Year 9 Nayland College student Donalee Parker was invited to Shanghai’s 29th Annual Tourism Festival 2018. There she performed as a highland dancer with the Celtic Pipe Band featuring two other Nayland students, Elise and Evie Reid who play the side drum and the bagpipes respectively.

Here are some excerpts from Donalee’s travel diary:

We flew out to Shanghai on the 13th of September and landed early in the morning on the 14th of September. It was a long and boring flight, I don’t think many of us got a good night's sleep.

Day 1: Arriving in Shanghai

Once landed in Shanghai we did the usual of going through customs and claiming luggage before proceeding to the airport “foyer” area to meet our guide Steve. We followed Steve outside to wait for our very small, striped blue and white bus with yellow curtains. There were meant to be two buses for our group but after waiting for an hour, we decided to load the one bus up and head to our practice. Our luggage was everywhere on the bus, even down the aisle!

Eventually we were able to step out into Shanghai’s sun and start our practice. We met the Queenstown Pipe Band (who we would be performing with) and their performers: three Highland dancers, about 8-10 can can girls and six kapa haka performers.

After practicing for what felt like forever we all climbed aboard our still very full bus and headed to brunch. For brunch we had, you guessed it, rice and some weird vegetables, along with a few plates of ‘mystery meat’ (we had a repeat of brunch every single day, three times a day for six days).

Afterward we went to the hotel, checked in and dumped our bags, then headed back out again for our second practice of the day, except this time we had to be in full gear. There were cameras filming us just in case it rained on the day of the actual show. By the time we were done I was so tired I fell asleep on the bus!

Day 2: The day of the performance

The whole day I prayed that it would rain. It didn’t by the way, and after bartering at a market we headed to the performance. We had to change on the side of the road or on the bus because we were late and there wasn’t any time for us to get dressed inside the building, like we were supposed to. We had to walk for 47 minutes down the road we were performing on and by the end of it my feet really, really hurt, mainly because I was walking in my dancing pumps that have no sole.

Day 3 and 4: We performed once again

Nothing major happened on days 3 and 4, we just went exploring and did two small performances (about 30 minutes).

Day 5: Visiting the museum

The museum has got to be one of my favourite highlights of my trip. We visited the Chinese furniture exhibit and the Chinese painting exhibit. These were both very beautiful.

Day 6: Leaving Shanghai

We had a bigger bus, along with a different tour guide, Jackie. Before we left Shanghai, we visited the Water Village. It was peaceful there and by far one of my favourite places. There was a river in the middle splitting the village in half and occasionally, a traditional Chinese row boat would sail by.

I loved my trip to Shanghai and I feel it was a great opportunity.