[VLOG#29] West Lake 2

Iona

(Video only)

[VLOG#28] Sound and Light Show, West Lake

Iona

(Video only)

Road Trip

Kelby

Wow, three weeks left! Time really has flown by since we’ve gotten to Hangzhou. I guess that shows how much fun we’re having!

Speaking of fun, this past Sunday was a blast for me. My host mother and host brother took me to a beautiful scenic area two hours outside of Hangzhou. Our final destination was the “Thousand Islands”, which is a man made lake with a rich history. I’ll get to that in a minute. Any who, although we had a final destination the trip was quite spontaneous. On the way to the lake we pulled off the highway and drove into a small town to pick strawberries. After feathering three baskets of strawberries, we hopped back into the car and continued towards the lake.

When we arrived the lake was unlike anything I had ever seen: island upon island, mountain upon mountain, and all connected by a massive body of water. I asked Henry what the history of the lake was, and he brought me to a film which answered my question... well, sort of. The film was in Chinese. After seeing the animations and receiving an explanation from Henry, the lake was in fact made to provide electricity for the major cities and towns in the area. Unfortunately, creating the lake and building the dam entailed displacing a whole village of people (let alone a village that had been established for centuries). The village was located in a valley, so the dam flooded the valley and transformed mountain-tops into small islands. That explained so much. When kayaking, I was wondering why the “beach” of each island instantly turned into an abyss. Yet again, the Chinese have impressed me in such an extreme way.

Happy 18th Birthday in Hangzhou!

Iona

Ni hao! I was lucky enough to celebrate my eighteenth birthday in Hangzhou yesterday, and it was a quite a unique day! I felt loved and celebrated the entire day, from both my family in America but also my new family in China :).

I started off the day with a few birthday FaceTime calls and then at school, I got so many birthday wishes throughout the day. Students and teachers made an effort to communicate their birthday wishes which was so nice of them. After our classes in the morning, I went to the cafeteria with the Sisterhood to find that Mr. Bacon (our chef) had prepared a birthday meal for me! Yiran and Irene (our friends who are also our english translators) had set up balloons that spelled out “Happy Birthday” on the wall, and our host siblings came to eat with us, as well as the teachers that are involved in the exchange programme. Yiran and Irene bought me gifts, as did the teachers! I got an assortment of bookmarks, hair clips, earrings, and even a large tea cup. It was so thoughtful of everyone to have gotten me gifts. After lunch, we had gym class and it was so beautiful outside that the class went to be active in the good weather. I, however, was still recovering from sickness so I stayed out of the sun, and out of the extreme heat for the afternoon. After we finished school, Kelbs, Liz, Yiran, Mrs. Waterman and I walked back to Peter’s house, where Peter’s parents had come home early from work to cook me a birthday meal! It was so sweet of them and I had a great evening that was spent with great friends and great food. I got two birthday cakes! Two sets of wishes!

I had known that I was going to be passing my eighteenth birthday in China for a while now, and I am so excited about the story I now get to share. When I turned eighteen, I had been living in China as a result of being a student on my school’s exchange trip. How cool!

A Day Out in the Tea Hills

Ms Waterman
(teacher)

We spent Saturday (our second in Hangzhou) with Charlotte, another English teacher at Hanggao. To reach our two destinations, we drove through endless gorgeous hills and mountains covered in tea trees. It was such fun to see the gorgeous geometry of the trees planted in rows rising up into the hills, and since it is late March, there were dozens of workers among them harvesting tea leaves. Charlotte explained that the best tea during the year is the tea that is available before Tomb Sweeping Day (usually April 5 or 6). She also said that it is the most expensive tea of the year because the taste is supposed to be the purest. Maybe we will have a chance to taste some in the next week!

We went first to the Bamboo Lined Path where we saw huge forests of bamboo trees and green waterfalls. Kelby and I accidentally hiked a huge staircase up to a temple for the god of wealth. I say “accidentally” because we thought the temple was much closer than it turned out to be! It took us 30 minutes of intense stair climbing to reach the summit where we saw a green temple garden where a lot of people were eating a picnic lunch. We were glad that we had persevered through the tough climb because we were greeted by a cheerful sign announcing that “exercises and workouts are good for health and the most important thing is persistence”. We were grateful, though, to meet Liz and Charlotte down the mountain since that meant we were on the way to the Tea Museum.