Last Day and Closing Ceremonies!

It was a cool day!  And I mean weather wise. I couldn't believe it, but it felt like Alaska at the highest temperature!  We really didn't sweat today!

We are exhausted after packing up for leaving tomorrow!  The kids showered us with gifts over the last couple of days!  We even got gifts from the school at the closing ceremony. We had started an exchange table in the workroom so that if you didn't want a gift someone else could have it, and you should have seen the treasures. Everything from stuffed animals, ceramic vases, Hello Kitty, Olympics stuff, beaded creatures of all sorts, snowglobes up the gazoo. We all tried to keep the nice things like silk embroidery pictures, blouses, jewelry, chopsticks, fans, and Chinese cups.

We spent time in our classes reviewing and playing games. I did Bingo and gave away all my extra books, paper, magazines, pencils, and candy.  Evelyn's group spent their precious learning time practicing for the program, all three days of it! While the rest of us taught and worked, she sat and sang, Celebration!  I'm not jealous!

We had our usual lunch of rice, soup, red stir fried cabbage, greens with tofu, meatballs that didn't really taste like meatballs, egg custard..........ugggg, looked like boiled blood, and a yummy yellow sponge cake. The Chinese people don't get cake.

Patrick, our Chinese helper, sat with me at lunch and talked about recruiting teachers. I asked what he would pay me and he said 10,000 yuan a month (About 3,000 a month for both of us).  He said he would pay my husband that also. He would provide us housing and a driver to take us to school everyday. He even said Kevin could come and either attend the school, or go to the American school.  Hey Rich! What do you think?  I think we investigate it! We could get rich, Rich!  We could travel all over Asia on our breaks. And they include airfare too!

The program started at 4:00 and it was fantastic! We all had to stand on the stage at the beginning of the show and they had children come up and present us with gifts, a bag with a book full of pictures drawn by the kids, and stuffed teddy bears! Large!   Too bad most of us have no room to take them home!

There were several teachers who were chosen with their class to perform. From our Alaska group, Lisa, Sue, Evelyn, and Mary were in the program.  There were rollerbladers, tap dancers, singers, magic acts, folk dancing, and  more. Very well done. 

The show ended after about an hour and within minutes the gym was cleared and parents were taking their kids home! They were excited to start their one month vacation.

We came back to the hotel, went for a foot massage, and then started packing. All the gifts we couldn't fit in went into several bags and we took them out of the hotel and passed them out to people, including kids, to take. We were quite the spectacle! