First Days in Hangzhou

(Li) 2/19

I met my host sisters yesterday. They are both really nice. They are in the same class, so I won’t have to get used to a different group of kids or teachers at all. I am living with my sister, Sue, her mom, dad, grandmother, and little cousin. The apartment is pretty nice, but they don’t use heat!... not something I am used to. Today was out first day of Chinese classes. First we had Chinese class. Our teacher, Derek, is an English teacher at the school and he will be coming to America this year. We were glad to find out he is coming, seeing as he is awesome. Derek is similar to William; cool, fun, nice, and young. I also have to talk about Bruce. Bruce is amazing. Bruce is a senior three student (aka our grade. Senior three is the hardest year of a Chinese student’s life). Bruce, however, applied to colleges in the US and has already received acceptance letters, thus escaping the dreaded college entrance exam. He also no longer has to attend classes (amazing, right?). Because he has a lot of free time and all his friends are still in class, he volunteered to be our translator, since most of the teachers don’t speak English. Bruce has become more than a translator, however, he has become a really good friend.

We had Chinese, in which Bruce and Derek taught us basic greetings and random words in Chinese. Not much more to say about that. After a short break, we had Calligraphy class. Calligraphy is really fun. Our teacher is very nice, and extremely helpful. He is a good instructor and can usually communicate with us through body language, although we have Bruce if needed. Our teacher knows how to say “okay” and “very good” in English, unfortunately he doesn’t know the difference between the two phrases (or so it seems). In calligraphy class we also met a 70 year old, former English teacher. He exercises at the school every morning and came to meet us. He is really nice and hilarious, so we enjoy his periodic visits.

We went to lunch, where we had an amazing meal in a small, heated room with our host siblings, cooked by our very own personal chef. Our chef is actually the head of the school cafeteria, so he doesn’t cook the school food, but he is an amazing chef and has been featured on Chinese cooking shows. Not only does he make great food, but he is such a sweet little man.

After lunch we went to classes with our host siblings. Most of the classes were really boring, seeing as they were in Chinese, so I did my own thing. Sue and Star had English though, so I got to participate in that class which was…. interesting. First we heard Ferddy the Frog sing a Beatles song. Then my English teacher, who has actually been to America, Ms. Wang, asked me to read the vocab words to the class for the students to repeat.

After school we went to the grocery store. CRAZY experience, there were 9 of us and everyone was saying different things. The siblings were arguing and trying to figure out what we needed. They were trying to figure out what stuff was, such as loofahs. It was crazy. There was quite a large language barrier between us and our siblings back then. But they have all progressed SO much and they speak English really well now. It’s amazing. Then we went out for dinner… The end

Blog…. DONE