Hot Chocolate and Oreos and a Personal Chef

(Drew)

Thrusday we woke up a little late but thats ok me and mark always make good time in the morning. My host mom always makes a delicious and fairly large breakfast for me and mark so that we start the day well. We also ride bikes to school, which gives us an advantage over Cady,Nick and Em haha... oh wait nick gets driven in a car to school woops. So after another class of chinese calligraphy which went well we took our 20 minute break to go get hot chocolate with oreos. Team China has grown quite fond of this drink which i will take credit as the original founder of this unique blend. Calligraphy for characters is very difficult, our teacher Mr. Yang makes it look so easy. It takes a lot of skill with the brush and a lot of patience. The past two days all we have done is work on basic strokes because anything more than that would be beyond our current abilities. Our second class was Hangzhou History which was more of a modern day look at hangzhou through tour guide pamplets. We looked at the layout of Hangzhou and all the places of interest so that the group had a better idea of how to get around. We also located where we all live on the map of Hangzhou. Nick lives so far away! Its too bad because sometimes he can't do things with us because if he wants to come to this part of Hangzhou he needs someone to drive him.

Lunch was delicious as usual. Each day we get a completely different lunch and the chef is so funny. Everyday the chef comes in to see us and see if the food is alright he just laughs as we point and give him the thumbs up and will come up to me and nick and give us hard pats on the back. After lunch it was time to shadow our host brothers and sisters again. Class gets a little boring unfortunately, but its nice to have a lot of free time to draw, read, write or do whatever we need to do for that day. I sit at the back of my class so my activity goes unoticed most of the time. Im making new friends in my class though, everyone is so nice but they are very nervous to speak with me because they are not confident about thier english.

I know many peope around school now which is nice, i get lots of hellos and seeing familiar faces is nice. Some students from my class and the kids who show up for english corner after lunch are always friendly. One senior at hangzhou, his english name is michael, comes to english corner frequently. He is studying hard to come to america for university. He takes a lot of extra classes so that he can score well on the tests he must take to be able to attend school in america and on the SAT's. He told me that the vocabulary for the SAT's is 15000! I take for granted that i already know most of those, it would be so difficult to take them as a foreigner.

I ran again after school even though it was cold and drizziling. I told myself that if i did a good workout i would go to my favorite bakery "Free Morey(sp?)" afterwards (hehe maybe it makes me run faster). Unfortunatly while running i hadnt noticed but i had been kicking mud up onto my school uniform that i was going to wear the following day so i spent about an hour thursday night cleaning off my uniform.

Going home is always so relaxing, i can take a shower put on my PJ's and slippers and curl up reading harry potter until dinner time. I have a new favorite dish that my host parents make. Its simply strips of potatos and carrots that i mix in with my rice and its delicious, maybe ill tell my real mom about this secret recipe so i can enjoy it back in America, of course ill need to keep chopsticks around the house from now on it just wouldnt feel right eating it any other way. We always have other assorted vegtables and meats on the table. Thursday we had clams dipped in vinegear, i actualy prefer the fresh fish that we usually have but it was still good. The most important thing is that i have a full belly at all times, frightfully easy to do. Harry Potter is almost over though im so sad i will be finishing it within the next couple days. Ill have to go to the local international book store and buy some english books to keep me entertained while i curl up in bed. I hear they have the Dan Brown books i never read.

My host family is too nice they feed me so much. Sometimes ill just be sitting down and a plate of fruit drops in front of me, i feel like i never left my house back home. Back in America i have a personal chef (my mom) who knows exactly when i am hungry and always has food ready, nothing has changed. They bought me new slippers because the ones that i had been wearing around the house did not fit, my feet were hanging off the end by a good 2-3 inches. When Mrs. Viz told me that the host families in China are too nice after i had told her about my fears of going to China, i still felt skeptical. Im so glad that she was right (of course she was right its, Viz...).

Ok well my thoughts about Hangzhou so far, sorry about being a little late on this entry. I do have to say that KTV on friday was so much fun even though im not supposed to talk about friday this is a thursday post :) but i really want to go back.

