Day 8 – Saturday

Today was the day for the homestay families to do something special with their guests.  David, Wendy, Jon and Rob spent the day with Flora and Linda.  We started out by sleeping in.  After this, Rob finished yesterday’s blog and then they all went to a park behind Flora’s appartment building.

It was a beautiful day and many people were in the park excercising, singing to boombox accompaniment and playing table tennis.   The locals were very friendly and soon we were playing table tennis with them.   We are fairly certain that they were playing with their metaphorical left hands in order to not embarass us too much.   This was another uniquely Chinese experience.

After this, we had lunch at a “Hot Pot” retaurant, where you cook your own meal in boiling broths (spicy and savoury).  This is similar to the Japanese dish Shabu Shabu.  With satisfied appetites, we all had an authentic oriental massage at a reputable business which was wonderful.   The cost for 70 minutes was ~ $10.  Maybe the best deal of the trip!

We did a little more shopping before heading back to Flora’s apartment where her father had been cooking all afternoon in order to present an unbelievable feast (see photo). It was delicious!

After dinner, we went to the West Beijing Train Station to say goodbye to the Esrigs.  This is the largest train station in Asia!

We needed a couple of things for the trip home so we went to Wal-mart where Wendy set off the anti-theft alarm with her backpack.  We managed to avoid an international incident and got home safely.

Here are some photos.

Day 7 – Friday

Today was a lighter schedule. After checking out of the hotel, we had a couple of hours in a mall to shop and then went to a resteraunt similar to Izzy’s for pizza buffet. After this, we went back to No. 159 for a final concert in their auditorium with their choir and the choir from the other high school we visited.

After the concert, we all met our host families (see photos) and everyone went on their own “adventure”. David, Wendy, Jon and I were invited to dinner with Principal Lee at a very nice restaurant and afterwards Linda and Flora took us to a place where people were tango dancing on the sidewalk and shops were open late.

I had some trouble getting the internet going last night, which is why this post is 12 hours late.    Here are some photos.