Handwriting and Medicine: Angry Confuigi Style

Elizabeth (Liz)

Quote of the day

         
           What's the character for sesame?
                                                    - Iona

Greetings everyone!

For those of you who didn't know I was sick last week (which yes totally sucked because I legitimately sounded like Beloved, ugh!) But it did give me a chance to try some weird medicine, that Caroline's mom bought for me (which was SO sweet of her!!!). First was this weird flower paste called Chuan Bei Pipa Gao. It came in a jar and was almost as thick as molasses but definitely did not taste like it. It honestly worked though, I could feel it coating my sore throat and soothing it. The other weird thing I tried was pear with rock sugar. This is honestly genius because it worked, the first day I did this I did not cough nearly as much. It in a way was like natural cough syrup. I was very sweet and warm and I wasn't sure if it was gonna do anything but boy was I surprised. This too decreased my coughing, which was nice. But now I am better so I don't need any more medicine, which is also quite nice.

Green Eggs and Ham, Meet Your Competition

Kelby

As you may know, the Sisterhood has finally arrived in Hangzhou! But does that mean we are no longer busy? No. No it does not.

So far the food in Hangzhou has been nothing short of exemplary. We have definitely not been eating as much eggplant (which Mrs. Waterman and I love so much) but we have been trying many new kinds of food. Take yesterday, for example. I had 3 amazing opportunities to try the Hangzhou cuisine: once at our “Welcome Banquet” for lunch, another at our cooking class, and a third at dinner with my host family. Let’s start with the Welcome Banquet.

The Welcome Banquet comprises of many faculty members from the school, including the Vice Principal, a Dean of the institution, and two teachers involved in the program. The staff was responsible for ordering the meal, and one of the dishes in the meal was sweet lotus with sticky rice. This particular dish is a Hangzhou delicacy, and essentially tastes like rice and syrup (so basically syrup), which is absolutely delicious. From the Welcome Banquet we proceeded to our cooking class.

Hangzhou!

Iona

This was our first weekend in Hangzhou and the sisterhood (minus Liz since she was taking a sick day) met at the South Gate of Hanggao to hang out with Mr. William for the day! We finally learned that there was a difference when using Hanggao vs Hangzhou, Hanggao refers to the school and Hangzhou refers to the city; Hanggao is short for Hangzhou Gaozhong (Hangzhou High School)- so in English it’s a nickname for Hangzhou High School. The more you know!

Mr. William teaches English at the international high school, but was happy to show us around and took the three of us to Liying temple first thing in the morning. Liying temple was an amazing site with loads of running water and pretty stones and greenery everywhere, and people! So many people were coming to the top of the Liying garden to burn incense and to pray to the numerous statues. Everything was done in sets of three, and so we took three sticks of incense and bowed three times in the direction of whichever statue we chose to pray to.

Don't Miss the Photos!

Mr Viz
(blogmaster)

It's been great reading all the exciting posts and watching the VLOGs of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Silk Pajamas.  But if you haven't been clicking on the 2018 Photo Album link at the right, you've been missing tons of fantastic photos as well as some additional short videos!

Ms Waterman just posted quite a few new pictures of the first days at Hangzhou High School.  Go to the end of the Photo Album to see those.

2018 Photo Album