Cady's Class Adventures

(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

Marching to Sugar Plum Fairies

(Emily)

hello hello! this email is working (ironically, yahoo is not). ok here's today's blog!

ni men hao! hope everyone is having a fantastic march! spring is starting in hangzhou and things are starting to bloom! not to mention it's warm and all you need is a light jacket! this is fantastic considering there have been some very cold mornings and there is no heat in the classrooms. luckily, we have our gym instructor to keep our heart rates up and our blood pumping with pom poms (see nick's entry for full disclosure). alas, we did not have gym today but we had chinese painting! it takes up both of our two hour morning blocks and while we were a little nervous that it would be boring to have the same class for four hours, it was not in the slightest. our teacher started off by giving us brushes (made from wolf, weasel, and goat hair) and ink. then she basically told us to go do whatever we want for a few minutes, allowing us to try out the different brushes and different water to ink ratios. after playing around for a little bit (my paper basically looked like a giant ink blot test...i think chewbacca was somewhere in there), we were brought to her studio. oh man, she's a wonderful artist. in particular, there was one painting that caught all our eyes- a watercolor of a shawl (some may call it a rug but no, it is a piece of clothing) on a wooden clothes hanger. the attention to detail was meticulous to say the least and we could even see the streaks in the wood and the light reflection on the shawl. STUNNING! and not to mention the actual studio space- sunlight spilled softly in through the open windows, illuminating the works of art lined up against the wall and creating a very romantic effect. it was basically how i envision great art studios. after showing us her studio, our teacher took us to another room where we watched a film of a man painting in the traditional chinese style (basically like bob ross....with less psychadellicness). then, we went back' into the classroom and used the books we were given to start to paint. over the course of a couple of sheets of paper, my work started to look less "ink blot" and more like "abstract" art. i even drew a pretty satisfactory bird that was painted by merging three circles together. now that's progress! drew was naturally amazing at painting (even though he claims that he's no good at western style painting) and even got an "excellent" from our teacher who doesn't speak much english. he drew a bird (that looked like a bird...and a very good one at that) and a tree with flowers that was really pretty. so talented! at the end of the class, we were all really happy and we can't wait until we have our next painting class.

during our break in chinese painting, we were lounging by the well (where previous groups have held their english corner. ironically, there are no corners around the well) and all of a sudden, the nutcracker's 'dance of the sugar plum fairy' started blaring from the speakers and baker (our awesome translator with an aussie/brit accent) was like "and now, the school will come out for morning exercises." and sure enough, students started marching through the campus in columns until they were in straight lines and started doing 'morning exercises.' well, team china just couldn't be sitting ducks and laze around while people around them were doing cool looking exercises. we jumped in-between groups and started to try and follow the morning exercises. what are the morning exercises? that's a good question to which i have no clear answer. basically, it looked like choreographed dance movements with some tae bo and jumping jacks sprinkled in. we must have looked ridiculous to the students around us but we had fun and it was another hanggao (hangzhou hs) experience!

lunch was amazing (per usual) with pork, sweet soup with red bean in it, bean sprouts, celery and ham, and light rice crisps topped with blackberry jam. after lunch, we went out to buy helen (english teacher who came to ds a few years ago) a birthday cake! we had already made her a card, but we decided that in order to be able to sing happy birthday in chinese, we needed a cake to...take the cake? ella, patrick (ella's friend), penny, eve, and team china walked to a nearby bakery and selected a cake with fruit in-between the layers. when we got back, we found out that she had gone home but would be back at two. at two o'clock, we went back to the teachers' room to await her arrival. sure enough, she came and we were able to sing her happy birthday in chinese and present her with the cake. she was really touched and was literally moved to tears. we were happy to make someone who had helped ds teachers out so much so happy.

after school i went with penny, hammah, and a classmate of theirs to a hardware store where they needed to pick up items for their shop class. after, we got cong bao hui (hammah) and dan bing (egg cake- penny and i). it's a bit like a crepe with a breadstick, scallions, sweet and spicy sauce, and pickles in between. we then went to the bus stop and came home to a(nother) delcious dinner. this time it was baby bok choi, chicken, pickled veggies, and celery and tofu.

