year’s Christmas letter between my sister Naomi and me. Since we have different things that interest us, we each talked about our favorite parts of every trip. In our China trip, I wrote about most of our time in Shanghai (上海), excluding the Expo (which Naomi wrote about), the gardens in Suzhou (苏州), and Tian Men Mountain (天门山) and Tian Zi Mountain (天子山) in Zhang-jia-jie (张家界), Beichuan (北川), and Chaling (茶陵). Naomi wrote about the Expo in Shanghai, Tiger Hill (虎丘) in Suzhou, Jin Bian Xi (金鞭溪) and Huang Long Dong (黄龙洞) in Zhang-jia-jie, Zhengzhou (郑州), and Chengdu (成都).
School Activities
In the second half of my freshman year there were many things we did, like Greek Drama Fest. For Greek Drama Fest, we were put into groups and made a play using characters from various books and Greek myths. We also had the 9th grade banquet in celebration for finishing our first year of high school.
Greek Drama Fest
9th grade banquet
The first semester of sophomore year went by so quickly because of all my activities. I was on the varsity cross country team, and got a new personal record of 20 minutes 33 seconds for a 5k. Our team placed fourth in thd regional meet to clinch its first trip to the state meet since 1999. I take dance at Chinese School, with Anita as our teacher. My more academic extracurricular activities include Forensics, Mu Alpha Theta, and I just made alternate for the Spanish Conference team. We’ve gone to a few pre-seasonal competitions for Mu Alpha Theta (the math team) and one had a Chemistry test, so I took the Chemistry test without knowing about it until we were on the bus to the competition, and I ended up placing 2nd!
Eastside Rams Cross Country Varsity Team
2nd place Chemistry
Besides once over the summer when my dad finally came home from China, the only other time I went to St. Augustine this year was this week, with Claire, a good friend from Wisconsin. Since she moved to Florida a few years after me, we decided (via Facebook) to meet up again at the beach. When we went, since this is Florida, and people are more accustomed to the heat rather than “chilly 60 or 70 degree weather”, there was almost no one else at the beach. Claire and I waded in the water and talked, ate fruit, and drew in the sand for the entire afternoon. It was so nice to see her after so many years, and I had a great time.
St. Augustine beach over the summer
Crescent Beach with Claire
Over the summer I did many fun things with friends, along with volunteering at Shands for three weeks, I spent another week at UF for Science Quest. Although they supposedly only took one student per high school, Alvaro, Alicia, and I all got in from Eastside. We met many new people there, and had nightly games of Settlers of Catan. During the day we got to go around UF to different science lectures and activities. One day we went caving with Mr. Everett in the bat cave and then went to the springs. Caving was so exciting! Alicia, Taylor, and I crawled through many tight squeezes, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I also got to go to Blue Springs with Kathryn and her family. We spent the day swimming, talking, walking, and jumping off the dock.
Caving at Science Quest
Blue Springs with Kathryn
Blue Springs
From the beginning of the first semester, we have been visited by my parents’ friends. The family of Hongjie Zheng came from New Jersey right after Christmas and had lunch with us. My mom and dad were glad to see them after so many years, and they had a very nice opportunity to catch-up over lunch. We kids had a fun time together too. One of my Mom’s high school classmates’ sons who is studying in Florida for college came to visit us as well.
Parents’ old friends reunion (and family)
Dad and his students
China Trip（中国之行）
This summer we got to go to China for almost a month, visiting family and friends, traveling, and I got to go somewhere really special, Beichuan （北川）, to volunteer in the place where the earthquake struck in 2008.
Shanghai (上海)
Shanghai is supposedly a city full of cultural things to see, but I obviously didn’t see that part of the city. When we were in Shanghai, we had dinner with my parents’ relative’s family (徐彻、向平and their son). I got to see his son, Niu Niu (牛牛) again, after almost 10 years. We also went to the Bund, where important, historic buildings line the river bank. There were colorful lights on every building there, many with huge brand name logos. It reminded me of the laser light show in Hong Kong.
Evening in the Bund
Historic place in Shanghai
Meeting with Niuniu (牛牛)
Suzhou (苏州)
Suzhou is a southeastern city in China well known for its gardens, which are a different style from the north, where the gardens are huge, because they belonged to the emperor or empress. In the south, the gardens were all private gardens, so they are small but have so many intricate little details that it more than makes up for its size. There are many windows that allow the gardens to be seen from many different perspectives. We visited two of the famous gardens, Lingering Garden (留园) and the Humble Administrator’s Garden (拙政园). The Humble Administrator’s Garden had ponds full of gorgeous water lilies, rocky hills teeming with plant life. There were pavilions where rich officials, writers, and artists used to go for a day trip. The pavilions were designed to allow for the summers to be cool but still have good views of the surrounding gardens. In the Lingering Garden, there were different rooms for the plants with windows to look through. It seemed like everything but the plants was inside, which was very convenient when it started raining while we were there. The gardens were still beautiful rain or shine.
Gallery in Humble Administrator’s Garden
Pavilion in Humble Administrator’s Garden
Fan-shaped window in Humble Administrator’s Garden
East Garden in Lingering Garden
Window in Lingering Garden
Naomi playing Chinese instrument zheng
Chaling (茶陵)
After almost ten years, I finally got to see all my cousins on my dad’s side in Chaling, Hunan Province. It was the first time for Naomi and me to meet Xiao Yu meimei (younger cousin). We played many games together with Xiao Jia jiejie (older cousin), Xiao Lei jiejie, Xiao Yu jiejie, and Xiao Yu meimei in the hotel room. At first none of us knew what to say, because it had been so long since we last met, but after the first hour, we were talking freely and playing games, like blind hide-and-go-seek, where the person that is “It” is blindfolded and has to find the people that are hiding (who are not allowed to move from their spot) and without looking, identify who they are. One of the days, we went to see the historic parts of Chaling, like the legendary Iron Cow (铁牛) and where the Communist Party established the first branch at the county level. The Iron Cow is supposedly the protector of Chaling, because this area used to get flooded very often, but after the iron cow was built the floods didn’t go above its neck. In the place where the first Communist branch was established, there were many exhibits of journals and letters of the Red Army and Chairman Mao. This was the place where after the Long March, Mao reorganized the Communist Party. While the adults were learning all that history, we kids ran around, talking about things that were more relevant to us. We had so much fun those few days that when it was time to leave, all of us were holding back tears, promising that it wouldn’t be nearly as long of a gap between then and when we would next see each other.
Lucinda, Xiao Lei, Xiao Yu, Naomi, Xiao Yu, and Xiao Jia with Iron Cow
Cousins and Grandma at Chaling Communist Party Museum
Zhang-jia-jie (张家界)
Zhang-jia-jie (张家界) is an exotic place in China, surrounded by the mountains; it has many famous parks nearby, including Tian Men Mountain (天门山), Jin Bian creek (金鞭溪), Tian Zi Mountain (天子山), and Huang Long Cave (黄龙洞). Tian Zi Mountain (天子山) is the park where the floating islands in Avatar were filmed. Tian Men Mountain (天门山) has one of the longest and tallest trams in the world. Tian Zi Mountain (天子山) has the tallest elevator in the world that takes people from the bottom of the mountain to the top.
The day we went to Tian Men Mountain (天门山), it was really cloudy and a bit cold, but after the sweltering heat of Shanghai, it felt amazing. Since it was so cloudy, and the mountain is so tall, we went through the clouds in the tram on the way up. At first, the mountain was completely covered with clouds; we couldn’t see anything outside of a 10 ft radius around us. Usually the view would be very pretty from such a high vantage point, but all we could see were clouds. By noon, the sun started to leak through the cloud cover and exposed our beautiful surroundings. All around us were mountains covered with vegetation, and the mist was rising from the valleys, creating the picturesque landscape. We were walking on a very narrow ledge sticking out from the side of the cliff, and there was a glass structure which we walked out on. It was scary to see under our feet how long of a drop it would be if the glass were to break. We hiked all over the mountain top, where there were various temples, and then went to Tian Men Dong (天门洞), which is a huge hole in the mountain. There are 999 steps going up to the hole, but apparently Naomi and I can’t count, because on the way up, we didn’t get 999 and on the way down we got a different number, but still not 999. On the way up the mountain to get to Tian Men Dong, the road curves 99 times according to the guide, but we didn’t bother counting the curves.
Clearing fog at Tian Men Mountain
Fog cleared at Tian Men Mountain
Road with 99 turns to get to Tian Men Dong
At bottom of 999 steps to Tian Men Dong
Temple at Tian Men Mountain
Glass Structure at Tian Men Mountain
Tian Zi Mountain (天子山) is one of the mountains in this unique area where the mountains are not connected like in regular mountain ranges, but are individual mountains, some with bigger tops than bases. The floating islands in Avatar are these mountains with the bottoms edited off. We got to see the exact mountain that was used as the island they land on in Avatar. Some of the mountains looked sort of like different animals, if you stretched your imagination a bit. One of the mountains in the park had the tallest elevator in the world that we got to ride on. We also got to see an evening show called Tian Men Fox Goddess (天门狐仙) which used Tian Men Mountain as its stage. We got to sit in the VIP section because our entire trip in Zhang-jia-jie was organized for us; we had our own van with driver and a tour guide with us the entire time. The tour guide was a native from Zhang-jia-jie, and we always had very good and fresh local food. We all loved that.
