Hangzhou High School! (HangGao)

(Caitlin)

The last week has been, well, crazy. We arrived a little more than a week ago, and since then, we’ve all settled into a rhythm. Wake up early, have breakfast (which is delicious, by the way, but I’ll get to that later), and head out into the crazy traffic jam on our way to school. In the mornings, we all go to class with our host siblings first thing, for the first two classes. It’s kinda cool, seeing a class that I might have already taken at home, like physics, but in a different language. I can’t exactly understand what the teacher may be saying, but I can understand what’s on the board, so I can still pretty much follow along.

After that we head to room 209, our home base, so to speak, and we hang out for a little bit, playing some music, using the wifi, until our translator comes to find us for the day. Usually, our translator is Dee Dee or Cindy, two of the three girls who came to Dover-Sherborn last year. Kay, the third girl who came to DS, has a part-time job, so is usually too busy. On Tuesday, however, Cindy was sick, so a boy named Crowtis came to translate for us.

We went to our culture class for the day, which on Tuesday was woodworking. We were given a piece of paper and told to draw a design that we would like to see on a keychain, or other small trinket. We weren’t entirely sure what this was all about, but we drew the design, and then gave our drawings to the teacher. He scanned them into the computer, and then after a while we all went to another room filled with all these odd-looking machines and little wooden trinkets everywhere. The teacher turned the largest machine on, which turned out to be a wood-carving laser machine. We were told that we could look at it, but that we shouldn’t stare, but I’m pretty sure everyone caught themselves staring at some point, as the machine carved our drawings into thin pieces of wood. I ended up with a Derek Jeter jersey, Timmy made a guitar pick with music symbols on it, Max got a mini-Route 66 sign, and Dareus made a music note, which unfortunately broke when the teacher was drilling a hole in it for the key chain. It was a really cool class, and I really like what we ended up with.

After that we went to lunch, like always, where we met up with Ms. Lockrow, and after that we went English corner, from 12:30 to 1:15. It was our first really successful English corner, because no one had shown up to the ones on Monday and Friday. A whole bunch of students showed up this time, and it was really fun getting to talk to students we hadn’t talked to before that much.

After English corner ended, we went to room 209 to do some final preparations for our presentations that we would be giving later that afternoon. At around three o’clock, my host sister, Willow, came to pick me up at room 209, to bring me to her class. I then gave a 45-minute presentation on my family, my school, sports I play, really anything. The powerpoint presentation and video I had prepared lasted about fifteen minutes, and after that it was mostly questions about what American schools are like versus Chinese schools, what we do after school at home, things like that. The pictures of Cheerleading and a video of one of our performances from last year was well received, so I got a lot of questions about how we do stunts, what we cheer for, etc.

When I went back to my host family’s apartment later that day, my host mother had made another fantastic dinner (she is a really good cook), with bamboo and lotus root. Our first week in Hangzhou has been a success!