(Cady)Hey all,
So I'm sort of writing this and watching a movie called Once right now. It's a hand-held camera style film that my English teacher put on my flash drive last week when I gave my presentation. There's a song called Falling Slowly in the movie that won the Oscar for best original song this year, or so I believe. Anyways, he put the movie on there so that I could watch it and learn the song because he wants me to teach it to the class. Kind of crazy eh? It's a beautiful song though, and the movie is really nice so far. It's a pretty cool idea on the part of our English teacher I think.
Anyways, I think we've all fallen into a pretty good routine here. Well, during the week, the weekends are always a surprise, which is always fun! (The one weekend we've had so far at least). I get up around 6:30, ready by 6:50, out the door by 7:00. We usually eat on the road now which works fine for me. Every day after school we go to Eve's favorite bakery, the one we got her birthday cake from, called Free Mori. My favorite pastry is a donut filled with sweet red bean paste. In fact, that's what I have waiting for me for breakfast tomorrow morning, so I know it will be a good day. I have given in to my absurd love of apples and started to eat them skin and all. The first apple I had the other night made me think of home because I eat apples so much in the States. Naturally, I liked it so much that I had an apple this morning too... I've started down the deadly, apple-paved path of no return. As, I've said it's about a ten minute walk to school. When I switch homes I'm going to have to take the bus to school, which is the public bus, which I've heard is very crowded. That's fine, but I'll be sad not to walk every morning anymore. You all probably know already, but our classes don't start until 8:00, so we have a half hour each morning to hang out and check email and enjoy the heated teachers' room. Then Baker, our translator, comes and gets us for class. Has anyone written about Baker? Well if not, I'll add my two cents, because he's a character in the Team China saga that you should all know about. He's a senior this year, but he's already into a language university in Beijing to study Arabic, which he's never studied before I guess, so he gets to come hang out with us all morning. He used to spend his "summer holidays," as he says, in Britain, so he has a very, very distinct British accent. When we first met him and had Chinese class, he was describing a Chinese pizza type dish and he said in his perfectly British accent, "It's, well... it's just like a pie!" And that, whether or not you can see the humor in it, or picture a Chinese boy with a British accent saying it, is how I would characterize Baker (whose Chinese name is Yi Kuan Chen in case anyone is interested). We had calligraphy this morning with Yang Laoshi who is extremely serious one moment and then incredibly funny the next. He doesn't speak English other than when he says "no, no!" or "ok, ok" when he looks at the character's we've done. None of us have earned very many "ok, ok"s yet, but we're working on it, and we've learned to hoard and savor the ones we do get. Personally, I like calligraphy. it's relaxing, sitting there making the brush create (poorly drawn) ink characters on the rice paper. Last class we focused on our names, though I think Yang Laoshi realized that we're not quite ready for that, so today we just worked on basic strokes. Some strokes got me a lot of "no, no!"s and I also got a few ok, ok"s. At one point, he just came over, started laughing and speaking Chinese to Baker who told me that Laoshi thinks my strokes look like brooms. Hmm.
After calligraphy we had a Hangzhou history course. Oh, and before that we went out to get milk tea! Actually, it was pretty awkward because everyone was in the middle of morning exercises. That's when all the students sort of fill up the front walkway to the school while songs from the Nutcracker Ballet play over the loudspeaker and then proceed to do a little jig that involves throwing your hands up and punching the air. It's a good time, but instead of doing it this morning we walked through the middle of the rows of people doing it, met by many stares, to get out of the front gate. It was well worth the milk tea though. So anyways, Hangzhou history. We got cool, fold-out maps and guide books that our teacher is actually the author of. We spent a lot of time figuring out where each of us live on the map, and then spent the rest of the time learning about historic spots around West Lake. Oh, Terry wasn't with us because she had a headache, but she did catch up with us right in time to see some very old tablets written by an emperor and other assorted people. The most famous one is about 200 years old, and some of the others are even older. We decided that it's pretty neat to have historic cultural relics at your school. The only relics at DSHS are a couple of the teachers who still reminisce about the days of corporal punishment in schools. Well, what I mean to say is that it's amazing how much history Hangzhou High School has. There, that's a better way of phrasing things. Oh, I've just finished the movie- it was very sweet, I would recommend it. Now I just have the song playing. So after lunch today we held our first English corner. Ella and Patrick were there of course, and our host brothers and sisters. A couple of girls that I like from my class came too, though I found out that they're really very sneaky and wanted to escape an English dictation that they were supposed to be doing during lunch hour. Still, class five is where it's at. One boy, Pizza (yes, that is his English name- I compare it to kids at DS choosing "Nacho" as their Spanish name) told me to come to class at one point. I thought that we were going to tell people to come to English corner but actually he just wanted me to sit next to him during the English Dictation! I didn't have my things though and he, along with those who sit near him, were rather disappointed when I went back to English corner. In the afternoon we had Chemistry, Physics where we did a lab on projectile motion (something I could understand! though not completely remember...), Math, and ball games. That's my favorite because we just play volleyball or badminton the whole time!
After school Eve, Drew, and I got our pastries at Free Mori, then it was back home again, dinner, shower, and now here I am. Let's see, I still don't know my host parents very well, but I understand that they work a lot. As I've said though, Eve is amazing and that's more than enough. She's rather addicted to he mobile phone, as they call them here- she's always either messaging her friends or playing games. Sometimes we'll be standing in a group and she'll start running around the outside in this funny, leaping, bounding sort of way that she has. She's really a character so I think it's kind of perfect that we ended up living together. Today when we got home from school she fell asleep on the couch, and when I told her it was homework time she said, "no! it's only 6:30... homework time today will start at 7:00!" This is rather uncharacteristic of a Chinese student, seeing as how most of them start their homework literally the second they arrive home. Sometimes Penny does her homework when we're out, such as when we were in a McDonald's this weekend taking a break from shopping on Sunday. Well, what my point is, is that I am very happy with my host sister, and I'm sure that I'll stay friends with her even when I return to the States. On that note, I am going to write some more emails and get to bed. Hope all is well with everyone!
Cady
So I'm sort of writing this and watching a movie called Once right now. It's a hand-held camera style film that my English teacher put on my flash drive last week when I gave my presentation. There's a song called Falling Slowly in the movie that won the Oscar for best original song this year, or so I believe. Anyways, he put the movie on there so that I could watch it and learn the song because he wants me to teach it to the class. Kind of crazy eh? It's a beautiful song though, and the movie is really nice so far. It's a pretty cool idea on the part of our English teacher I think.
Anyways, I think we've all fallen into a pretty good routine here. Well, during the week, the weekends are always a surprise, which is always fun! (The one weekend we've had so far at least). I get up around 6:30, ready by 6:50, out the door by 7:00. We usually eat on the road now which works fine for me. Every day after school we go to Eve's favorite bakery, the one we got her birthday cake from, called Free Mori. My favorite pastry is a donut filled with sweet red bean paste. In fact, that's what I have waiting for me for breakfast tomorrow morning, so I know it will be a good day. I have given in to my absurd love of apples and started to eat them skin and all. The first apple I had the other night made me think of home because I eat apples so much in the States. Naturally, I liked it so much that I had an apple this morning too... I've started down the deadly, apple-paved path of no return. As, I've said it's about a ten minute walk to school. When I switch homes I'm going to have to take the bus to school, which is the public bus, which I've heard is very crowded. That's fine, but I'll be sad not to walk every morning anymore. You all probably know already, but our classes don't start until 8:00, so we have a half hour each morning to hang out and check email and enjoy the heated teachers' room. Then Baker, our translator, comes and gets us for class. Has anyone written about Baker? Well if not, I'll add my two cents, because he's a character in the Team China saga that you should all know about. He's a senior this year, but he's already into a language university in Beijing to study Arabic, which he's never studied before I guess, so he gets to come hang out with us all morning. He used to spend his "summer holidays," as he says, in Britain, so he has a very, very distinct British accent. When we first met him and had Chinese class, he was describing a Chinese pizza type dish and he said in his perfectly British accent, "It's, well... it's just like a pie!" And that, whether or not you can see the humor in it, or picture a Chinese boy with a British accent saying it, is how I would characterize Baker (whose Chinese name is Yi Kuan Chen in case anyone is interested). We had calligraphy this morning with Yang Laoshi who is extremely serious one moment and then incredibly funny the next. He doesn't speak English other than when he says "no, no!" or "ok, ok" when he looks at the character's we've done. None of us have earned very many "ok, ok"s yet, but we're working on it, and we've learned to hoard and savor the ones we do get. Personally, I like calligraphy. it's relaxing, sitting there making the brush create (poorly drawn) ink characters on the rice paper. Last class we focused on our names, though I think Yang Laoshi realized that we're not quite ready for that, so today we just worked on basic strokes. Some strokes got me a lot of "no, no!"s and I also got a few ok, ok"s. At one point, he just came over, started laughing and speaking Chinese to Baker who told me that Laoshi thinks my strokes look like brooms. Hmm.