Tallest elevator in the world
Tian Zi Mountain
Mountain used in Avatar
Tian Men Fox Goddess Show
With one of the characters from the show
Beichuan (北川)
When we were in China, I was able to volunteer at Beichuan, Sichuan (四川省北川县), where the horrible earthquake struck in 2008. When I was there, I taught and lived with elementary school kids at Yongchang Elementary School (永昌小学) for a week. On May 12, 2008, an earthquake in Sichuan province destroyed the city of Beichuan. Since the city was located on the fault line, the Chinese government decided to move the entire city and all the people living there to a new location, about a half an hour drive away, and build the new Beichuan there. All the buildings in new Beichuan are less than four years old. The school I taught at, Yongchang Elementary School is special, because it was named in memory of an elementary school in old Beichuan, where none of the teachers or students survived the earthquake.
Lucinda teaching at Yongchang Elementary
The new Yongchang Elementary School seems better than a lot of schools, including my own school, Eastside High School. There are a few things that were not the same though. The students stay there during the school week and get to go home only for the weekends, so they have bunk beds with really thin, straw mattresses. They do not have air conditioning either, so it was uncomfortably hot. What was worse was we did not have showers or running hot water. We had to wash our hair in buckets, and carry hot water from the kitchen. We also had to hand-wash our clothes daily, which was not too bad, but washing the dishes was. There were about 300 students, so with each having a plate and a bowl, we had to wash about 600 dishes. This is when we decided that the best thing ever made by the Chinese is not one of the four great inventions of China, but chopsticks. If we had to wash that many spoons, forks and knives daily we would have gone crazy!
Aside from all the games and fun, I also had to teach class. I taught the fifth graders English and Physical Education. Everyone loved the English classes from what I could tell. I mainly had them play games to help refresh their vocabulary. One game that they especially liked was where they start with one word and then use the last letter of that word to start the next one. Afterwards, they translated all the words from
English to Chinese. Some spelling errors were found, like “eater” was supposed to be “Easter”. I also had them write introductions about themselves and say them out loud to the class. They were so adorable! Then I had to teach them PE, and they do not like most of the games I wanted them to play, like tag or catch fish. They said that they would rather run, which I made them do as their warm up. The second class of PE, I let them practice their plays, but some people did not want to, so I talked with them, and they told me Chinese stories and we jumped rope. I had a lot of fun teaching the fifth graders.
Old Yongchang Elementary School destroyed by earthquake
New Yongchang Elementary School
I had a great experience living one week in Beichuan. Even though it was very different from what I am used to, I learned a lot there. It was amazing to see how students live in those difficult conditions, without running hot water, showers, etc, and survive like that until they move away. After the earthquake, although some of the kids I worked with lost their parents, they are somehow really happy at school and playing with friends. They appear no different from the ones less affected. Life moves on no matter what happens; people, no matter how young, learn to deal with what is left, and move on. Without trying to do anything but have fun at school, the kids taught me a lot about life.
My dad got to go to Europe for about a week, visiting Austria and Germany. He was invited as a keynote speaker for the European Forum Alpbach. On the way he visited Munich and Vienna. He asked us to go with him, but we could not miss school so we took a rain check. My mom plays on the tennis team in Jonesville and loves playing with her team. On days they have practice and I don’t have school, I like to join them as well.
Dad in Vienna
Mom’s tennis team
Emilio, Manny, Lucinda, and Chanti playing Cannon
Lucinda and Naomi played for the guests
This year has been an amazing year, filled with travel, friends, activities, and school. I loved interacting with the kids in Beichuan that week, and that really helped improve my Chinese speaking skills. This wonderful opportunity changed my perspective on life, how we take everything for granted that we are actually fortunate to have. It shows how easily life can change, and there’s nothing you can do but deal with it and move on. It made me realize that volunteering is truly rewarding and can actually make a difference in people’s lives. I’m so glad I went there. All the activities I do throughout the year have taught me that life is all about balancing what should be done and what is fun, and once committed to do something, go all out for it. I’ve had a great year, and hope you have as well. I’m looking forward for the next year, ready to make the best of it. Happy New Year!