It was just a windy day in China.

Finally the vacations I had anticipated all summer arrived: the trip to Los Angeles, California and the trip to China, for two months!

A day after, I had spent an entire weekend with my family, visiting shopping malls, restaurants, and museums. It was a bright day, wind was blowing softly, the birds were singing, I can tell it was a fresh weekend, we go for a walk, and I was wearing a tank top with blue jeans and very colorful sneakers. Suddenly the sky turned dark, the clouds were gray as if they were dead, and we didn’t expect it was about to rain. We were confused but nothing ruined our weekend, in fact, we still enjoyed it.

My parents send me to a camping trip. They told me that every year during vacations, groups of high school students from almost all the countries in the world get together (before Christmas time) in a specific country, this time was in China, 2007. Every camping lasted two weeks.

I was there, with my friend Annie, we came from Guatemala and when we get there we knew that it was the same as a camping trip, what makes it hugely different was that we all were living in a hotel near the university and that every day every morning and every noon we have to get there to learn something, I think it was like going to school in vacations but more exciting, there were a lot of activities, including dancing and I really loved being there.

During these two weeks of December I was spending a nice time with people of different countries, we met each others, and most of us used English to communicate between us. In the ends of November, I turned twelve and for me it was hard to understand and to be understood, knowing other two more languages. It was hard but at least I have learned a lot, people around me were speaking French, Russian, German, and other more languages of the world, and I was impressed, in fact, I was excited to hear them speak even though I didn’t get what they were saying and they were very kind to teach me some words. Every group has a teacher and my teacher used to speak with me English or Mandarin, it was easy to me to understand. The hopes to learn more about traditions, culture, manners and people of several countries was the reason Annie and I came to this camping.

We enjoyed every day of these two weeks. It wasn’t cold as I imagined it would be before coming to China, but there was a day that really changed my mind completely and the weather changed so constantly and so awfully. One December morning breeze brushed my long, black hair as we were going out of the hotel, it was very cold, the wind was blowing so fast and so strong that we couldn't even walk, even though the sun was smiling warmly on us, there were students all over, trotting around to keep themselves warm but we were too cold to care about everything.

We finally got there, eat some food and drink two cups of warm jasmine tea, and I can’t believe it! We all still were in bad moods because of the weather. I was expecting that this would be a normal and special day as the past few days because we still have places to go and the weather wasn’t too good, it was horrible. Our teachers called up us to get outside, and it was dancing time for the girls and for the boys I can’t remember pretty well what they choose, but it may have been 

kung fu lessons or gym.

In that moment, some of us like to think about a warmly weather when it comes a cold weather like this day and some of us simply don’t care about it. Me, I like to think positive. This day was pretty long, it was an intense practicing day. At noon, I was tired while Annie was in a normal status and I didn’t know why. I really thanked the weather to be like that cold because it refreshed me after practicing so much, it taught me that no matter what happens, you will always find the positive side of a bad situation.