Yuexi and Edwyna fixed it, then dismantled it and put it back into the packaging and gave it to Xinliang, Yifong and I to play with. Stupid right. But I still like Billy a lot. He provided us with 2 and a half minutes of entertainment :D

Ohyes. and on that night, we stayed in a hotel in Hangzhou, and my roomate was YINWAI! it was fun. and we talked for a long time. ooh, i brought my eye mask (because i need complete darkness to fall asleep) and MY VERY FAMOUS PILLOW! i seriously think my pillow is famous-er than me, since hiankek and jiayi and huiping and other people know of its existence.

Introducing, my hotel bed!

Day 2

We arrived at Hangzhou No. 14 Middle School, and met our buddies for the first time in 4 months! It was quite exciting, really. And then we went to their houses. Fei Hong was very nice, she helped me carry my luggage and stuff like that. So i reached her house and met her mother! She was really warm and veryvery nice. She offered me an apple, but alas, i am not trained to eat an apple whole, so she offered me a knife. And i tried to cut it, but failed. as in after i cut it i had spent so much time that i didnt want to eat it anymore. Ohwells. Fei Hong was sick! It was really a pity and she had to go to the hospital for a GLUCOSE DRIP. i was like, OHMYGOODNESS. she must have some really evil virus in her body, but she told me that it was just a fever, and that she goes for a drip everytime she feels unwell. and i was like, -.- Since she was unwell, her auntie took me out to shop! It was super fun dividing everything by five, and i bought a nike tote bag and an english storybook and other stuff. Heh. Then we went to West Lake to watch the Musical Fountain and her auntie explained all the folktales to me about the pagodas found at West Lake and other stories. She was really very nice and hospitable. I miss her already! Oh and the place where she took me to dinner served little BIRDS. They were fried and black and just dumped into some container, and I could see the claws and the head. Really disgusting.

Day 3
I stayed at home. Oh wait. I went out. With yuexi, xinliang, edwyna and their buddies. Since FeiHong was sick and had to go to the hospital again. We took neoprints! It was super fun. It's not like Singapore, it's like they give you a few books that contain manymany frames for you to choose from, and you write down the numbers on a piece of paper and give it to the person there. And then, they'll key in the numbers and the frames you pick will automatically appear when you want to take a photo. It's really cute :D and cheap :D we took like alot alot. Ohyes, I ate pigeon! It was er…tough. And pigeon-ish.

Day 4
I went to Fei Hong's school with her and went to her classroom. It was really different from Singapore's. Here's a picture, although it's not her class.

Different eh? They use a blackboard instead of a whiteboard. And the teachers stand on a platform and teach. OOH. Spot the plasma tv in the picture. That's where students make announcements. As in they have their own school tv station. COOL OR WHAT . and they play their school song on the tv , with the lyrics and images of their school. It's really really awesome. Ohyes. And we did swordplay. It was really funny, as i said i lacked hand-leg-sword coordination. So in the afternoon, we went to have lunch at this muslim restaurant since we had muslim students as well as miss saifa with us. Look at how they served the rice!

Anyways. After lunch, we went to West Lake and Yue Fei’s Temple. We took many scenic photos and stuff like that. And fooled around. Our tour guide was called Wendy! She was very nice although sometimes no one listened to her on the bus. Heh. We took palace-y pictures dressed as ancient royalty. It was uber funny! I was waiting for the ge ge (princess) costume and since people like joanne and waiteng and yuexi had them on, there were not enough. But i badly wanted to take the photos and guess what. I BECAME THE EMPEROR INSTEAD! It was very funny because i never expected to be given the emperor's robes at all. I was so shocked. But in the end, it was great because Lixin became my concubine and Jingyi was my emperess. And Yinwai was my GENERAL. And the others became my daughters. Funny shit!

Day 5
Went to Fei Hong’s school as usual. Went for calligraphy lessons! Drew flowers and a chicken/bird. The teacher was very gentle-looking/gentle-sounding. Very nice. And I wrote funny-looking characters. Heh. And Lixin, Jingyi and I attempted to write Gong, Xin and Lu. It was super fun! In the afternoon, we went to Hu Xue Yan's residence and a tea plantation. The residence was super grand and big, while the tea plantation just robbed me of my money. Two cans of tea leaves for SGD$80!!! Crazy or what.

