Day 12: June 16, 2017

We started off the day with Starbucks, and I had my new favorite drink: Green Tea Frappaccino with Earl Grey Jellies. Straight after, we crossed the street to visit Datong School's "Makerspace", which had 3D printers, and the woman there gave us a bunch of examples of student work that had been done with the printers. To be honest, the presentation was a little redundant, but overall I thought it was pretty cool, and the artwork that they showed at the end was very different than the products that are made at PA with the 3D printers. After the presentation, we had time to look at the student artwork then slowly made our way back to the Datong school where we had a little slot of free time, so we decided to play some table tennis, which was actually really fun even though I'm not very good at it. Shortly after, we had lunch and met up with our pen pals and had a huge chunk of time to interview them about our research topics. I asked my pen pal, Rose, and her friend to answer a couple of questions about my research topic: the effects of buddhism, taoism, and confucianism on business etiquette in China, and something that I found really interesting was that Chinese people generally have different views on those who live north of the river and those who live south of the river. According to my pen pal and her friend, Chinese stereotype people from different provinces and will act accordingly to their lifestyles. Getting to talk to Rose and her friend was really interesting, and it was also really fun to get to know my pen pal better. At the end, it was sad to leave her after getting so close on the third day, but I was able to get her WeChat and take a picture. After the school, Michael brought us to a park, and we passed by a beautiful taoist temple on our way there. My favorite part of the excursion had to be when Emily and I joined in and followed an elderly man dancing slowly to the music that was playing at the park along with other elderly women. It was also really fun when the rest of the group joined us, and we all got in a circle and danced together. Another favorite part of the day had to be when we sat down on the ledge of the pond and just sat there for a few minutes. To my left, there were a group of students chatting and laughing, and to my right, there was Cai Lao Shi meditating. It was nice to soak in my own thoughts in the middle of the day. However, this soon came to a close when we had to get up to go on a public bus in order to join Mr and Mrs. Tan, Tony Tan's parents, for dinner. And dinner was a whole other story. Dinner was absolutely amazing. The food was delicious, and Ryan, Jungwoo, and I had a nice conversations about our future, and it was so interesting to see how differently we saw each other and ourselves. Tony Tan's parents also seemed like wonderful and kind people, so overall dinner was amazing. We finished up the night with a nice, 11 stop train ride back to the hotel, and during that, Kishan joined in on the conversation, and it ended up being Jungwoo and I giving quality advice to Kishan about Andover life.

High: 1. the park- dancing & sitting on the ledge 2. everything about dinner
Low: leaving our pen pals/leaving the school
Shoutout: Kishan for having a nice conversation on the train ride back