After calligraphy we had a Hangzhou history course. Oh, and before that we went out to get milk tea! Actually, it was pretty awkward because everyone was in the middle of morning exercises. That's when all the students sort of fill up the front walkway to the school while songs from the Nutcracker Ballet play over the loudspeaker and then proceed to do a little jig that involves throwing your hands up and punching the air. It's a good time, but instead of doing it this morning we walked through the middle of the rows of people doing it, met by many stares, to get out of the front gate. It was well worth the milk tea though. So anyways, Hangzhou history. We got cool, fold-out maps and guide books that our teacher is actually the author of. We spent a lot of time figuring out where each of us live on the map, and then spent the rest of the time learning about historic spots around West Lake. Oh, Terry wasn't with us because she had a headache, but she did catch up with us right in time to see some very old tablets written by an emperor and other assorted people. The most famous one is about 200 years old, and some of the others are even older. We decided that it's pretty neat to have historic cultural relics at your school. The only relics at DSHS are a couple of the teachers who still reminisce about the days of corporal punishment in schools. Well, what I mean to say is that it's amazing how much history Hangzhou High School has. There, that's a better way of phrasing things. Oh, I've just finished the movie- it was very sweet, I would recommend it. Now I just have the song playing. So after lunch today we held our first English corner. Ella and Patrick were there of course, and our host brothers and sisters. A couple of girls that I like from my class came too, though I found out that they're really very sneaky and wanted to escape an English dictation that they were supposed to be doing during lunch hour. Still, class five is where it's at. One boy, Pizza (yes, that is his English name- I compare it to kids at DS choosing "Nacho" as their Spanish name) told me to come to class at one point. I thought that we were going to tell people to come to English corner but actually he just wanted me to sit next to him during the English Dictation! I didn't have my things though and he, along with those who sit near him, were rather disappointed when I went back to English corner. In the afternoon we had Chemistry, Physics where we did a lab on projectile motion (something I could understand! though not completely remember...), Math, and ball games. That's my favorite because we just play volleyball or badminton the whole time!
After school Eve, Drew, and I got our pastries at Free Mori, then it was back home again, dinner, shower, and now here I am. Let's see, I still don't know my host parents very well, but I understand that they work a lot. As I've said though, Eve is amazing and that's more than enough. She's rather addicted to he mobile phone, as they call them here- she's always either messaging her friends or playing games. Sometimes we'll be standing in a group and she'll start running around the outside in this funny, leaping, bounding sort of way that she has. She's really a character so I think it's kind of perfect that we ended up living together. Today when we got home from school she fell asleep on the couch, and when I told her it was homework time she said, "no! it's only 6:30... homework time today will start at 7:00!" This is rather uncharacteristic of a Chinese student, seeing as how most of them start their homework literally the second they arrive home. Sometimes Penny does her homework when we're out, such as when we were in a McDonald's this weekend taking a break from shopping on Sunday. Well, what my point is, is that I am very happy with my host sister, and I'm sure that I'll stay friends with her even when I return to the States. On that note, I am going to write some more emails and get to bed. Hope all is well with everyone!
Cady
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