Final Week in Hangzhou Pt. 2

Wednesday (August 7) 
We visited a Chinese tea museum after classes today. There wasn't much to look at, but I thought it was still okay.

Making tea, hahahaha

PC: Angelo Perez

After our group trip to the tea museum, Sander, Haley, Michelle, Matthew and I took a taxi to a building nearby my bus station. It was supposedly a place where Chinese kids come to take English classes to prepare for the TOEFL and SATs. Apparently, Sander had taken us to an "English Corner" that he organized and wanted us to participate in. Speaking English to Chinese teens? Well, that's kinda counterproductive towards our goal of Chinese fluency, but this was the least we could do for Sander after all that he has done for us.

We didn't do much conversing...it was actually very awkward. One of the Chinese guys spent most of his time hitting on Michelle, uhhh. But it seems as if most of them there wanted to go to Stanford, Harvard, etc. I have high hopes for them!

While I was at the "English Corner," I kind of lost track of time and came home late for dinner --- around 7 p.m. I felt so bad, because my host family was waiting for me to come home before having dinner ;____; I apologized over and over again, but they assured me that it was okay. The bus ride home was really relaxing. I've never been on the bus this late before, so I just sat and stared outside at the neon lights with my earphones on.

Thursday (August 8)

Classes were very chill today. Since our final exams were taking place the next day, we spent most of class reviewing and taking pictures for memories.

张老师的课

李老师的课

At lunch, Alex and I walked over to our favorite smoothie and shave ice place!! We bought our drinks there, went next door to buy a bowl of noodles for only $2, and made our way back to the smoothie place to eat. I can not get enough of this store.

After lunch, the whole group had a re-entry workshop administered by D and Sage. I don't remember too much about the re-entry workshop, but Sage did show us videos of her year in Beijing with NSLI-Y! We also got to see videos of her dance crew back in Beijing. Sage is soooo good at dancing. Seriously, so amazing. To top it all off, Sage bought us cream puffs and mini ice cream cones.

The ice cream cone was so tiny (it was really cute!)

When the workshop was over, Haley, Nancy (Haley's host sister), Michelle, Riona (Michelle's host sister), Matthew, Sander (Matthew's host brother), Estella (my host sister), and I took a bus to the rich part of Hangzhou to sell paper flowers for charity event. I later found out that this rich part of town included Wulin Street. And the mall we were selling paper flowers at was the same one we visited back on July 4th --- with the museum, Starbucks, and Paris Baguette. 

Walking to the mall

I still can not believe Nancy and Riona made all of those paper flowers. There was a lot! I want to say that we did a pretty good job of selling them, but it was tough. Not a lot of people wanted to buy them. Matthew was the most successful out of all of us. His tactic was to go into an elevator full of Chinese women and persuade them to buy a rose or two. He did this about 10 times, and actually sold quite a bit. LOL, and we all made fun of him for it at first......who knew...

Nancy and Riona's classmates helping out with the fundraiser

Who said Chinese people are short?!