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.

We're Cheerleaders Now.

(Nik)

I woke up very excited for school. My host mother had set out an early morning banquet of dumplings, fruits, and soft-boiled eggs to fuel the academic pursuits she assumed would lay head for Charlie (my host bro) and me. While I'm sure Charlie had a feichang intellectual day, my education took a rather different direction.

Switching Gears

(Lindsay)

“There are a number of teachers here at Hangzhou who can forecast the weather by touching the walls of the school.” With this, William, the teacher who will be traveling to Dover in May, ran his hand along the tiles of the corridor wall, then turned to show me his wet palm. Sure enough, last night it poured. Buckets. And thundered with lightning and hail. This morning, everything was wet, inside and out. The corridors of the school buildings are arcades, open to the elements, and the floors everywhere are mopped regularly to clean away the dirt tracked in from the street. Since arriving in Hangzhou I’ve been told by many that this is the rainy season and that I should be ready for a downpour at any time. So far, it has rained heavily only at night, and I’ve been able to ride my bike to school each morning. I am getting accustomed to the dampness; fond of it actually, for the way it seems to bring out the songbirds.

A Big Welcome from Hangzhou

(Abby)

Today started off with a bang when my water bottle rolled off of the top bunk of the night train and woke everyone up at 7 am. Our 15-hour overnight train ride was coming to an end and we were going to arrive in Hangzhou in an hour and forty minutes. Despite the limited space and luggage, all of us managed to put ourselves together quite nicely, if I do say so myself.

At the train station, three teachers from Hangzhou High School met and took us to the school. The taxi ride through the city was amazing. I honestly didn’t expect Hangzhou to be as nice as it really is. New buildings and many types of trees are everywhere and the city itself has a safe and interesting atmosphere. As we drove up to the school, a sign was posted on their electronic screen welcoming “the friends of Dover-Sherborn High School”. Our homestay siblings met us next with beautiful flowers at the front steps. My host sisters names are Rich, my host sibling for the first two weeks, and Maggie, my second.

Bye Bye Beijing

(Ola)

We woke up with some mixed feelings today. It’s our last day in Beijing, which means our last day of traveling. The traveling portion of this exchange has been amazing and although we’d like to continue, we’re also very tired and are looking forward to settling down. After getting used to constantly traveling, we’ll now have to get used to living with host families we’ve never met before and attending Hangzhou High School.

How to Use a Small Child As a Weapon

(Nik)

It was a busy day to say the least: the Great Wall, a Cloisonné factory, the Ming Sacred Way, and a Gongfu performance. Kelly got us moving bright and early to drive for about one and a half hours to Mutianyu, a popular place to climb the wall.

As walls go, the Great Wall is pretty great. At its greatest length, it was about 10,000 kilometers long, and stretches from the Pacific Ocean north of Beijing and out across the parched northern plains. National walls were first constructed in quantity during the Warring States period in the 300s BC, and after Qinshihuang unified China, he linked up some previously-build walls to form the first stage of the Great Wall to halt nomads who were raiding food from Northern and Western farmers. It was further expanded by the Han and Ming Emperors.

Different Strokes

(Lindsay)

At first I thought the music was piped throughout the grounds, but as we walked along the open-air Long Corridor of Beijing’s Summer Palace, the tune became louder and more distinct, a drum, definitely, a saxophone and an erhu, and many voices in unison. It was about 9:00 in the morning. Who practices at 9:00 on a Saturday morning? I asked Kelly, our guide. “Come see,” she said, and we left the corridor, ascended some granite stairs around a bend of bushes and there they were, hundreds of older men and women, holding music or clustered around music stands, singing. Not just singing, but joyously singing a folk tune about Beijing. Their enthusiasm was overflowing. Many threw their hands in the air in motion with the music, and one woman even danced, while clutching a piece of embroidered green cloth in each hand to emphasize the festive nature of the song. They all finished the first song with a flourish and began another, this time one about swallows. I asked Kelly if this was a holiday. No, it was not a holiday. Did they just sing on weekends? No. “They come here every day. They are retired. They just come here to sing.”