I Made a Recording for Huangguoshu Waterfall

Here's the first of my five updates, as promised!

About a month ago, I got a call from Miss Zhang. She's a university administrator in the English Department. It turns out that the people from Huangguoshu waterfall called the university to ask if a foreigner would make some recordings in English for the waterfall. I considered it for a few minutes, and said yes.

She and I had a few phone calls to set up a time that was convenient for both me and them. We chose a Wednesday, at 6:00.

When that Wednesday rolled around the last thing I wanted to do was go back into town. But I did! I met two women at the school gate. We took the bus into town, to a recording studio.

I've only ever seen recording studios on TV and in movies. It was kind of fun. There was a room with all the controls and the computers, and a booth with headphones and a microphone. I had six typed pages of information to read for them. It read something like this (from my memory, so don't quote me on this):

Huangguoshu waterfall group, the largest waterfall group in Asia,
is located in south-west Guizhou province, 130 kilometers from the
capital city Guiyang, and 40 kilometers from Anshun...

Huangguoshu waterfall is the only waterfall in the world that can be
seen from six sides: the top, the bottom, the left, the right, the front
and the back...

It was fun and weird at the same time. If you're like me, you don't like to hear your voice recorded. I felt like I sounded childish. And, they kept asking me to be more "emotional". To me, those words don't evoke emotion... But I did my best!

They had a woman record the same text in Chinese. And if you take the free tour bus at the waterfall, you get to hear me!! Laura Leigh, one of the Peace Corps teachers, said she heard me! So I'm famous!

It was a lot of fun, and it's fun to think that I'll be leaving myself in China (hopefully) for years to come!