Last Day at Hanggao

(Alex)

Good evening all!

As we approach our final week in China, we are all cramming in last minute activities and plans. Our time has flown by and we can't believe that today was our last day at Hanggao! We had our final aerobics class with the dance teacher and Liam today, and though it may not have been the most fun class, the act of poorly dancing and jump roping will be missed. Liam and I tried our hardest to maintain a jump rope today with the teacher, but she was way too fast! The teacher just giggle at our attempts to keep up with her pace, but we all gave it our best try. After the class we all headed to our final meal with Chef Wang and were very glad to see he prepared us pizza, ribs, chicken wing, and chocolate covered peanuts (my favorite)! We all enjoyed the meal very much and will miss the living daylight out of Chef Wang and his amazing and extremely funny personality! Soon after, English Corner time was arriving, and today we had the biggest crowd yet. Word had spread that it was our final day of school so even people that we have never met before showed up! It was surprisingly big for us, but we all loved the company so much. Joe and Kitty showed up along with Alaina's friend, my two pals named Vapor and Little Bread, and a ton of other students wishing us the best travels and safe ways. It was here that we all truly recognized how much a part of Hanggao is in our lives and how much our stay here has affected Hanggao. The students and teachers alike are all so awesome and friendly and they will be missed dearly and we are so grateful to have had the pleasure of their presence.

Later in the day as we began to hand out our gifts to teachers, we found each one of them and individually gave their gifts. Every teacher was very stubborn about accepting the gifts, but it is all part of the Chinese culture. William had plans for us to go out to Zhejiang University to see Bob and a few others, so we met him and Ivan at the English Corner well at 3 pm. From there we all drove thirty minutes to get to the University to see the Team America 2008 students for the last time (minus Alice). Bob showed up with friends including Sam (the boy from 2008 who had the astronomy competiton that could not make it), Tony, and Rough. Rough speaks outstanding English, and he lived in the US for a year with his father nine years ago. We talked about University life whilst taking a tour of the college on a golf cart. Bob was our guide so of course things could get out of hand. After the short tour, we all sat down next to the river that runs through campus and played an intense series of Uno. We couldn't play San Guo Sha because the game is all in Chinese and the rules are too complicated, but Uno was so fun and funny to play. It was Sandy's first time playing, and she completely swept the first round of cards, setting up the next few rounds to be really heated. At one point, four people at once had Uno and that was quite a moment, but after Uno something hilarious happened walking back to the cars. To begin, Lauren's head is a magnet for sports balls to hit. She has been hit by ping pong balls, a birdie, and a basketball all in the course of a few weeks, and a second basketball just added to the list. Rough brought a basketball with him to play with later, but Bob hijacked it and started fooling around with it. He was playing and he accidentally bounced it off the back of Lauren's head and it went bouncing and rolled into the river. It was hysterical with everybody laughing including poor Lauren! We spent the next half hour trying to fish the basketball out of the river with a long piece of bamboo, big rocks, and tons of branches. After finally getting the ball, we made sure that Bob never touched that ball again the whole night and we all headed off to dinner.

At dinner, we all talked about our stay in China the past 2 months and reflected on our experiences. While that was fun, somehow movies got brought up into the conversation and that took the main topic of the night. William loves movies as much as Derek and I do, and Bob was writing down all the movies we were talking about to go see later. The dinner was a great unofficial close to our stay in Hangzhou, but the night was not over. We all went back to William's house to play guitar hero and to meet his family. It was the girls first time meeting Emma (Hu Xiao Ai) and they all fell in love with her! She is extremely cute and hilarious too. During Guitar Hero, she would get up and dance to the songs and hug William's leg during his guitar solo. We played for an hour and a half, and then we departed ways. I said bye to Bob and Ivan for the last time that night and I will miss them too much! It had been two years since I had seen them, and it could be even longer until I see them again so I really enjoyed this night. Tomorrow all of us and our host siblings are supposed to get together so I hope that works out, but for now I leave you all.

See you in a week!