some more interesting tidbits about life at hanggao: my host sister (as well as the host siblings of nick and cady...i'm not sure about drew's) is a part of the league. the league is the equivalent of the government (i.e. communist) party for adults and is very prestigious (kind of like national honors society?). however, any members have to renounce their religious beliefs. my family used to believe in jesus christ until my host dad and penny joined the party and league (respectively). now that they are in it, they cannot be religious. another interesting fact is that over this summer, penny went to egypt and turkey! i have been fascinated by egyptology since i was a little kid (who am i kidding, i'm still a little kid), so this was a particularly cool bonding experience. it's also really cool being in such a big school where no one knows everyone, which is a lot unlike ds. i didn't know it was possible to not to know all your classmates until i saw how many kids hanggao has.
well that's all for today! bye!

An Idyll of Lake and Garden

(Terry)

Even on the weekend, our days are full!

You already know that Team China and host siblings headed off on our glorious Saturday at West Lake – then one teacher and I separated from the younger folks after lunch. Michelle (Shen Liang) and I continued sauntering down the road that bordered West Lake, eventually stopping for a cup of tea; ultimately, we walked back up the road to attend a wedding banquet! William (Hu Kunling) will be coming to DS with this year's group of Hangzhou students, and he'd completely outdone all notions of good hosting by inviting me to join his wedding festivities. I changed out of jeans to a dress, and then Michelle and I watched part of the photo session for William and his new bride (Jiang Yijiao). Little did we know that they'd already spent days posing for a video which looped through most of the dinner, featuring bride-and-groom; this is apparently a feature of modern weddings (rather than the bride being carted about in a tiny sedan chair to her in-laws' home). The couple posed most romantically in a variety of (mostly outdoor) settings, and many heartfelt sayings in English were interspersed among the pictures, since William is an English teacher. The marriage was official once they had obtained their marriage license, but the "host" who acted as emcee for the banquet guided them through an exchange of wedding rings, and invited people to make several speeches offering good wishes to this glowing couple. We ate expansively (when does that ever not happen in China?), chatted much in English, and watched as the couple made their way from table to table: toasting their guests, and lighting a cigarette for the senior male guest at each table, who in return smoked with great gusto (even the non-smokers, it seems!) The bride changed her dress as the evening progressed, from her long white wedding gown with a lovely train, to a fitted long red gown, and finally to a short traditional silk dress (the one every single American female has ordered while in Hangzhou!) Talk about being made one of the family while I'm here!

On Sunday, Rose (Xu Hui, last year's teacher for the exchange) met me at 9:30, and we took a cab to the Hangzhou Botanical Garden. If anything, the weather was even more spring-like than the day before, and we chatted the day away while I sighed over the glorious garden setting. Many plants were labeled with Latin names, much to my delight, and I was able to learn the names of several trees that I'd seen on our travels. Of course, there were plum trees galore to enjoy, along with a koi-and-carp pool, numerous fountains, venerable pavilion structures, and uncountable vistas. Even though we shared the garden with thousands of families young and old, if felt like it belonged to us, too!

"There's heaven, and then there's Hangzhou!"

(Nick)

We have been in Hangzhou for six days now and each day seems to get better than the last! Today we went back to school after an amazing weekend, so I will tell you what my weekend was like (Now that we are not the "Gang of Four" anymore, this trip is a lot more individualized).

On Friday after school, my host brother Raven, three of his classmates, and I played badminton for a couple hours. It was great fun and although they play badminton a lot more often in China than I do in the states, I wasn't half bad. After badminton, we took a city bus to Hefang Road, an old street in Hangzhou known for its many shops and ancient medicine factories. After walking down Hufeng St., we ate dinner at a gourmet American restaurant you might recognize - McDonalds! It is actually not so cheap here and the actual restaurant is much nicer and more modern (compared to the U.S.). After our fattening meal, I'm positive we managed to burn it all off. We walked to West Lake (Xihu in Chinese) and probably walked for almost 3 hours. It was absolutely beautiful at night - all the lights from the many buildings on the other side reflected on the water. One of Raven's friends, whose English name is Samuel, wanted to speak English with me but was really shy and nervous (A common theme that I've noticed thus far in Hangzhou). His friends convinced him to and we ended up talking for the entirety of our 3 hour walk. Samuel is VERY interested in history (according to Raven he knows more than his history teacher), and I, being the history nut that I am, was more than happy to talk about it. Samuel gave me an overview of China's history for a while (and by a while I mean 2 hours...with such a long history, you can't possibly give a "brief" overview), and I gave him an overview of American history (which wasn't very hard, considering China is thousands and thousands of years older). We then talked about our two countries in general - he's not a fan of the Chinese education system and is quite envious of American students. We talked about the reputations of our two countries....I told him how I felt about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the Three Gorges Dam project , and he told me about his thoughts on the war in Iraq. We talked about the upcoming 2008 Presidential election - he thinks it is a very important election for the U.S. and thought it was great that a woman and an African American were both running for President. His English was not the best when we started talking, but by the end of our long conversation, he was a lot more comfortable and his English was rather good! It was a great thing for both of us - not only did he get to practice his English, but both of us learned a lot in the process. After our stroll, we went to a Starbucks near the lake. Raven and his friends told me that Starbucks is quite popular for young men in China, which I was very happy to learn. We sipped our tea and coffee as we talked about a variety of things - sports, music, movies, and even girls (which was rather amusing for me...there is quite a difference in the dating scene here...it is pretty much nonexistent among high school students). It was a great way to spend Friday night, and as much as I love Cady, Drew, and Emily, it was refreshing to be with new friends and completely away from everything familiar.

On Saturday, we took a trip to West Lake (during the day this time) with our host siblings, Terry, Michelle (English teacher), and two other teachers. We walked around West Lake, ate a delicious lunch (including duck tongue!), and then took boats out in West Lake. I'd heard so much before coming to Hangzhou about how beautiful West Lake is...boy was everyone right, it sure is beautiful! As we were out in the middle of the lake, one quote definitely popped into my mind - "There's heaven and then there's Hangzhou." After a gorgeous day on the lake, my host family took me out to dinner at a really nice restaurant. Lucky for us, a wedding reception was happening at the restaurant at the same time! It was very interesting to see but I felt weird watching a total stranger's wedding reception! After dinner, we all saw Atonement in the cinema which was very well done.

On Sunday, my host family took me to the Thousand Island Lake (Qiandao Hu). We went with my host mother's friend and her daughter, and it took about a 2 hour drive on the highway to get there. First we went to a river near the lake and ate lunch on a boat. The lunch consisted of fish from the river and it was so delicious! My host father kept on putting the most delicious parts of each fish in my bowl of rice and I couldn't resist, but I came out absolutely stuffed. After lunch, we drove to the Thousand Island Lake. My host family just purchased a luxury timeshare in a hotel overlooking the lake, and it is currently being built, so we viewed a model of what it is going to look like. Now I knew my host family must have quite a bit of money after seeing their apartment in Hangzhou, but their new timeshare is going to be incredible. Raven told me that I should convince my parents to also buy a timeshare in the same complex.......yeah, okay, i'm sure my parents would be totally fine spending 1.1 million yuan on a timeshare half way around the world. My host parents did invite me to come visit them over my holiday break next year, since their new timeshare will be ready by then....all I can say is, now wouldn't that be nice! After a tour of their timeshare model, we took out a speedboat on the lake. This lake is HUGE compared to West Lake...I'm pretty sure you can see it on a map of China. As the name infers, there are supposedly over 1000 islands...not sure if it is true or not, but the point is there are a lot of islands! We got off on one of them, named Monkey Island, that is home to probably 50 or so wild monkeys. Raven brought some dried tofu which he threw near the monkeys so they could eat it. They weren't very interested, and took a liking to the oranges that a young couple was throwing towards them. It reminded me a lot of Emeishan, but not nearly as touristy and there were no old women to yell at you if you got too close. There was quite a bit of trash on the beach, though, and the idea of throwing tons of food at wild animals wasn't very appealing to me. Overall, though, the lake was gorgeous and the water was very clear and looked fairly clean (for China standards, of course). We took a ton of photos throughout the day...it felt like every time a photo was being taken, I had to be in it, even a photo of my host mother's friend and her daughter. We drove back to Hangzhou after a beautiful day (Raven and I both took naps in the car - the sun sure does make you tired). Once we were back in Hangzhou, my host family took me out to dinner yet again (I guess eating out is a must on weekends, despite my host father's excellent cooking skills).

Today we went back to school. Monday morning is different from any other morning: there is a morning ceremony before classes, where all the students line up by class and march onto the field/track, watch the Chinese flag get raised, and listen to the Vice Principal speak (since Madame Miao, the Principal, is at a conference in Beijing). A girl from my class, who apparently is the head of my class, also spoke in front of everyone. I felt pretty awkward being the only one in a sea of over 2,000 students not wearing a uniform (besides Cady, Drew, and Emily of course), but luckily we got our uniforms a couple hours later!

Our first class today was Chinese. In addition to our Chinese teacher, Gao Li, we were pleasantly surprised to see that we had an English translator now, a grade three (senior) student who is already into Beijing Language University to study arabic, and doesn't need to be in his classes anymore. His English name is Baker, and he has a British/Australian accent (His mom lives in the UK and he spent his summers when he was younger in Australia). We all love his accent. William, the English teacher who will be coming to Dover-Sherborn this spring, popped into our class and told us that our uniforms were in our cubicles in the English office, along with candy that he left us. We were all so excited to finally get out uniforms! It was our second Chinese class, and a pretty unique one at that! We spent about 30 minutes reviewing the different cities and provinces we've visited and then learned some new food words. Gao Li then took us to a restaurant near campus to eat the foods we had just learned how to say (talk about an interactive way of learning). We ate Hun tun (small wontons in soup), jiao zi (dumplings), and diao zha shao bing (Gao Li described it as a Chinese pizza..it was basically scallion pancakes). We had all just eaten very large breakfasts from our host families, but we managed to eat a good amount of the food that Gao Li ordered for us. It was so nice of him to take us. It definitely brought us all back to our Modern China Tutorial days when we would get Chinese food with Ms. Viz! After Chinese "class," we went up to the English office and got our uniforms, which of course we immediately put on. They all look great and we definitely feel like we are now a part of the school rather than complete foreigners. Now, let's just hope that we don't lose Emily...now that she has a uniform, she fits right in!

After Chinese, we had gym class. We thought that Baker, our translator, was just for Chinese class, but were happy to find out that he is our translator for all of our classes...talk about hospitality! Our gym class is private unlike the P.E. classes that we attend with our host siblings in the afternoon. We have our own teacher, who we don't know the name of yet but we absolutely love. She is so cute, always smiling and very energetic. We started out by doing cheerleading....i know....pom poms and all! None of us are by any means what you would call cheerleaders so we all had a lot of fun pretending to be peppy and spirited. We learned a fairly difficult routine and then did it along to music. It was quite a scene...too bad nobody got it on tape! I'm sure many of my fellow Calculus students back in DS would pay to see a video of Mrs. Luskin cheerleading. Many Hangzhou High School students tried to peak into our room to see us making fools of ourselves, but we were really embarrassed and our teacher finally told the students to stop watching so we could actually get through our routine without being bright red. It turned out to be rather tiring and we only learned a part of the routine, so we will finish it next class. We then moved onto strength and conditioning....we did many different kinds of crunches and bum-strengthening exercises that hurt SO much, but we managed to get through it because our teacher was smiling the whole time. We are all expecting to be sore tomorrow. We finished class by doing yoga (like last class) which was a relaxing way to end the class.

We had lunch next, which was delicious, but we were all stuffed from our Chinese class trip to the restaurant. Kathleen (whom I hadn't seen yet), Ella, and Patrick popped into our private lunch room. We still had almost an hour left in our lunch period so we all sat on the grass near the front gate of the school and just hung out and talked. We all love our host siblings to death but its so nice to have friends that are our own age as well. After lunch period, we headed off to our respected host sibling's classroom. Today, Raven had the Chinese equivalent of industrial technology, History, Politics, and P.E. In industrial technology, we cut some type of metal with saws (I helped out Raven's friends when their arms got tired from sawing). History class seemed to be a World History class, and we watched a movie in addition to viewing notes on powerpoint (Every teacher has a laptop that they bring around with a powerpoint presentation of that particular day's lesson). I couldn't really understand Politics, although we did watch a short clip of what seemed to be about the heavy snow that hit southern China right before we arrived, and I'm assuming it was about the government's response to this natural disaster. In P.E., each class ran two laps around the track. Each class was in two lines, a line for the boys and a line for the girls. Music was blasted as we ran. Then me and some of my friends played badminton for the remainder of the period.

Tonight my host family and I viewed each other's photos and we talked about many different things. They love America and my host parents look forward to visiting next year when Raven is attending high school in Los Angeles. In my last entry, I said that Raven will be there for one year on an exchange, but it turns out that he will be there for the remainder of high school (2 years). His parents think the American education system is very good so that is why he is going. Raven is an only child (well, it is pretty hard NOT to be an only child in China due to the One Child Policy), and he is very close to his parents (Just like me...gotta love only child syndrome). I have grown very close with my host parents despite the language barrier, and I think that because I am so used to being an only child, I am quite used to the constant attention. I do feel bad, however, because my host mother is constantly comparing me and Raven, telling him that he needs to wear his pants higher (like me), wear brighter colors (like me), and do well in school (apparently they think I am smart just because I am into college). I do try hard to remind them that Raven is one of the best English speakers in his class and that Hangzhou High School as well as the school in L.A. that he will be attending next year are both excellent, prestigious schools. My host mother hates the English name that my host brother gave himself, Raven, and its really funny because everyday she will say (Raven...bu hao...bu hao)...and then call him by his Chinese name, Xie Jing Yi. His parents call him Yang Yang as a nickname though, but they can't do that while I am here since my name is Yang Ni Ke! I am so happy with my host family and it is a perfect fit for me. Sure, it is sometimes difficult for us to communicate, but every time I use a new Chinese word my host parents are so impressed and every time they use a new English word I tell them "Hun hao" (very good). They are very funny and we definitely share many laughs.

I will be honest when I say that when I first became interested in this exchange, it was the travel portion that was the most enticing to me. Travel has always been a huge interest of mine and this was the perfect opportunity to see another part of the world at such a young age. But the last six days have proven to me that nothing can compare to actual human interaction. I had a lot of fun during the 3 weeks of travel, but this is so much better! All the anxiety I had about Hangzhou has gone away and I am having so much fun. I learned a lot while traveling, but I have found that I have learned so much more just from making new friends here and stepping out of my comfort zone. I feel so much more accomplished after a day at Hangzhou High School than I did during any of the travel days, no matter how great the city! When I first came into my classroom last Wednesday, I noticed some hesitation and I wasn't sure what to make of it. But I have since realized that the students are just very shy when using their English and they were very scared to approach me. I am probably the least intimidating person...ever...so i found that rather amusing. After a couple days, however, they warmed up to me and began asking lots of questions about my life in America.

After just six days, I already know that this is going to be one hard goodbye. But I can't even think about that right now...I just want to enjoy Hangzhou while it lasts!

Hope everyone at home is doing well!

