(Cady)Hey everyone!
As you all know, we have officially moved in with our new families. For me the switch happened after dinner on Friday night. Before that though, my host mom came home with silk scarves and longjing tea for me! I was truly surprised, but of course extremely happy. It was sad saying goodbye to Eve. Her mom drove us both to my second sister, Doris's, home where we sat in the living room sipping tea while the moms discussed my maintenance in Chinese. Since Doris had class, I had 45 minutes alone with my new, non-English-speaking host mom. The coffee table in the living room of my new apartment is cluttered with all sorts of sweets because Doris told her mom that I like candy, all of which she proceeded to try to feed me within a very short period of time. I showed her pictures of my family back home and she called her husband, who lives in Beijing right now (he's attending the Party University for a year), so that I could speak to him in English over the phone. Actually, he seemed like a very nice guy and we ended up talking for about twenty minutes. As you can imagine, his English is very good. After Doris came home we shared more photos, and then off to bed.
The following morning was typical of a Saturday- we meet at the school at 9:00 am and from there some teachers take us to a new destination. Oh, before that I had breakfast with Doris and her mom. She actually cooked us breakfast! I say this with such excitement because it was my first experience with being served breakfast by a Chinese mom. In case anyone is interested, I had toast with ketchup, greens, and egg on it, along with a dim sum bun and some bacon. Impressive, right? Anyways, yesterday we went to Wu Village. The village is about an hour and a half away from Hangzhou. The bus ride was fairly interesting because we were all buzzing with the excitement of new host brothers and sisters. Nick and Drew's brothers are both extremely funny, but I'm sure they'll want to tell you about that themselves. Doris and I spent most of the ride sharing my Ipod. We must have arrived at Wu Village at the exact same time as every other tourist, because the place was packed! The village itself is sort of like an interactive museum. Or a lived-in ghost town. There are canals running all through the town, which reminded me a bit of Lijiang and made the area very beautiful. At the same time, it was so crowded that it felt like we spent all morning in one massive line. The part of town we walked through, as I said, has basically been transformed into a museum. The narrow streets led us into buildings where we had our tickets punched and viewed very old furniture (especially beds), costumes, and the special "blue and white flower fabric" for which the town is famous. I really enjoyed the architecture of the buildings and the look of the canals more than the furniture, but that may be because of all the tourists packed around every single piece on display.
Then, of course, came lunch. It was one of those meals where we all got extremely stuffed and then they brought out the carbs. Fried rice and noodles followed what had already seemed like a hundred delicious dishes. After that we had a short, scenic boat ride on the canal, much like the one we took on West Lake. Ah, and let's not forget- we did a bit of shopping. Then it was back to Hanggao where karaoke plans awaited us. The eight of us (Me, Doris, Em, Luna, Nick, Jerry, Drew, and Joe) had dinner all together at the Pizza Hut across from the KTV place. Drew and Nick each got their own pizza... yikes. We went to the same KTV place we'd gone to the first time, so we were all familiar with how it works. Eric, a former classmate of Drew and host for the night, had reserved one of the big rooms. Good thing too, because there were a lot of us there. Eric brought four classmates with him, plus Eve, Baker, and my classmate, Peggy, all came. Needless to say it was rather crowded. In a good way though. Lots of singing and socializing went on until about ten when we all parted ways.
We tried to make hiking plans for this morning (Sunday), but in the end no one rose or shone in time for the 8:00 am time Eric and I set. Well, except for me, but it wouldn't be considered acceptable, I think, for me to hike alone with a boy. Therefore I spent the morning amusing myself in various ways, answering questions for the Focus, and thinking about college. AH! Doris's mom had lunch ready for when she got home from class (Math from 9-11). That was great, of course, and after wards Doris and I went to the supermarket to buy snacks for this afternoon. Since I have a cold, Doris's mom bought me Tylenol and imposed nap-time on me. So I napped. After that some girls from our class came over to just hang out. It was actually a lot of fun. They taught me how to play a two-deck card game and I taught them Spit, which they got pretty in to. We also spent a lot of time just talking and goofing around. Then we made dumplings. After dinner another girl, Doris's old neighbor, showed up bearing a present for me. So she, Doris, Peggy and I sat around talking until they all had to disperse and do homework. Overall, a good day. So that pretty much brings us up to date. My actual day for the blog was Saturday, but I thought I'd include a bit about today since we all went our separate ways.
Hope all is well and dandy in Dover-Sherborn. See you all in two weeks! Whoa, so soon.
Cady
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