Week 5 Pt. 2 - Weekend Adventures

Saturday (August 3)
Matthew's birthday was on this day, and his host family brought us KTV-ing. I got to witness Matthew's host mom and host brother, Sander, sing. Pretty interesting :)

Birthday boy

Alex's host sister was also there, so I tried my best to interact with her since she's incredibly shy towards everyone else. I'm not sure if I already mentioned this or not, but Alex's host sister is an EXO fan. And she somehow got my number and started texting me about them one day. I'm not kidding. It was so random too, but I'm always happy to meet another EXO fan ;3 In order to make her feel more comfortable, Alex and I tried getting her to sing EXO songs with me. We sang "What is Love" and "Wolf" (with Haley and Alex doing back-up for the "awooo" and "saranghaeyo" part haha). In the end, I was the only one who sang. Alex's host sister was too shy to sing, and she would always push the mic away. Oh wells. At least I can cross off singing to EXO at KTV, and they even played the original music videos!! Hahahahaha, the life of a fangirl.

Besides EXO songs, Haley, Matthew and I also rapped "Look At Me Now". We are boss at that song. Alex was staring at us the whole time, hehe. Surprised at my rapping skills! Whaaaat, haha. "Thrift Shop" also came out, but none of the Chinese host siblings knew the song...so the Americans sang it alone. My host sister rapped another Eminem song with Matthew. She has an interesting taste in music. Her two favorite artists are Avril Lavigne (apparently she's super popular in China) and Eminem. (Oh, funny story. I was discussing my host sister's artist preferences with Alex one day during class. While I was explaining to her how much she loves Eminem, Michelle butts in with "Me too! But I like skittles better". Alex and I had a good laugh about it after explaining to Michelle that we were talking about the rapper and not the candy).

The only person missing from the party was Michelle. She was supposed to come, but she got lost on the way to the KTV place. We called her and this was what she said, "I was on the bus to the KTV, but I got lost. But I ended up at a really nice mall now, so I don't think I'll be coming to your party." Oh gosh, you can never leave Michelle alone on the bus. She'll end up at a mall and buy millions and millions of socks.

After we finished KTV-ing, the party group headed back to Sander/Matthew's host and ate dinner. Sander's dad cooked so much food! And it was all so delicious too.

When dinner was over, it was time to open presents! Haley got Matthew these hideous shorts from Walmart, which you will all see in the pictures below. Sander's presents were the best of them all. He got Matthew a terabyte usb with all of his favorite Archer episodes (How can you even like that show Matthew?! It's so bad) , and three shirts. The first shirt was from Zhejiang University. The second shirt was the China flag in a shape of the Apple logo. The last shirt was definitely the best. Matthew has this nickname that was given to him by his AP Calc class, I believe? And the nickname is "Foldonium." The last shirt is a customized shirt with a picture of the Baidu search engine. In the search bar, "Foldonium" is typed in and all of these cute search results show up underneath. It was a really cute gift. The moment Matthew saw the shirt, he was so shocked...and it was just so emotional. Such a heartfelt moment between him and his host brother. Sander started crying in the middle of all of this. Alex and I started crying, too, as a result of seeing him cry. It was really touching ;___;

Sander and Matthew hugging

Aww, group hug. Bonding time between the Americans and our host siblings. 

We went park dancing again after this. All of us. We even joined in a dance with these old ladies -- you join hands and run around in a circle together. It's way more fun than it sounds :) Matthew even got all of the Chinese host sisters to tango with him: Nancy (Haley's host sister), Estella (my host sister), and even Alex's host sister (who is extremely shy).

By the time we left, it was already 10 pm (NSLI-Y's curfew, whoops). My host sister had a fun time though, which I was happy about. I was afraid she would be uncomfortable during the whole party. But she participated in a lot of the activities!

I honestly wanted so badly to sleep, but I knew I had to work on my final project first, or else I would never finish. And it was due on Monday. Yikes! Don't procrastinate like I did. My host parents were gracious enough to stay up with me and help me with my presentation. I did mine on Chinese park dancing. I am forever grateful for my host parents. They're seriously the best ;___; My host sister was falling asleep...and I saw her post about it on QQ (too bad I can't get on QQ anymore l o l. It logged me out because of inactivity and I don't remember my password anymore, so I'm screwed)

Sunday (August 4)
I don't know why, but I was extremely moody that day. I spent the whole morning eating ice cream while working on my Chinese presentation.

There's a banana in the middle of the ice cream bar!

Evening was spent with my host family. They took me out to see the Grand Canal, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site like West Lake. The Canal connects all the way from Beijing, with over 18 cities along its bank. It's supposedly the longest man-made waterway in the world!

We walked around for an hour or two, but everything was closed (all of the museums - fan, knife, umbrella, etc) because we got there so late. I wanted to leave at this point. I know I should have enjoyed it more, but it was so humid and I felt so sticky. Plus, my shoes and socks were soaked by the rain puddles on the floor. I had to throw my socks away before getting into my host dad's car. I was just really irritated and did not want to see anymore of the canal.

Because my shoes were ruined by the rain, my host family brought me the shoe mall that Alex, Michelle and I went to before. It was close to closing time, so we ran inside the mall as fast as we could. We walked around for a bit, but there was nothing I liked. Chinese shoes are a bit...weird. When it was five minutes to closing, I got so desperate that I bought the first pair of flats I found. To say the least, it was hideous. But my host mom and sister thought it was cute lol. It had ears and eyes resembling a pig. I needed new shoes though, and it was only $4...so it was the best I could find. Plus, staying in my old flats was not an option. The water made it smell so bad. After I payed for the pig flats, I started browsing the store next to it for fun. I found this really cute pair of flats with blue stripes on it. I bought it on an impulse because it was so cute, and I'm really glad I did. It was only $5, and I wear it almost everywhere I go here in Hawaii. Unlike my old flats, this new one is so comfy, so bonus points!

Once my host sister and I bought our shoes, we drove over to this super nice restaurant. It was booked out, so we walked over to another one.

My host family kept ordering me so much food. They bought around five to six plates of Hangzhou cuisine, including sweet-and-sour fish, soup, pumpkin crisps (SO GOOD omg), and many more. It was all so delicious. I wanted to finish everything, but my belly was about to burst. They also kept ordering more and more juice for me. The juice in Hangzhou (or just China in general) is really fresh. My host dad ordered watermelon and cantaloupe juice, and it came straight from the fruit. You could taste the pulp and everything, which is why it wasn't as sweet...but that's just because it's the fruit juice itself with no preservatives or corn syrup. I felt so bad because they just kept ordering stuff for me, and it was all so expensive ;___; I wish I could've finished everything, but there was just too much. I hate wasting food. 

My host parents saw how much I liked eating the duck eggs/thousand year-old eggs and the duck blood (brown things)  in the soup that they bought and made it for me to eat during the next couple of dinners. They are too nice to me.

The best part about the restaurant was its restroom. The sink looked really fancy, and there were western toilets!! That's how you can tell if the restaurant is fancy and expensive or not...it's if there is a western toilet. This was my first time seeing a western toilet in a public place, so I got kind of excited.

After eating all of that good food, we ventured out into the square nearby to walk off all of the weight we just gained. The park we went to was so pretty. You could see little kids roller skating and blowing bubbles around this gigantic field of lights, and there were also people dancing nearby!

When I came home, I had to work on my presentation again because it was due the next day. I think I finished around 12:30 a.m or so. While working on my presentation, I got really sad. It finally hit me that I had only one week left in Hangzhou. I honestly didn't want to leave, haha.

Week 5 in Hangzhou Pt. 1

Hello all! I'm finally back after a hectic fall semester. Time literally flies by so fast -- I'll be finishing up senior year in less than five months! So so excited :) But enough rambling, the main point of this post is to keep track of what I did during my 5th week in Hangzhou. I'll be putting week 5 and week 6 in different posts because there is a lot to talk about.

I am actually super thankful that I blogged while I was in China. Why? Well, it's been almost five months since I left Hangzhou, and my memory is beginning to get a bit hazy. I've been hesitating to blog about my last few weeks in Hangzhou because I can't remember a lot of things. But thank god I took pictures, and my phone tells me exactly when they were taken. Hooray for modern technology! I also have my trusty Chinese school schedule to help me as well. Better to update now than never, so that I'll have something to look back on years from now.

Tuesday (July 30)

The most memorable thing I can remember from that day was my bus ride home. To start, instead of taking only 30 minutes, I ended up riding the bus for a whole two hours. Why? Being the idiotic person that I am, I wondered what would happen if I stayed on the bus past my bus stop. Naturally, I thought the bus would make a complete circle around the city. I mean, I take the 303 to school and back home (using two different bus stops though). They must be on the same bus route (because it's the same bus, duh)! But no, I was wrong. It was on the same bus route, but I had to "transfer" buses (and waste bus fare). 

