October 6th

October 6th was our last day of school in China EVER. I was really sad, but we still managed to have fun. In music class, we learned a song from the beijing opera. Also, we were informed that there are 5 tones in the Chinese musical scale. I thought that was interesting since we have 7.

Afterwards we went to an English class. This class was very unique because they didn't have desks. I'm guessing maybe it was two classes combined because the students were all squishe together. And instead of answering questions about China, we played musical chairs! In chinese, they call it take a seat. We mixed American students and Chinese students, but the American students always won. I came in third for one game. It was great fun.

In Chinese class we watched a movie called Raise the Red Lantern. It's a chinese movie but it had English subtitiles. I thought it was very interesting. We only saw the first half, but then today I finished the movie on my own. I found the ending very depressing. The link to the movie if you have 124 spare minutes is http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_xMTMxNjQ4NzY=.html

It is set in a very famous ancient house that was used by rich people in ancient times. I thought that the music in the movie was very good. The movie is about a 19 year old woman who is a student at college in the tang dynasty maybe for 6 months until her father dies. Then she has to come home and her mother gets her to marry a rich man. Problem is, the man already has 3 wives, so she will be the 4th. The plot revolves around all the drama of the four women trying to get the master to spend the night with him and they end up doing some pretty vicious things to each other, It's not a fast paced movie but I found it very interesting. I just didn't like the ending.

At cooking class we learned how to make chicken wings in a good sauce that kind of tastes like spaghetti'os. It was delicious.

Then instead of going out to Peking duck our plans changed a little and we found out that there was a farewell dinner planned for us. So we went out to a hotpot restaurant and everyone that was involved with the exchange program came. It was really fun. The tables had hotpot but around the pot there was a griddle so we could fry food too. It was really cool. And instead of having our food ordered for us there was a buffet of all the stuff we could get. Bethnay had fish head. Also I saw what a fresh uncooked shrimp really looks like for the first time. And we had soybean icecream. It's actually pretty good. The president and Vice President were there, and they made speeches. So did Mr.Nelson, and he gave the school a gift of a picture of all the students involved in the program and he had that framed with all of our signatures. Dinner was great fun and it was probabally one of my favorite restaurants.