Done with Schoolwork!!

Meiyou zuoye 没有作业 I don't have homework!!!

I really like the conclusion of classes, no matter what country they are in. It is quite liberating to not have to do homework or study anymore, particularly when the studying I have been doing was intensively learning around 25 Chinese characters each night.

I also realized that I only wake up in Beijing three more times (contact lens count and whatnot), and that's totally weird to me. I think that over my time here, even though I've known it was temporary and finite, I set up a sort of routine and life, and that pattern has been very fun and awesome all summer. I'm sad to see it go, especially because there are so many more things to see and do in this enormous country. That said, I'm still okay with leaving because I haven't seen my family for a long time and I haven't been home since March, so there are also things to look forward to as consolation for leaving my adventure in China. I think it's good that I have a bittersweet conclusion because it means I had a great time while I was away and I have people and things to come home to!

I took my Chinese final in the morning, and when we were all done with the test we practiced for the talent show and finished a movie about food and family that we had been watching all week. I finished my test pretty quickly and ended up having time to do some life tasks including a stop at the dorm, and I ended up walking back to class with four of the five students in our Chinese 2 class. It was pretty funny, and nice to have walking companions. Before class (since I woke up remarkably early today) I decided to go to the store on campus that uses the meal card to buy yogurt and a coffee, but then I remembered that they don't have the coffee I like and the yogurt I got was really odd. It was a cardboard cup of drinking yogurt that came with a straw. The package had a picture of a strawberry and some sort of grain on the outside, and when I started sipping, it was indeed strawberry yogurt, but there were pieces of cooked barley or something. It made it taste like cake and I didn't finish it because I didn't like it after a while.

After Chinese class, our class and class 3 went to a restaurant called Spice Spirit for lunch. Our Laoshi drove me and two other classmates, and he has a membership at the restaurant, so he knew just what to order. He really ordered too much food, but it was delicious. The main thing he wanted us to try was the Sichuan oil cooked fish, and that is served with a piece of bread to soak up the oil. I ate a little bit of that to try it, but my favorites were the salad, the lettuce with peanut sauce, the mapo tofu, and the pineapple rice. I think all the food was really delicious, but the entire meal was very spicy, so there was nothing to cool off my mouth with. The lettuce with peanut sauce and the pineapple rice were cooling and the rice was sweet, but the spicy was everywhere. I liked it though; it was tasty spicy. Other things on the table were prawns (they had full shells so I didn't try it), frog, chicken, spicy noodles, and spicy vegetables.

I spent the two hours of afternoon time I had relaxing in my air conditioned room, and then I left to meet Yizhou (my friend from high school who is a 北京人) at the subway station near Houhi for our meetup. In planning, we decided to meet at the station because we could then take a taxi together, and we were meeting early to beat rush hour crowds. I know the subways so well, so when we picked a station I knew exactly where it was and how to get there with the transfers without having to look it up, which was really cool.

When I was waiting at the 地铁站 (subway station), a guard came up to me to see what I was doing. I either looked lost or suspicious, but I told him 我的朋友在地铁三个站 (my friend is on the subway for three more stops). I didn't know how to say I was waiting for my friend, but the message came across and I was really happy to have handled the interaction.

We took a taxi from the station to the Houhai area, and it was really cool there. Houhai is a lake with a few bridges, an island, and lots of boats for rent that is surrounded by storefront after storefront of bars, clubs, and restaurants. Yizhou had made a reservation at a Yunnan restaurant, so we walked around and then went there for dinner. We ordered their specialties of beef and fish (best fish I ate; it was grilled with lemongrass), and we got chicken soup, pea flour glutinous rectangles, and bamboo rice. I really liked the food and the fish was my favorite. The soup was the best soup I've had in China (not such a fan of the seaweed soups), and the rice was extra sticky and a little bit sweet. The restaurant was decorated with paper flowers, lanterns, and wooden surfaces, and we had a table on the second floor by the window overlooking the lake, so it was a fantastic setting.

I loved getting to spend time with Yizhou and talk about life. She told me about her summer internship, travel to and from her American university, her upcoming semester abroad in Hong Kong, and her jazz dance class. I told her about my time in China and we played some "where are they now" with our former classmates. I used a lot of my Chinese language with her, and she was excited that I could speak at all, and I was excited to be speaking, so it was really fun. We walked all around the lake and took some pictures before ending our evening with beverages from a smoothie/juice/tea shop, and then going to the train station together. We took the same line but in opposite directions, so our good-bye hugs were on the subway platform. It was so fantastic to get to spend time with my friend, and I am truly happy to still be friends after these years apart.

Returning home was easy, and when I got back to my room around 10:00, I wrapped up my day with a shower, writing my blog, and going to sleep.

Today is awesome because I finished my classes, I had two fantastic meals, and I got to see Yizhou.