At first, I was a bit hesitant to stay on the bus. I didn't know where the next bus stop was nor how long it would take to get there. Being the person that I am, however, I let my curious instincts take over the situation and decided to stay on the bus. Stupid mistake. The next bus stop was all the way across the bridge from my house (I really should have listened to my host mom. She wasn't kidding when she said that if I missed my bus stop, I would have a hard time getting home -- walking is definitely not an option). As the bus kept moving, the scenery started changing as well. It literally went from city to country lol. Less houses and more dirt/farmland. I had no idea where I was going, but of course, I wasn't too fazed because I THOUGHT the bus was going to turn around. I stayed on the bus for another hour until it came down to the last stop -- the bus station. At this point, no one else was on the bus except for me and the bus driver. Being that this was the last stop, I had to get off. And where was this bus stop? It was in the middle of NOWHERE. It looked really sketchy too. There was nothing but dirt, grass and trash. And the bus driver left me...so I was all alone. Scared out of my mind, I phoned my host mom. She freaked out for a bit, but told me to just get on the next bus back into the city. I took her advice and waited for 10 minutes. Finally, the bus driver came out from his resting area and started the same bus again. And it was a different bus driver too! Thank gosh. I don't think I could deal with the embarrassment if it had been the same bus driver. How could I explain to him that I was on the bus again? Especially after I made it seem that I had somewhere to go after I stepped off the bus, haha. Anyways, I went back on the bus and rode for another hour or so before finally reaching my apartment. 

I got home later than I originally wanted to, but I guess that's partially my fault. At least I now know where the bus goes to after my bus stop. And now I know you have to transfer buses because there are two main bus stations for the 303 bus -- the one across from Huanglong Stadium and the one in the middle of nowhere. I will definitely keep that in mind if I ever decide to take the bus in Hangzhou again. Also, I got a cheap tour around part of Hangzhou (even though I saw mostly grass and construction), so I guess it wasn't too bad. Bus adventures are always fun in foreign countries, am I right?

Wednesday (July 31)

Field trip to Leifeng Pagoda! It was extremely windy at the top of Leifeng, but the wind felt so nice after all of the heat we had been experiencing. I think I saw lightning strike maybe about 4 times from up there? And thunder kept roaring every 30 minutes or so. It was frightening, yet fascinating. It looked like it was about to rain, but the rain didn't come. There were only grey clouds everywhere. Regardless, the view was still really pretty! I could see over West Lake and all of the mountains surrounding it.

Credit to Angelo for this last photo!

When I came home, I did a little bit of online shopping ;) I literally spent 4 hours searching Taobao -- one of the greatest shopping sites known to man-kind. I bought so much stuff (2 dresses, tons of K-pop stuff for my friends, two TonyMoly cooling sticks for my eyes, a backpack, a bunch of hair ties and bows, etc) and it only came out $40. And shipping is great too. It came about 3 days later! If only things would ship that fast to Hawaii... If anyone knows any good Taobao agents, holla at me! I  miss shopping on Taobao so much. Ebay just doesn't even compare.

At around 7 pm, the sky got really dark. Thunder started pounding across the city and there were consecutive lightning strikes. Looking out of the window, I was incredibly scared for my life, haha. It rains and thunders in Hawaii, but never this hard. I didn't  think thunder could even get this loud and powerful. It felt like the source of the thunder and lightning strike was right outside my apartment window. Apparently this was a man-made/artificial rainfall, though? Because it got so hot over the summer, the Chinese government resorted to shooting weather missiles into the sky, causing rain to fall. That is some serious business. It was so hot that rain had to be CREATED. Crazy.

Friday (August 2)
5th Friday! This meant it was time for another 友谊 (friendship) activity with the host siblings. And what was the fun activity this time around? Majiang/Mahjong! Woo! I didn't know how to play Mahjong (and I still don't), so I just watched the host siblings play with Francesca and the other NSLI-Y kids on my table. Francesca tried teaching me, but I don't think that turned out so well. I just came out more confused than before.

cr: Angelo

After mahjong, the Panda Pack (Haley, Michelle, Alex, and I) wanted to go back to the mall by Michelle's place and buy some food. I asked my host sister to come along, but my host mom said no. :/

Ugh, so the noodles guy really pissed us off that day. After buying our food, the workers in the noodle shop made us sit in their shop. We wanted the noodles to go, but they had already put our food down on the table. After enjoying our noodles and eating some meat-on-a-stick, we wanted to leave. But we ran into some problems. Knowing that we were foreigners, the workers tried ripping us off. They made a huge scene about us not paying them for our meal, even though we did pay for it! We paid for our food right after we received it. We kept arguing and arguing over it, but in the end, we just gave up. It was no use trying to argue with them because what could we do? Our Chinese was not good enough to call them out for cheating us out of our money. And I know for a fact they intentionally ripped us off because they kept asking each other where we were from. And one of them kept repeating "美国! 美国! 美国!" I hope they know that we could actually understand them...ugh. Even though we had to fork over another 24 yuan (which doesn't seem like much because it's equivalent to about $4), that amount goes a long way in China, seriously. So pissed. We all hypothesized that this is the reason why Chinese people are so cheap LOL. I'm kidding. But here we were, sulking over losing $4. They even charged us again for the water. I will get you back darn noodle guys! You better watch your backs >:(

After losing our heads about getting ripped off, we decided it was time to leave. No more business for the noodle guys from us! ...Even if your noodles were pretty darn good too! We don't give business to people who rip us off, pfft.

