farewell festivities

summer program in shanghai: officially over!

it's unbelievable. last night we had a closing ceremony, dinner, and evening cruise on the huangpu river. everything was wonderful... the ceremony wasn't too long, we went to a classy restaurant, the food was delicious as always, and the river cruise was a blast because we were encouraged to BYOB/bring plenty for our teachers too! on top of it all, i simply enjoyed the company of my peers so much. this is a pretty 'motley crue,' as mishwar and i have often said. none of us seem to have much in common. but our 8 weeks here were amazingly conflict-free... and we have definitely grown close even though most of us would deny it! bottom line: fun night.

here's a picture at the restaurant - ahhhh a fabulous feast. i think my favorite things were candied dates, fungus-sesame oil salad, mouth-numbing hot frog, fried tofu with sweet sauce, steamed fish, chinese yam, and coconut jelly dessert. sue and yanan were going on about how americans eat so little... aiya! compared to this array, maybe they were right. but we are still the fat country. boo.

after dinner, we were taken by bus to the huangpu dock and boarded our vessel! it was a gorgeous, clear night (so lucky) because it had monsooned all morning and blown all the pollution out for the time being. here's a picture of the cityscape before we got going... because everything after that is quite blurry.

on the boat ride, we snapped lots of pictures, drank, joked around, presented presents to our teachers, and just enjoyed the evening. my class has two morning teachers and one afternoon teacher. we gave each of them a different tea thermos with a cute design. a bottle or cup in chinese is "yi beizi"一杯子 (1st tone). but "forever" is "yi beizi" 一辈子 (4th tone). so, you can give a bottle as a present to represent remaining friends forever, or recognize that someone will have impacted your life forever! awww. shi laoshi is the guy in the blue... with 6 pretty american girls as his class? lucky guy.

on a more lighthearted note, we also presented our teachers with plenty of bacardi breezers (china's smirnoff ice, wahoo!) here, it's 100% kosher to drink with your teachers as soon as the final exam is over. i'm not sure if that custom is worth the excessive difficulty of classes and strictness of teachers here... but that's how they do it. being american students, we couldn't help but find it hilarious to be drinking on a boat with our zhongwen laoshimen. i shared another specialty from home with sue estella yanan: a bottle of california white wine, muaha! :)

so that was friday. today, sue yanan sarah and i casually went for an hour of karaoke at like 9:30 am. that's another fascinating thing about china... kids go do karaoke completely sober. just for kicks. incredible. i grabbed a starbucks drink before we went in, my first since i arrived in china. i think starbucks is the only place i have discovered so far that is more expensive in chinaaaaa than it is at home! 4.5 USD for a frappucino. ick. will not be going back (but it was amazing. coffee jelly in a frap? best asian/american fusion ever). at karaoke, sarah and i put on an enrique inglesias marathon, and were highly impressed by sue and yanan's english skills when it comes to singing beatles tunes.

i spent the entire afternoon after that PACKING: picking the things i will take on my 16 day trip and stuffing the rest back into my suitcase to ship to beijing on monday. please god, may my things arrive safely. now i think i will go for a run (for once, the weather is mildly forgiving; plus i am working on my lung capacity for tibet! ha) and then go out to dinner with the peeps. most of us leave monday, even tho the program is finished (there is a group bus to the airport, very convenient 很方便！) zaijian.