KTVing in Hangzhou

(Cassie)

Hello everyone! Today marked a couple of important landmarks...it is both the end of our first week of school at Hanggao and the exact halfway point of our trip. Looking back it's been a whirlwind of a month! And today was no exception.

First I must say that the weather was absolutely spectacular. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the thermometer didn't drop below 60 degrees until the sun went down. Yin and I began our day with a delicious (as usual) breakfast. Today it consisted of noodles in a chicken broth with greens. After Yin's encouragement, I mixed in some...peanut butter! While it may sound very strange, it was actually quite good. Our bellies warm and full of peanut butter noodles, we set off for school. I began the day in Yin's class, where they spent most of the period going over the homework - a series of reading passages that were very similar to the SAT but a little less difficult. Then William , their teacher (for those of you who don't know, he came to DS several exchanges ago), discussed their recently completed music projects with the kids. Over the last couple of days groups of two or three kids had been making presentations in English on music which varied from Lady Gaga to musicals to rap and a couple places in between. It was quite fascinating to see a Chinese take on some familiar music. After English came math, where I admittedly checked out as I could no longer understand. Realistically, that would've happened (as it was math) whether or not the class was in Chinese as math isn't exactly my strongest point. According to Yin, the class can be classified as algebra.

After the two morning classes spent with Yin's class of 55, the Shanghai 5 had their first class of the day together. The class was called Body Mechanics. We had it in a room on the first floor of the gym (yes, their gym does have multiple floors) which had walls lined with mirrors and a bar. It was, in essence, a dance class. Our teacher, who spoke a decent amount of English and was very enthusiastic, then proceeded to attempt to teach us part of a cheerleading routine. I say attempted because none of us are particularly gifted in regards to coordination and its wasn't exactly pretty to watch. After a short break (which I think was more for her sake than ours) we spent the last 40 odd minutes of class doing pilates. It was very relaxing. All in all the class really made us feel as if we'd earned our lunch.

After a tasty lunch, we went our seperate ways again. Yin had Chinese (in which they mostly read ancient Chinese literature) as well as geography and chemistry. In chemistry, the class was delighted to recieve the news that their exam had been pushed from today to Monday. With this happy atmosphere permeating the class, the last period passed quickly. As Yin has no class last period on Fridays, we got to leave after chemistry. Which was very convenient seeing as we had some fun plans ahead.

After school, we all headed to KTV! KTV stands for karaoke television. A big group of kids including Alex, Alaina, Lauren, and I, our host sibings, Sandy, and several others friends of ours and our host sisters and brothers, all made the short walk to the building which housed the KTV. We got a pretty big room, which contained a big TV, several couches and chairs, and a computer on which we chose our songs. There were both English and Chinese songs, along with several in multiple languages such as Japanese and English or Korean and Chinese. We were all amazed by the voices of our friends - everyone (I do not exaggerate) had spectacular voices. Ning and Liam had particularly stellar voices, along with Jing Yu Chen (a new friend we've made). Alex sang a great rendition of Billy Idol's "White Wedding", and I attempted to sing a song in Chinese with Yin. I have heard it several times - it's called "Xi Shua Shua". Zhu Laoshi played it for us in class, and I liked it enough to put it on my iPod. I'm sure my attempted rendition was quite an amusing sight.

After several hilarious and fun hours spent at KTV, we walked next door for a dinner of pizza! I can't tell you how wonderful it was to eat a piece of pizza...all of us from DS greatly enjoyed it. As my family knows, cheese is the American food I miss most (after chocolate) so I was very happy when the thickly crusted, cheesy Hawaiian pizza arrived. We've discovered over the course of our travels through China how food-obsessed the five of us are. Despite the heavenliness of the pizza, I have to say the company was even better. We sat in the restaurant long after the food was finished laughing and talking in both of our languages together. After we got up from the table, we spent at least another half an hour taking pictures together. No one wanted to leave. When we finally dragged ourselves away, Yin and I grabbed a taxi and went home. As nice as it will be to get to meet a new family, I'm definitely going to miss living with Yin and the rest of the Tus. I'm having a fantastic time in Hangzhou.

'Til next time...