Day 6
Attended a seal-making class and a mask-painting class! Carved my name on a marble thingy and took a longlonglong time. But the final product was very satisfying! Also, the mask painting was very cool to do. Win’s mask was the unanimously-declared-best mask. Went to Guo Zhuang and a very big bookshop in the afternoon. I can’t really recall what Guo Zhuang is, but I know it has really ancient architecture and it was really big. Oh, and the bookshop had a CD shop in it! I literally went crazy grabbing all the CDs and DVDs. The Banquet DVD was selling for like, SGD$3 plus. And CDs were selling for SGD$5. CRAZY OR WHAT. And the books were very nice. I bought a lot of Chinese books to improve my standard of Chinese! Heh. However, I was desperate for English novels because I was so tired of looking at Chinese everywhere. Therefore, I sourced for English books and found that they were selling at prices that were almost the same as Singapore, just because China regards them as IMPORTED BOOKS. It’s really silly, and because of their prices, we decided not to get any as it was not worth it. Stupid right. So I was stuck in China for the next few days without an English book to read. BOO.

Day 7
Attended class with Fei Hong for the first time! (If you haven’t noticed, we had been attending cultural classes without our buddies for the past few days.) It was very exciting. First lesson was Chinese. It was understandable actually. They study interesting stuff like poems and they do literature-like stuff with the poems. It’s really fun and interesting. Next was Physics. They were talking about the collision of the particles with the walls of the container and how to increase the pressure and stuff like that! I was intrigued because for once, they were talking about something that I study. And the funny thing was, they were teaching it in Chinese! So the whole pressure process thing had its own Chinese terms. It was quite an experience. Oh, and then came History. American history. Very nice. I understood some parts of it, and the teacher was quite funny. Then, MATHEMATICS. They were studying circles. Not our type of circles, but a ‘cheem-er’ version of it. And the teacher could draw a perfect circle without any instruments. SUPER. Oh, then they had Biology. I slept through it. Heh. Actually, i slept through everything. I only attended the first half of every lesson except for Bio. Oh, this is Pearlyn's picture of their periodic table. Very very interesting.

Photochemical smog!! I studied that! :) And why is 'sulphate' spelt as 'sulfate'? In the afternoon, we went shopping at some random place near our restaurant. We were very excited at the prospect of shopping but in actual fact, there was nothing to buy. Except Mcdonalds and Dragon Beard Candy. Ohwells. But all in all, it was okay I guess.

Day 8

Today we had yoga class. Which of course, I didn’t participate in because of my religion. Ahem. They learnt yoga from a video. But an instructoress was there though, to guide them. It was quite a professional class, not like a playful one. Oh, they have morning exercise like mass run. But their exercise lasts for like 1 minute and they don’t really do it at all -.- I went to the supermarket! It was okay big. But they had so many different flavours for Lays! I went berserk. They had Hokkaido Crab flavour, SUCKLING PIG flavour, Roast Duck, Texas BBQ, Cucumber, Tomato, French Chicken etc. Like how do they even manufacture suckling pig-flavoured potato chips?! Waiteng bought the Hokkaido Crab, and it was super crabby. Not nice. I tried the cucumber and the French chicken and the BBQ. Very very delicious. Heh. I loved them all, but couldn’t bring them all back because they were packeted hence I couldn’t fit them all in the luggage. So I just ate everything over there. Heh. The amount of fats I took in. Tsk. In the afternoon, we went to Wu Zhen, which is outside of Hangzhou. So the bus trip took two hours. And everybody slept. Wu Zhen was a village-y place with many crissed-crossed water canals. It was super ancient-drama-ish.

The last day we would spend in Hangzhou. I went to school in the afternoon with Fei Hong’s mum, since she had lessons in the morning. Saw Lixin, Edwyna, Win and other people there. We waited for everyone to arrive and took a group picture with the school banner. Then we bid farewell to our hosts. Everyone cried like mad. Even Fei Hong’s mum cried. I was super sad please. I mean, even if we all say that we are going to come back, there is like an 80% chance that even if we come back to Hangzhou, we’re not going to visit our buddies again. Seriously, it was like the last time in our lives that we were going to speak to one another and hold hands and have dinner together. Anyway, we climbed aboard the bus and were on our way to Shanghai. I was high after sometime, and wanted to dance again. So Yinwai and I danced. And became crazy. Oh yes. This day was a very special day. IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY!!! *SCREAMS* so everyone sang a birthday song on the bus for me (: And during dinner, I was pleasantly surprised when Mdm Lim Hong Geok served me a piece of beef because she heard them sing the birthday song. Heh. I was really shocked. Oh, because Yinwai and I were separated from the others during dinner because there were not enough seats at their table and we had to sit with the teachers, we had no appetite. Heh. No offence though. Especially since we were so high after the dancing, we wanted to dance more. So we just ate two scoops of rice and hopped over to the next room, where everyone else was seated. And this was when the fun started. I invented a superstar pose and entertained everyone with my dance moves, together with Yinwai, my superstar partner. Heh. And of course, people like edwyna joined in and did silly moves. Oh yes, and they needed tea, so I did a teapot dance. Or rather, I posed with the teapot at the door, in hope of attracting the waiter’s attention. And everyone was laughing so hard that they couldn’t eat. Except for Shermain. She’s our food tester and the only one who just keeps eating no matter what. She’s a super funny food tester, because there was one dish which the waitress said was beef, which she tasted and then said was duck. And waiteng said it was mutton or something. So no one ate it. The restaurant itself was super hilarious because we were eating at this same muslim restaurant for 10 days in Hangzhou and were sick of it. So when we got to Shanghai we were like, phew on thinking that we were finally going to a different restaurant. BUT IT TURNED OUT THAT WE WERE GOING TO THE SHANGHAI BRANCH OF THE SAME RESTAURANT!!! I saw the signboard when we were nearing the restaurant and couldn’t stop laughing. No one else noticed it and thought I was mad. So I just kept pointing to the signboard but still no one realised it. I was choking to death so I couldn’t explain. Until someone realised it and started telling everyone, OMIGOD IT’S THE SAME RESTAURANT. Then everyone started laughing like crazy and I was really going to choke and die on the floor. Anyway, we went to The Bund, which is a shopping area for tourists. And I bought an Adidas bag! Very cheap and nice! Lixin, Jingyi, Yinwai and I went to shop together, and we all bought bags and had a nice time walking in the streets of Shanghai. So all in all, we had fun. In the night, we went to the hotel. The huge shock was that I broke the stupid hotel key while opening the stupid door. I was totally in shock while Yinwai ran to Mdm Lim since she was my roommate. As in Yinwai, not Mdm Lim -.- Fortunately, she just smiled at Yinwai and gave us a new key. Erps. So anyway, after it was settled, I went to bathe first. Then Yinwai came in and brought me to Yuexi and Edwyna’s room. She blindfolded me with my towel ( I was bathing, remember?) . Actually, she just covered my head with that heavy thing. So I sorta figured what was happening and was in total shock. Because I didn’t realise that there was anything more after the birthday song. Actually it was quite funny because we were standing at the door with me looking like an idiot with that towel and the people inside the room were talking so loudly I could hear everything. So they opened the door and everyone started singing the birthday song and even though I knew what was happening, I screamed when they took the towel off because there was a cake thrust right in front of me. My hair nearly caught fire I tell you. And the whole room was engulfed in smoke so everyone was like, HURRY BLOW THE CANDLES! And so I did. Then I cut the cake! I delivered cake to the teachers too! And they were very nice and wished me a happy birthday. When I went back to the room I fed everyone chocolate and realised that when we were looking at the night scene(picture below) after we shopped, Yuexi, Pearlyn, Yinwai and the rest were protecting my cake. And I was wondering where they were! I was quite afraid that I was lost because everyone was missing. Heh. And they said that the cake was in the bus all along and they were afraid that I would notice it. But I didn’t, I swear. So it was a total suprise! And i was really feeling like a superstar that night. Heh. I was so touched please, because i really wasnt expecting anything else from them :D THANKS GUYS! (if you ever happen to see this)

Day 10

Last day in China. Went to the Shanghai City Planning Museum where they had displays of what Shanghai would be like in the 10 years to come. Very interesting models.

Finally, we had to go to the airport. Everyone was lamenting and were super sad. I was too, because i didnt want to go back to the homework in Singapore. And also because China proved to be so fun with so many people around! :D

Anyway. We shopped around in the airport. ( that's where we bought the darned kimchi) I was trying to look for gossip magazines to read on the plane since I have experienced the stupid boring flight on the first day. And guess what? I found ONE. ONE FRICKING MAGAZINE. PRICED AT SGD$10.80. So fricking expensive. I bought it anyway, since i was desperate enough. SO. We boarded the plane at 3 plus. And flew back home.

So this is it! Our 10 day exchange trip to Hangzhou and Shanghai! I miss it alot alot alot. The place, the people, the bus, the restaurant etc. Everything! I would give anything to do it again! <3>