Docu finished!!!

After my arrival back in The Netherlands, I didn't take much time to rest.

I soon started editing my 7hours of moviematerial. It took me in total more than 40 hours of editing! For almost a week I was only editing, eating, drinken tea and sleeping.

I noticed that I didn't have a lot of useable material, but just enough to make a nice documentary out of it. The hardest thing, was that I didn't know how my movie should look like. I didn't have any sort of script and a lot of time went into figuring out what storyline I should take; which interview first, 2nd, etc. Slowly I got a vague idea of how to put everything together, and after 4 days I was able to get my head cleared on this subject and put the scenes in the position I wanted. In the meantime, I was mostly busy with getting to understand the translations from Peter, my Chinese buddy and translator in the first week of the journey, and writing the correct subtitles. Also cutting out the translations from my buddy and trying to make it seamless took some time.

Last Wednesday I made a first preview movie. From this I got to see the biggest mistakes. On Thursdaymorning I corrected these mistakes and made a second preview movie where I was able to see some smaller mistakes. After correcting, my movie was finaly finished!

I am incredibly happy with my result :)

Looking back, I see and realise that I could have made a much better movie if I had shot better material. This was my first documentary and I have learned a great deal from it. I already have a big list with things I can do better next time.
It was fantastic to have this opportunity to make this journey and to produce a nice documentary!
Big thanks to all the people who made this trip possible.

So, you can find my movie at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgcAmYsjsqo

Back home

It is hard to realise that this beautiful trip has reached it's final destination, but the realisation slowly takes it's ground. I still have a bit of a jetlag, and yesterdayevening I was conquered by a sudden sleepiness and went to bed at 19:30. Pffffff

After my mother and sister picked me up at the airport on Wednesday, I spent the night at their place. The next day I was quite tired and at the end of the afternoon I took the train back to Delft. Yesterday I found out that I had problems with my internet, that I didn't have enough harddisk space on my pc for all the moviematerial and that I was missing one important cable. I solved each of these problems and started capturing (transferring) my movies to my pc. This morning I finished the capturing and now I can really start with the editing of the movie!

Looking back at this trip, it was an incredible one!
The whole 18 days of this trip have passed unbelievable quickly; our programme gave us a only little time for realisation during the trip. Every day we had a very full programme except for our free day. Since I wanted to visit Peter's family, this free day was also filled. Every other night we had a meeting with all the people form the movie-group. In the beginning it was quite usefull, but in the last week not so usefull anymore.

I would get crazy if I would see more touringcars right now. Every day we had to sit for some hours in our bus, some days more than others. It is not my type of travelling around and in the last days of our trip I produced an aversion against travelling with the touringcar. However, it probably was the most convenient and efficient way of transportation for our specific journey.
Also from an organisational point of view, it was not the best event where I have been to, but I can't blame the leaders who did their utmost best to arrange every aspect in this journey. Probably the most difficult and frustrating was the Chinese burocracy which gave us a lot of unclarities, also one day we had to cancel the programme and on other days we had to shorten some parts of our programme.

More or less one week after the start of our journey, all our boxes with bags, sweatbands(bracelets), sports clothes and balls arrived at the office of the father from Sizhen, one of the other participants. We had distributed already some sweatbands in the first week at one of the schools, but when all the boxes arrived, we were able to hand out much more.
In the last week we have visited two other schools, where we organised some activities. Because of some good connections through Sizhen, this was the kind of clarity we hoped to have had all trhoughout the journey. It was a nice day, without the usual official talk which we started to hate. Many thanks to Sizhen and his father for making this day possible!

We have visited several schools, and got a good image of the education system in Sichuan. We have seen poor public schools, rich public schools and even a private school of which there are only a handful in China. Very surprising is, is that at the private school it is very unlike China. They teach the IB (International Baccalaureate) course system and the children behave like the kids here do, e.g. complaining about all kinds of stuff. We organised a few activities at a summer school taking place at this private school, and it was not easy to motivate these children to cooperate in the game.

During the trip, we visited several tourist attractions, such as a very old irrigation project and a panda center in the first week; of which the latter one was quite impressive. We also payed a visit to a few temples and one museum in the first week.
In the second week we visited another temple, a museum, the biggest Buddha (Leshan Giant Buddha) in the world and climbed Mount Emei (a famous sacred mountain).

Many thanks to all the Dutch and Chinese participants and to the leaders, for giving me this incredible and unforgettable journey!!!
And of course thank you, dear reader, for reading my blog!
Now I really have to start editing. You will have to check out my pics and movie (when I have finished it :P).
Xie xie and Byebye!

Incredible experiences

Hi everybody!!!

It's been a while since I wrote something on my blog, I am sorry it took so long. It is just impossible to find the time (and internet) to write a nice story on my blog. 

It is quite strange that here in China certain websites are not accessible, such as our blog and Facebook. I will upload some pictures when I get back home, so you will have to wait for my visual impressions.

I had already a good match with my buddy Peter, and as some time elapsed, we have become very good friends. His character is very much like mine, and already on the first day he invited me to visit his family and friends in his hometown (Zhongjiang). I of course accepted his invitation and soon we had made the deal that I would pay a visit to his hometown. In this trip, we have one day in which we can choose ourselves what to do, so I chose to use my free day to visit Zhongjiang. It was a 3-hour journey from our hotel in Chengdu (capital of the Province Sichuan) and in Zhongjiang we were picked up by a good friend of Peter's and he drove us that day from one place to the next. We first visited the shop from his mother, where I met his mother, father and some of his friends. We payed a quick visit to the house of his parents, which is a very small flat. Then we went to the house of his uncle and aunt. There I met a few other freinds from Peter, his sister, uncle, aunt and cousins. I there learned to play Mahjong, a typical Chinese game, before we had lunch, I even won a few times!

Like every meal in China, this lunch was very big; Peter's father had prepared a fantastic and delicious meal!

Everybody was really kind to me and treated me as I was there family, incredible... I also felt like I was visiting some family.

Although I am raised with also a lot of information about the Chinese culture (because my father is Chinese), I also experienced a new cultural activity. At a special lunch or dinner, you should toast with the host or other guests. Since I was a very special guest, everybody wanted to toast with me. To explain it a little: first you give a short speech, with a full glass of whatever (usually beer) and when you have finished the speech, you have to toast and drink the whole glass empty in one time (in Dutch: adten).  So I was quite tipsy around lunchtime  :P

  

After lunch we visited Peter's previous middle school (secondary school) and a museum. Then it was really time to get to the busstation and travel back to our hotel, but now without Peter. This was because, unfortunately, the Chinese students joined us for only one week.  

I of course miss Peter now but I know that I will have a good friend here forever, and vice versa. Very funny, when we chose our buddies, we chose purely by name and study and still, this was a perfect match!

What I came to realise, was that I have been very lucky in life. Of course I have a few negative experiences in life, but I have had many good things. I was born in a rich, modern, stable and safe country. I got many chances in life and I took them. I have worked hard and I still am, to achieve a lot in life. I have seen many countries in the world and experienced a lot of things. I am very grateful to my parents for giving me so much, and especially for supporting me so much.

Peter, a guy very similar to me in lot of things, didn't have those chances, which lightens this realisation of me. One's life depends very much on the environment where one grows up. Apart from becoming good friends, we also inspired eachother in several aspects. It is a pity that the day before yesterday we had to say goodbye to eachother and I now miss him...

Luckely enough, we still have a nice group with all the Dutch students, and last nigth 8 of us went to get a massage. Here in China, a 2 hour massage costs about 70 Yuan, so about 7 Euros. I had a fantastic massage; 30minutes my leftfoot, 30 minutes my rigth one, 45 minutes for my legs, back and shoulders and the last 15 minutes were used for a special thing. They have these glass spheres, which have an opening on one side. They heat them up with fire and put them on your back. These balls will suck tightly to your back by creating a vacuum. It is supposed to be very healthy, but right now my back is filled with 13 circular bruises (blauwe plekken).  

I must say that the massage (except for the last part) was incredible nice.

This past week I have shot a lot of material for my documentary, and I haved seen many places in this province. Apart from tourist spots, also several schools, earthquake ruins, and temporary housing. This has made a big impression on me.

One of the most impressionable things was a town which was totally deserted, because all the buildings were so dangerous after the earthquake, that nobody was allowed anymore to live there. That was really a ghost-town.

Now I am really tired and I am going to bed, so speak to you soon!!!

First impressions of my trip

" It feels like somebody had put 100 woollen blankets on top of me!" That's what I thought when I stepped out of the airport in Chengdu. The temperute is very high here, as well as the humidity. So constantly I have a second skin of sweat all over my body. But still it feels very nice!

 

On the 4th of July, during a group meeting with all the Dutch students and organisers, we chose, by name and study, our buddies. (We, 20 Dutch students, are teamed up with 20 Chinese students.) My buddy, Xu Liang or Peter (his western name) is studying safety engineering, which I found out two days ago, is more like safety chemical engineering.

So on the arrivalday we met our buddies for the first time, we had had a little emailcontact before, but now we really met eachother. Now, after more than two days, I am finding out that it is a perfect match. His character is very similar to mine and I think we will stay good friends after my trip. Unfortunately all the Chinese students will only stay with us for one week.

 

Until now we have visited two schools, but unfortunately we were not really able to talk with the kids. I really want to interview some of them for my documentary; I want to use sports as main theme. What sports do they do/like, and is there difference before or after the earthquake and/or last year's Olympic games. It is, with our busy programme, hard to shoot the right videomaterial. I hope it will improve these coming days...

