星期二：Today was the actual dragon boat festival, which is a memorial to an ancient patriotic poet who committed suicide for the greater good of China (not sure how) and then everyone went out and rowed dragon boats to try and find his body while simultaneously throwing the rice zongzi in the river to keep the fish from eating the poet’s body. Today everyone just eats zongzi, watches or participated in the boat races, and participated in a few other small traditions that can be found in temples like taking a drink of some famous yellow alcohol or trying to stand an egg on its end.
星期三：Today was our last day of morning tutoring so we had a little party to thank our three morning tutors who have put up with our often late and not yet awake selves. Then, after class, we had another party to thank our Wednesday personal tutors who spend two hours every week helping and hanging out with us. We ate a lot, exchanged gifts, and then all gave thank you speeches to our tutors before taking lots of pictures. After that party, we all headed over to Andrew’s house, which we all figured our was incredibly snazzy and now all want to live there, where we set up a surprise party for Jenny since it’s her birthday. We all hid under the table and waited for her to show up, though, in the end, we ended up scaring her kids more than anything, though it was still cute. We than all had Thai food, mainly because we misheard Kripa who wanted Taiwanese food and then all protested for Thai, cake, which was also for Mackenzie since it was also her birthday, and then sang KTV while almost crying because everyone kept singing sad goodbye songs. At the end we all found some air hockey tables in the basement and spent some time playing with Jenny’s kids. Overall it was a super fun day full of many parties and way too much cake.
(with my morning tutors)
(with Wednesday tutors)
(with Jenny and her daughter)
(all of us at the birthday party)
星期五：Today was the closing ceremony for the year which was both cool and sad, though mostly pretty sad. After our last class at Wenzao, we all headed over to the auditorium where we had all of our friends, tutors, teachers, host families, and all the important people from iEARN and Wenzao over to watch us essentially graduate. There were first speeches from all the important people and then we all had to make speeches which we all half cried through therefore completely messing up our Chinese, then we sang two songs as a little graduation performance, and then gave gifts to all of our host families; The families then surprised all of us with a really cute video where they recorded messages for all of us before we all took a bunch of pictures and then headed out for a group dinner together.
(group pic from the closing ceremony)
(another group pic)
(Mackenzie and I were matching)
(with both host families and my tutors)
(we all went to an aboriginal restaurant for dinner)
(group selfie)
(me and Kripa)
(another host family pic)
星期六：Today I went out to a nice brunch with my host mom and her friend before heading out to get some shave ice with Mackenzie and Becca. As per usual, we ended up running into Liam, Joey, and Pablo at the shave ice place because the practically live there at this point. Later in the day I also went out to the arena mall with my two tutots and a last get together. We had dinner, shopped around, and then sat down to talk when we ended up next to a cute grandpa who gave us lots of life advice and also spoke to me in English for about an hour before we slipped out and I headed home.
(with my tutors)
星期天：I went out to brunch again today, though this time with my host mom and host sisters, which was a lot of fun, though the breakfast place specialized in “Western” style brunch and I somehow ended up having a full chicken and vegetable plate for breakfast. Later in the day Kripa came over to check and make sure we had all of our stuff packed up and ready, and I then spent the rest of the day just hanging out with my host fam and playing with my little sister.