Saved by the Bell!

(Ola)

Dear readers, it has recently come to my attention that Ms. Alighieri and Ms. Viz have been encouraging their students to read our blogs and comment. Although the blog itself is blocked in China (why?!?), we receive email notifications informing us of your contributions. We are all very glad to hear from you and greatly appreciate you taking the time to read about our activities. Life at Hanggao is fun but if you'd like to hear about slightly more raucous and exciting adventures, we would highly recommend that you also check out older blog posts from the month when we were traveling. There, you shall find tales regarding "The Time I Flooded the Bathroom while Showering" (<-- this actually occurred more than once) as well as "The Time I Yakked in The Tour Van."

The Classroom

(Lindsay)

Rows of perfectly behaved, thoroughly attentive students ready to soak up anything you teach? That is a myth. As in many classes at DS, here at Hangzhou there are some students who are true scholars, many who want to learn and therefore apply themselves and one or two who cannot wait for the period to end. The classes are large—each numbers about 50 students—and it takes some time for everyone to settle down. One class took a little longer to start today, because at the beginning of this particular period, the school piped music into the classrooms to signal a time for the students to rest their eyes. I heard the music in classrooms down the hall, and as soon as it began, a girl in the class I was to teach jumped up to switch the music on in our classroom as well. Students took off their glasses and massaged their eyes in a uniform manner that clearly had been taught to them. I could tell that the music was about to end when they all opened their eyes, put their glasses back on and straightened in their seats. Some things in Hangzhou High School are still lockstep, but I am told that discipline is much more relaxed here now than it once was, and I believe it.

The Romantic Star Ferry Part Deux

(Nik)

Today was jam-packed; we visited a temple, wandered in the tea, and had our first views of West Lake. We started early, around 8 in the morning, to meet Rose, an English teacher here at Hanggao, friend of the Exchange, and universally renowned fashionista, our effervescent tour guide, Bobby, and Ezra, a young female student Lindsay invited to join us.

Dinner and a Show in Hangzhou

(Abby)

We're starting to get into a rhythm here in Hangzhou. Nik, Ola and I have completed a five-day school week with our host families, with whom we’ve become more or less comfortable living. I’ve become close to my host sister, Rich, because of her straightforward personality and her superb English skills. While her, as well as her classmate’s, English skills are great, they sometimes make it a hard to practice my Chinese because these students are so eager to practice their English with a native speaker. I’m learning to balance using English with them in return for Chinese lessons in return. My host parents are also using more Chinese with me by telling me what certain words mean in Chinglish, which I appreciate very much.

Duck!

(Lindsay)

On Sunday, Steven Fang, a student who came to DS last year, and his mother took me out for lunch. Not just any lunch, it was Peking Duck, such a delicacy that you want to stretch the repast for as long as possible to enjoy every bit. And it wasn’t just the duck; it was a performance and a class. A chef came in with the duck to carve it into even slices and then taught us the proper way to place the duck slices, along with onion, hoisin sauce, and cucumber onto a very thin pancake, about six inches in diameter, and wrap the whole into a roll to be eaten in two bites. This process is repeated until the duck is gone, and between pancakes you sample other dishes, such as the sweet Osmanthus soup, a crab and doufu ragout and several vegetables. We were in our own dining room in Yi Jia Xian, a high-end restaurant on Baochu Road here in Hangzhou. Our little salon had an anteroom, to which Steven returned from time to time to search the cupboard for whatever was needed, be it more serving spoons, bowls or napkins. The atmosphere was a hard-to-achieve and wonderful combination of elegance and coziness, an ambiance that requires time and subtlety. Subtlety was, it turned out, the order of the day.

Hangzhou Happenings

(Ola)

Now that we've been in Hangzhou for a few days, we are starting to get our bearings. In the mornings, I bike to school with my host sister. Although the roads are slightly calmer than those in Beijing or Xi'an, it's not by a lot. On our first day of biking, I faced what I thought was an immediate death at least 8 times during a 25 minute ride. I've come to realize that a public bus will never actually hit you, it will just pass you by a few centimeters. As for walking, the best method is to stick with the locals. What I usually do is I wait till I see a group of young adults and I just fall in step with them. There have been times when opposed to covertly following a couple across the street, I consider just linking arms with them or hopping on someone's back and being carried across.