Pros and Cons of being a celebrity By: Brinson

Well first of all, in China if you're white you're immediately famous and I and the rest of my family are white as you probably know.  So everywhere we go people take pictures with us.  I'm not kidding, parents will actually line up their children to take pictures with Aiden and I. 

Once my dad and I went out to play football for a while and it turns out we didn't get to because people stopped us to talk to my dad.  Then suddenly I  heard Boy! I turned around and there were some girls, they were motioning for me to come.  I told my dad then went over and like always they said "Can we take photo with you?" So I smiled and held up the peace sign.  They each wanted to take one with me so willingly I did. 

Well sometimes it is quite fun to be the center of attention but sometimes like if you want to play with your dad it's not as fun.  Once we went to a kinder garden and it was Mid Autumn Festival so there were performances and stuff like that. 

The director asked us to go up and sing a song.  We sang A is for Awesome and the Pritchards sang Blessed be your name and believe it or not there was a T.V. camera man there.  He came over to our family and told our wyban Robert something.  Robert told me to say something in Chinese.  I had no idea what it meant but we practiced it then I said it to the camera.  The camera man said Hen Hou which means good then went away.  Later I asked Robert if I was on T.V. and he said "Yes" I never thought I would be on T.V. 

It was a really fun experience but afterwards some ladies pointed at their cheek and said "Kiss!"  at first I said Bu which is a negative word like No or n't etc...  but the ladies kept saying "Kiss kiss kiss!" so eventually I kissed them, but on the cheek definitely. 

It's kind of hard when about 3/4 of your time outside is spent taking pictures with people.  It kind of depends on how your mood is.  Sometimes it is so fun to be famous but sometimes it's not as grand as it seems.  Back in America it was a dream to be famous but now it is Ma Ma Hoo Hoo which means so so.

Another experience was when we went to another school and we saw kids lining up and  then they started running on the track.  If you know me I absolutely love to run. So that looked very appealing. 

Well anyway some people led us inside of a room and the president of the school was there.  There was a camera man with a camera and a camera woman with a T.V. camera. 

In China they always serve you hot water, I knew that but the water this time was extra hot, which I did not know.   I blew on it and took a sip it immediately burned my mouth and numbed it with pain.  I uttered a surprised cry, thankfully it was quiet and the water spilled out of my mouth onto the table.  It was kind of embarrassing and to make it worse the camera lady was videoing me, the only time I messed up there.  Three days later my mouth still hurt. 

Anyway a guy asked us if we wanted to go outside.  All four kids shook there heads in agreement.  The man led us outside and there were two more people with cameras.  We waved at the kids and they waved back very happily. 

First we did a game where you hold a stick and push a ball.  The people videoed us and took pictures. Next we did a track competion Me, Aiden, Ayden, and Hannah lined up for the race.  A man with a gun counted to three "ee, are, san" ( one two three) then he shot the gun and we started running. There were a lot of people in the audience and they all started cheering.  Next we did a high jump.  A whole lot of people gathered around to watch. 

The camera lady was there too and the camera men.  I went first and didn't make it.  After Aiden went, I went again and flipped over the pole and onto the mat.  Next we did the jump rope that is after a picture.  The man who took the picture showed it to us and I thought it looked very professional.  After the Jump rope we were interviewed and the man who was with us all day asked us a lot of questions.  We answered them and I asked the guy if we could say Ne How Shiyan which means Hello Shiyan which is our city.  He said we could say Zhijean Shiyan which means Bye Shiyan.  So we did. Well that's about it. I'll write soon Brinson.