Take Care,
Ni Ke

Kite Flying and Snacking in Hangzhou

(Drew)

I feel like so much has happened since i last wrote an entry, perhaps thats because this is my first entry in Hangzhou!! It feels like a whole different trip not traveling around with the gang. Ok so right before i got here i was pretty nervous about several things. I hoped i would get a great host family that i would get along with well and have fun with, this has already been confirmed as i will talk about later i got two awesome host brothers. I also hoped that i would enjoy the food that we eat in Hangzhou because until now we hadnt been eating home made food only generic restaurant food which i think we were all very acclimated too and maybe starting to get a little bored of. The food i have been given is great! My family started throwing snacks at me as soon as i got in the house. In the middle of our home we have a table infront of the T.V. which gets stocked with all the snacks i like. Sometimes i have to be careful what i say that i like because as soon as i say i like somthing it mysteriously appears on the snack table the next day. The snack table currently has the most delicious apples, clementines and strawberries. Each night we eat dinner pretty much exactly at 6 P.M. Some days my host brothers grandma comes over for dinner (im not sure if its his moms mom or his dads mom i didnt ask). I used my english-chinese dictionary to show my host mom which foods i like. She has also discovered this book and is trying to study it and learn little phrases.

The first night i went out and got some oatmeal for breakfast along with various other groceries with my brother (English name Mark, Chinese name Liu Min Chao, i just call him mark) and mother. There is a large supermarket about one minute walk down the street. My current house is in a nice location, about 10-12 minutes walk from the school. My house is located on the same street as the school so its very difficult to get lost. This is also convienient because i have started running every day after school. Mark goes home and starts his homework and i spend about an hour after school doing a workout on the track (which is 300 meters, as opposed to our 400m track which really throws me off) and then head home with enough time to shower and rest for a bit before dinner.

So the first couple days at the school were a little overwhelming especailly because the second day i played soccer after lunch and got dehydrated enduceing a rather agonizeing migraine which took me out of my last two classes that day and prevented me from running after school. I think i am beggining to be able to navigate my way around campus though. Luckily we do not switch classrooms like in DS so when in doubt i just go to our classroom or the english teachers office where Terry is working or another one of the english teachers who i have come to know very well already. All the english teachers are so nice and helpful and took an instant interest in us. My english teacher (michelle) had me talk infront of my host brothers class in english about myself, colleges (the american university system which is much different than the way chinese university works), Dover Sherborn, my impressions on china, answered a few questions and basically anything else that popped into my head. I also had cady guest speak in my class becasue she is in the next class over in geometery which means she wouldnt understand it anyways and i was a bit nervous to talk infront of so many people by myself. Plus, cady loves to talk...

So the weekend has come and gone but it has been a lot of fun. Friday me, cady, her host sister eve, emily and penny all walked around west lake at night. West lake is amazing, well of course it is but you dont quite understand until you see it. There is a one kilometer long causeway across the lake that we walked across. At night there were many couples hand in hand or with thier arms around eachothers shoulders walking along the scenic strip. We made a quick stop at KFC for icecream and did a little more walking before we took a taxi home. Saturday we went back to west lake with some teachers from the school, this was more of a school event for us. Im not sure which is better west lake at night or west lake during the day... hard to decide. After west lake we made plans for a movie with our host siblings, we saw atonement which i had never even heard of but I ended up liking a lot. It was subtitled in chinese so it was basically like just watching a regular movie because you just block out the characters at the bottom after a while. Today (Sunday) we woke up early again to go fly kites with my classmates who had invited me and given me a kite which looks like a combination of a pheonix and a chicken. One of the girls who came brought a lizard which i think was a water dragon but im not sure, it was very spiky like somthing you would find in the desert. She put it on my shoulder and i walked around with it for a while, so cool!! We flew kites in wu hill square where a bunch of other people were also flying kites. I forgot that you had to run around with the kites to keep them up in the air and i got tired pretty quick. Two hours of flying kites and we took a taxi home before heading to eves apartment to make dumplings with the girls (emily, eve, cady, penny and one of thier classmates). We had a delicious lunch which was cooked by eves aunt. Eves apartment is huge! After dumplings the girls went shopping, of course. Me and mark narrowly dodged that bullet by going to play badminton with my other host brother joe and one of his classmates. We played badminton for about two hours and i was completely exhausted afterwards. I think my ping-pong skills tie in with badminton because joe, who is also good at ping pong was also good at badminton. We went to KFC afterwards because i was starving after so much running around.

Ok well these are my first expiriences in Hangzhou, im having a great time and cant wait for whatever else Hangzhou has to offer. Zai Jian until next time.