 

It is the first time I really do interviews with the camera, and especially with Peter as interpreter. I have interviewed some people and made some nice shots, but I hope I will have more and better chances these coming days. Unfortunately the governor has told us that we can't do tomorrow's programme. 

 

Other than that, it feels great to be in China, especially because I am partly Chinese and I have never been here before. I am right now sitting alone in a very small  copyshop/intercafe, and it seems that I am their only customer for the past hour. Since I don't speak mandarin Chinese, I had to use my hands and feet to show what I want. The  you realise that you are really in a different country where they don't speak any other languages!

 

This morning I saw the eclipse, and as a miracle, the clouds parted a bit so we could see the full eclipse. Incredible! It get's almost as dark as at nighttime. It was quite special since this eclipse was a very long one!

Yesterday I bought an erhu (Chinese violin), and a bamboo flute. The flute is not so hard to play, but the erhu is much harder. Even a violinist like me is terrible at playing the erhu. But, I am very,very happy with my new instruments, and it is like a dream come true.

 

I just started with my travel diary today, since we have so little free time. That is also why this short story may be a little unorganised. There are just to many impressions I have to undergo!

Since it is not possible to open the blog here in China, I am using a different way of posting a message. I am sorry that I don't have pictures right now.

I hope to write you soon some more!

Greetings from warm (and right now for the first time rainy) China,

 

San  

Departure for China!

Hi everybody!

After a long discussion with myself, I decided to write my blog in English, so that also all my foreign friends and family can read about my trip to China.

Now there are only a few hours left until departure; The airplane will leave at 18:05, so I have get ready very soon to take the train to Schiphol. We will fly directly with KLM from Schiphol to Chengdu in an Airbus A330-200. With all my bags ready, I will now only have to think of making some sandwiches :P

Yesterday me, Jennifer and Tim worked hard to get 8! boxes of materials ready for China. Jennifer had arranged a lot of sports clothes and some balls from the Sportscenter from the TU Delft and Tim arranged 550 bags from the Erasmus university, which can be used as shoolbags.
Of course we couldn't take all the stuff in our bags, so most of it we stuffed it in boxes and they will be shipped by regular mail to Chengdu. We are lucky enough that by using AEGEE-Delft (The student association of which I am now the president) we were able to send all this stuff for free. Nothing is free in this world, o the university will pay the mailing costs, not us ;)

With about half of my backpack filled with presents for the kids in China, I had to put my bag on a weighting scale, and luckely it stayed within the 20 kilograms maximum weigth limit for checking in.
Now I have to get the last things ready, so...
...enjoy my further blog messages from China!!!

De eerste bijeenkomst

Daar ging ik dan, met een paar telefoonnummers op zak, naar station Rotterdam Centraal. Goed rondkijken of ik bekende mensen zag van het selectiegesprek, en ja hoor, daar zag ik al een bekende! Even later kwam er nog iemand van ons selectiegesprek en gezamenlijk hebben we de trein naar Utrecht gepakt.

Op 13 Juni hadden wij in Utrecht onze eerste bijeenkomst. Hier zag iedereen van het Sichuan project elkaar voor het eerst (behalve een paar mensen die bij elkaar in het selectiegesprek zaten).

We kregen die dag een hoop algemene informatie, een lekkere lunch, we hebben visaformulieren ingevuld en konden elkaar een beetje leren kennen. Althans, de groepsgenoten die naast je zaten want van een stoelendans was geen sprake. Dan moeten we straks in onze tourincar in China maar zorgen dat we met 51 mensen reizen wanneer er 50 stoelen zijn ;-)

Na de visaformulieren en vragenrondje, was het toch echt tijd voor de eerste echte groepsfoto lekker in het zonnetje in het parkje voor de deur van het IOC. Nee, in dit geval geen Internationaal Comité Olympische Spelen, maar ik heb het hier over het Inspraak Orgaan Chinezen in Nederland.

Nu het groepsgevoel er goed in zat, werd het tijd om daadwerkelijk in je eigen discipline-groepje te gaan zitten om eens goed met elkaar te overleggen. We gaan drie verschillende disciplines uitvoeren tijdens onze reis in Sichuan: schrijven, fotograferen en filmen. De fotografiegroep kreeg direct een training over.......fotografie natuurlijk!

De andere twee groepen konden ieder in hun eigen groep elkaars kennis en vaardigheden uitspreken, en eventuele plannen om tijdens de reis te doen.

Nog even lekker in het zonnetje zitten en toen was het toch echt tijd om weer de trein naar huis te pakken.

Op naar de volgende bijeenkomst: het informatiediner in Rotterdam!