On the way to Sander's house, Michelle was starting to get riled up. First time I've ever seen her like this. "WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST DRIVE ON THE ROAD?!?!" Michelle screamed as the scooters and motorbikes whizzed next to us,  taking up the sidewalk we were on. Her outburst was actually pretty hilarious. Oh Michelle. What would we do without you?

Arriving at Sander's house, we found out that Matthew and Sander weren't there. They were still at the Thai restaurant with Rachel. Thinking they were going to come back real soon, Haley, Michelle and I decided to wait it out in Sander's room. Sander's dad came in to keep us company, but he just kept asking us questions about school and SATs. Haley and I just looked at each other like "noooo, please not this talk again." Let me just say that this talk went on for another 2-3 hours. By the time Sander and Matthew came back, the three of us were done. We just wanted to go home. Michelle left first, while Haley and I walked around the streets nearby Sander's house. We got ourselves a Strawberry ice drink before calling a taxi to take us home. The first taxi that stopped for us looked really sketchy. It was so sketchy that Haley and I did not want to take it at all...so we ran away and hid behind these two black cars. LOL. After 5 minutes of hiding, we came out again and saw that the same taxi was still there. Two other people wanted to get into the taxi, but the taxi driver kept insisting that Haley and I were there first. We didn't want to tell him that we didn't want to get in though, so we just kept standing there...until another taxi cab came. And this one looked more legit! We ran into the second taxi cab as fast as we could and had him drive away before the other taxi driver could call us back. 

I'm Alive!

I realize it's been a while since I've posted (almost 3 months!), and I know I haven't posted about my last week in Hangzhou yet. Things just got really hectic after landing back on the islands, especially with school starting the day after I returned. I promise I will get those posts/pictures up by the end of 2013. I already have them up on Facebook, but I might as well share it with the rest of the internet...just in case some prospective NSLI-Y applicants happen to stumble upon my blog (c'mon, pictures are the best). It might take a while to write, since my memory is kind of hazy at the moment. I do, however, have a lot of stories to share :) since the last week was filled with tons of activities and events.

Unfortunately, I chose not to apply for the year program. Summer in Hangzhou was definitely fun, but I don't think the year program is right for me. I'll be back in China during college :) Good luck to everyone applying, though! I did some PR at my school and managed to get my 5 little juniors to apply for the program(; (3 for Korea, 1 for China, and 1 for Russia). Hoping them and all of you the best of luck!

I'll be back in December with stories from the last week of my trip, which includes Matthew's birthday, getting ripped off for noodles, visiting a night market, hanging out on the roof of Sander's house, graduation, and many more!

Until next time,
Christine

Some pictures before I go? 

Getting my haircut at some sketchy barbershop!

Making jiaozi

In front of West Lake. Isn't it pretty?

After Tai Chi back in Week 1

I basically stole these photos from Angelo's collection of 20304333 China photos....and I might've taken some from Michelle and Alex as well, hehe.

Goodbye Hangzhou!

I apologize for not updating within the last week. I wanted to enjoy as much of Hangzhou as I could before I left. Right now, I am sitting in a hotel room in Chicago by myself. At this time, some of the NSLI-Y kids have already reached their respective states, while others are probably on their connecting flight back home right now. My flight back to Hawaii isn't until 10 a.m. tomorrow, so I figured I'd give a short update now. A more in-depth account of the past 2 weeks will come within the next week or so while the memory is still fresh in my mind. More pictures will also come as well, since I can access Blogspot now!

Today was just...emotional. Many tears were shed and many hugs were given. I miss Hangzhou and China so much right now. I miss my host family, teachers, friends, host institution, Chinese ice cream, Chinese buses, and so much more. Don't get me wrong...I am excited to go back home and see my family/friends...but six weeks is just way too short. If only the trip was a little longer...

But this won't be the last time I will be in China. I promised my family and friends back in Hangzhou that I will come back one day, and I intend to keep that promise (Sander even said: "You know you'll always be welcomed in my house"). I will miss (I already do) everyone from the trip, but I know we'll all see each other again in the future(: (LA reunion next year, wooo!)

Until next time,
Christine

More Pictures

Here are some pictures I've taken over the last 5 weeks.

Last picture was from PDO Day 2