(Lauren)
Hangzhou Day 31
For the first time since we have been in China, our group has been separated for a period of several days. Although I think everyone was a little apprehensive about this, I think it was nice to have spent our last weekend in Hangzhou with our host families.
Saturday morning, my host mom and I went to the West Lake to take a bus tour of the scenic sites. (Hongan had to stay home to do her homework). The tour provided a nice overview of the different parts of the lake. It is so huge, I had not realized how much of it I hadn't seen, even though we've been going there every weekend!
For lunch, my host mom took me to a restaurant that served famous Hangzhou snacks. We had "Wawatou" which are little triangular pastries, "hongtang," a type of dumpling soup, and my personal favorite "xiaolong baozi" which are also sort of like dumplings. My host mom was particularly thrillled, because everyone at the restaurant assumed she was my translator, which made her very proud!
After lunch, we went back to one of the scenic spots we'd passed earlier. Gou's Villa, as it was called, used to be the private residence of a partiuclarly wealthy man, and was converted into a tourist site after his death. The villa was made up of several very traditional houses overlooking the lake. As it was not one of the most popular tourist destinations at the lake, we had the place practically to ourselves. It was nice to finally get an appreciation for the beauty and peace that West Lake offers when there aren't crowds of people around!
The next day, my host family and I went back to their hometown for the Qingming Festival. Their hometown, Xin'An Jiang, is a very famous water town. The river flowing through the town is clean and pure, and people could drink directly out of the water (although I'm not sure how sanitary this practice was, considering people also did their laundry directly in the water). Most of China's bottled water supply comes from the river, and my host mom was very proud to inform me that her hometown's river provided the bottled water for the Beijing Olympics!
We went over for lunch at Hongan's grandparents' apartment, where I also met her aunt, uncle, and cousin. After a quick lunch, Hongan's uncle drove my host mom, Hongan, her cousin, and me over to a place where we could ride dragon boats down the river. On our way downstream, we passed a large bridge made up of red arches. My host dad had designed the bridge, and named it the "Rainbow Bridge" after Hongan (whose name translates to rainbow in English).
Once we had finished the tour, Hongan, her cousin, and I went to the park. There were bumper cars at the park, so we rode them. I don't think I've ever ridden bumper cars before, but I was surprised to find how violent they were. The seatbelts were particularly poor - I can't help but think that a company with the same standards in the U.S. would be regularly sued for whiplash!
We left the park and decided to go rollerblading. Naively, I assumed we were going to a skate park. Actually, we were going to a club. The large room where we rollerbladed was lit with three disco balls, the Chinese equivalent of disco music was playing, and the entire room was smoky. It was very funny to watch other people rollerblade. The boys especially knew a lot of cool tricks, but they'd seemed to have forgotten to learn basic ones such as "turning" or "stopping." Therefore, people were constantly crashing into each other (or into walls or pillars).
We rollerbladed for a while, then went out to dinner with Hongan's parents and some of their friends. Hongan's mom's friend's son came later to practice his oral English. I thought this was going to be somewhat disastrous (many people ask to practice, few want to speak), but when my host mom took him, Hongan and I over to another friend's house, he opened up somewhat. The other friend's daughter also wanted to practice English, so the four of us went down into the basement to play Poker. I didn't know how to play Poker, but I caught on fairly quickly. Then my host mom decided to join the game to "help me," but kept accidentally revealing all my cards instead! I didn't win many games, but it was a lot of fun anyway!
After Poker, we went back to the hotel and went to bed. Tomorrow, we will be saying our goodbyes to everyone in Xin'An Jiang and heading back to Hangzhou. I can't believe I have only one more day left with my host family! I have really enjoyed being with them and will miss them a lot.
Until next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment