"Til Next Time"...

 (Cassie)

April already! Happy April Fools Day everyone.  Before I get into my blog, I just want to say that unlike St. Patrick's Day the Chinese do celebrate this holiday.  I was tricked! But more about that later.

This morning, Jiawen and I began our day a rather unusual breakfast.  I'd mentioned to my family (haven't learned my lesson about that yet) that I miss peanut butter, so yesterday Jiawen and I went to the store to pick up a jar of Skippy and a loaf of bread.  So breakfast was half a peanut butter sandwich, half a sweetened condensed milk sandwich (which is better than it sounds), and half a ketchup sandwich (I gave that half to Jiawen).  Jiawen eats more slowly than I do, so we walked out the door while she was still munching her condiment sandwich.  It was suspiciously overcast (although the forecast said clear skies) so I made sure to grab my umbrella.  And sure enough, it began to rain around 9.  The weather forecasts are remarkably inaccurate here.  At least they're consistent!

My first class of the day was Chinese along with the rest of the DS delegation.  For the first half of the class we read a Chinese version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" called "Long Lai Le" (a wolf is coming).  By the time we'd finished we could manage to read through the whole story without pinyin...I was pretty proud of this achievement as there were many new words.  During the second half of the class we worked with Qiu Laoshi (our Chinese teacher) and Derek to translate our speeches for the banquet.  We owe them...we certainly couldn't have managed it and if we'd tried it would've sounded like a mess.  They both took our speeches with them at the end of the class, and even finished them before the end of the day.  Talk about awesome!  After Chinese we had calligraphy.  As we've had so few classes (this was only our third) the teacher told us we should continue to practice and he would write out some Chinese sayings for us so that we could take them home with us.  The writing was beautiful.  Mine said that "A good person loves others".  He even completed them with his official seal. 

As Liam was sick today, Michelle (another Hanggao senior applying to American schools that we know) stepped in and acted as translator for us.  She and a friend came to lunch with us.  By this time it was pouring, so we didn't have English corner; however, we were joined by some of our friends in our lunch room.  One Year 2 student of Alaina's even gave her a short children's book (which was adorable) that she'd translated herself.  Before the end of lunch we took a field trip to the observatory, which houses the school's ginormous (the biggest in Hangzhou) telescope and is where the astronomy club meets.  Although we couldn't use the telescope in the rain the view from the observatory was still stunning.  It's on the fifth story and is higher than any of the other school buildings.  We stayed and chatted with some of the students in the observatory for a bit until the bell rang. I headed back to meet Jiawen at her classroom. 

I stayed with her for two periods (Chinese and history).  She regaled me with a longwinded explanation of her terrible math test that morning, and I did KenKen puzzles (math puzzles similar to sudoku but with arithmetic).  Then at three I went to meet everyone at the English office.  Helen had offered to take us suitcase shopping as all of our bags are no longer be under the fifty pound weight limit for flying (lots of gifts).  The place we went to was an indoor labyrinth of small peddlers selling everything from books to fake flowers.  I'm very glad we didn't attempt to go on our own because A) we would have gotten very lost and B) as soon as any of the vendors saw us they jacked up their prices.  We all managed to find bags that were at a good price as Helen helped us bargain.  Bags in hand, we then went back to Sandy's apartment to eat cookies (yum!) and get all of our gifts for teachers and administration wrapped.  When 4:45 rolled around I went back to meet Jiawen at school.  She'd and her classmates had just come from an awards ceremony in which students received accolades for academics and outstanding performance in a teenage organization run by the goverment.  This organization is called Gong Qing Tuan - it's name is the China Communist Youth League in English.  Jiawen received an award for playing a particularly good role in this organization.  I'm not sure exactly what her role in it is, but she says she enjoys it.  On our way out of the school a Year 2 student (who later introduced herself as Lynn) offered me a "biscuit".  Being gullible, I was slightly surprised but I smiled and took it.  I opened the wrapper to eat it as she watched and saw...a piece of green chalk.  I ended up a bit embarrassed and with green chalk all over my hands, but we laughed and I could tell it made Lynn really happy that she'd managed to pull off her trick, so I really didn't mind it.  Plus, Jiawen ran to another friend and got to reuse Lynn's trick. 

After this we made our way home.  Her father came to pick us up so that we wouldn't have to walk through the rain.  We had a tasty dinner of mushrooms, along with a dish potatoes, carrots, and beef, congealed duck blood and tofu soup, stir-fried noodles, and bokchoy greens.  After dinner, Jiawen, Jiaming (her cousin), and I took a walk.  I ended up going to buy lollipops for my class as tomorrow is my last day of class at Hangzhou.  When we got back I showed Jiawen's family all of my pictures and they in turn showed me pictures of their vacation to Xinjiang and Beijing two years ago.  It was a lot of fun. 

I can't get over the fact that we leave in five days!  As I've said before, our time here has flown by!  I'm really going to miss the people and culture of Hangzhou when I leave.  This is my second to last blog, so I'll be saying "'til next time" for the last time today. I'll talk to you after we've left Hangzhou! 'Til next time...