Wrapping It Up, Getting Home

I'll do this last post just to wrap up the end of my experience and put a close to this crazy time in the Orient. After graduation we basically had a day left in Harbin before we headed out to Beijing via train the next morning. After getting unnecessarily lost on the way to Pizza Hut (Robbie Smith was leading, what a terrible mistake) we had a fantastic time arguing with the Pizza Hut server about the size of the pizza and the price. They brought out the wrong size pizza, then said they'd add another small one and it would be fair--but it clearly wouldn't have been, so we refused. They were angry. We were angry. Then Kerri did the math on a napkin (I think she even used pi to estimate area or something...it was crazy) to prove they were wrong...they didn't really like that. Anyway, we ate our stupid pizza and paid the ridiculous bill. I was still hungry.

For the rest of the afternoon we just wandered around Harbin. I bought a suit jacket for my brother. When I re-met the group and tried it on to show them, some random lady came up, felt the fabric of the jacket, smiled real sketchy like, then walked off. I didn't even realize she was doing it at the time, but everyone told me two seconds after the fact. There was also one lady trying to sell something useless--I don't even remember what--and was saying, "One kuai, one kuai, one kuai, one kuai", repeating the price over and over again. So I walked over to her and said, "Excuse me, but how much is it?" At first she was confused, then she just smiled and said, "Crazy foreigner." We both laughed, it was pretty funny I guess.

So the next morning we set off toward Beijing in a nice sleeper train. Everyone just kind of hung out in the dining car, since we all seemed to have a couple Chinese strangers in our room who had annexed it for the night. It wasn't until my girlfriend started getting a bit upset over leaving Harbin that I realized I would probably never see these people again. Not just my classmates...some of then I would actually see...but our Chinese roommates. We had made friends with a lot of them. Actually, I made better friends with Yue Yang and Huang Lin than my roommate, and I still keep in touch with them. Since I do plan on going back to China, there's always a possibility of seeing them, but the chances are about as slim as China's population is large.

When we woke up--or rather for me, opened my eyes, since I can never sleep on those trains--we were in Beijing. After that train ride, and two-month semester, I felt kind of like the lady at the service desk of our hotel. Our one night stay at a western-style hotel included a western-style buffet. It was awesome; hit that up twice. We first set out to the dirt market--I guess kind of like a flea market (shown in the second pic). This one guy tried to sell me this ridiculous hat (first picture) and said I could look like an indian, like that is something I've always strove for. This guy was crazy. He even did the full expression, as you can see in the picture. We haggled for some art and random stuff that would later become souvenirs and Christmas gifts.

That night we went to Houhai Lake, which is the same place I ran around for days on end last summer. The night life there is really great, so we just kind of hung out for a while. When we decided that we weren't willing to pay the absurd prices to sit on one of the outside couches to have some beer (drinking inside is much cheaper, but that defeats the purpose) we just headed back to the hotel. It was past midnight anyway, and people had to get up for flights. Sometime between then and when we left for the airport the next day, I bought some corn flavored ice cream. I tried it just before Robbie, who is eating it like a cob in the fourth picture. To tell the truth, I probably could have finished it if I was really hungry...

Leaving the next day was kind of sad, but pretty exciting. I was ready to get back to overpriced burgers, democracy, personal transportation, the REAL football, and the fattest population in the world. Going to the airport I could already smell America. Lauren and Chelsea, from my class, were on the same flight, so we all split two cabs. Apparently these two girls knew the system. You just tell the Chinese service person that since we're tall Americans, we should get the emergency exit. It worked, and it was awesome. Chelsea just gave me a sleeping pill and I konked out for the 13 hour flight. I knew I was in America when I smelled the sweet clean air of Los Angeles (and yes, it was clean compared to China's air, I just didn't realize it until I had something to compare to).

I arrived back in Jacksonville at about 6:30 am. I had to be at the airport for my flight to Nashville at 1:00. Thus ensued a blitzkrieg of packing, but I was happy to be home, if only for about four hours.

Graduation

So I know no one is reading at this point...four months after the fact...but I'm doing this more for my sake than for anyone else. Kind of just want to remember what went down while it's still semi-clear in my head. Anyway, I finished up the semester, and I figured my grades would be okay (about 3 months after graduation I found out my actual grades, which is a ridiculous amount of time considering Vandy is CET's biggest customer). It was really a great feeling to have all that over with and see the huge improvements. Some of the teachers gave speeches, as well as the head of CET Harbin, Ren Laoshi (in the first picture), and they were actually pretty meaningful. Ren Laoshi was awesome. I secretly had a crush on her...not really, but sort of. She was an awesome teacher--so nice about everything, and always tried to make every interaction with her a learning experience. But anyway, I usually tune those speeches out and stare off into space, but this time I actually listened. Maybe it was just because they were speaking Chinese and I had to listen closely, but whatever.

They brought the food out, which, for the most part was pretty horrible. Ding Lobi and I had this thing (not sure what it was), and it was probably the worst taste I've ever tasted. At the end of the ceremony--after receiving our diplomas--the language pledge was lifted, and we could speak English again. It was kind of awkward. Some people's voices sounded a lot different when they spoke English, and actually, at our table we continued to speak Chinese because at least half the people sitting there were Chinese, and communication was just easier that way.

But before all this, they gave awards for the person who most stuck to the language pledge, which was Hu Ketong. On the way to graduation he was drank a pint of beer...10:00 in the morning...that's awesome. That award was decided by peer voting, and a few friends and I wrote in Robbie Smith, aka Ding Lobi, who frequently--almost absurdly often--violated the language pledge. It was pretty funny. And there were other awards, such as Most Improved. I didn't get any of them--not really that surprised. It was crazy to think back to the time eight weeks earlier when I walked into the room with 30 odd people who looked like they were going to embarrass me back into 5th grade with their intense Chinese. At graduation this same group of people were (pretty much) all my friends, and some of them very good friends...In the second picture I'm with Huang Lin, probably one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He was always willing to drop whatever he was doing just to talk or hang out. I could definitely take a lesson from him. So yea, I definitely gained a lot more than just better Chinese in Harbin.