Home!

Daniel at Cory and Lara's party

Cory, Lara, and I. We both wore the same shirt on accident. It says "I hear you, but I don't understand" in Chinese!

Annie, me, and Patrick at Mr. Mai's.

Mr. Meng

Suzanne, a waitress at the Aloha Diner. She will be moving away this summer.

The teachers in my office. Mr. Zhou, Jane, me, and Teacher Wu.

Hey everyone! I made it home Tuesday morning at about 7am after a 30-some hour trip. I probably wouldn't have made it home in time if it wasn't for my friend Joe, who works for Delta Airlines. Kirk and I flew Delta from Los Angeles to Detroit, but our first two flights in China were on a Chinese airline. That airline messed up our baggage, and our flights were delayed. With those together, we had hardly any time to make our last flight. Fortunately, we had planned to hang out with Joe during our LA layover. Instead of hanging out, Joe spent the time helping us out. We were the last two on the plane before they closed the gate! Thanks a lot, Joe!

The last two weeks of my time in China were basically spent saying a lot of goodbyes. To my students, to teachers, to friends, to the other foreign teachers. It was nice to have our last week off which gave us more time to visit with so many people. Next school year will be the first time we will have lost some of our teammates. The first year, there were 5 of us (me, Kirk, Daniel, Cory, and Rebecca). This year we just added Mandi. Next year, Cory and Daniel will stay in California. We'll have two new teammates. It'll be really strange to not have them with us next year!

A lot happened these past few weeks, but here's a quick list along with some pictures above.

- I went to a goodbye party for Cory and Lara (Lara is his Chinese wife). They will stay in America and get their Master's degrees.

- We said goodbye to a lot of friends at Mr. Mai's. One of my closest Chinese friends (Patrick) is moving to Nanjing, a city close to Shanghai. Hopefully, we'll be able to see him a few times next year.

- One of the math teachers whose office is near mine had a goodbye lunch for me and the other teachers. Mr. Meng is a hilarious teacher who can't speak English very well, but he loves talking and teaching me Chinese!

- Rebecca, Mandi, and I went to dinner and had a very interesting conversation with a teacher at our school. This teacher is a member of a religion that is REALLY looked down upon in China (so much so that I can't even mention it on here). I'm glad I was finally able to learn more about this religion, as well as us share what we believe with her.

- Cory and Lara left a little too early for us to make one for them, but the other foreign teachers and I made a goodbye video for Daniel. It had a lot of interviews, funny skits, songs, etc. It was fun to make, but hard to hide it from Daniel while we made it!

- One of my students gave me a really cool gift before I left. She kept a record/journal of every lesson I taught their class along with some other things I did for the school! I know it was a lot of work for her, and I really appreciated it. It's something I'll be able to look back upon and remember this year.

- Wuhan had some flooding our last days there. So much so, that we had to walk home instead of take the bus one day. We had to walk in water that was knee-high for quite awhile. We also had to walk on a train bridge to avoid waist-high water. While we were on it, we were pretty close to getting run over! It was pretty crazy, but lots of fun too!

Well, I guess that's everything for now. I probably won't update this blog too much (if at all) over the summer, but it'll continue for Year 3 in August/September! I'm hoping to see as many of you as possible while I'm home! Have a great summer!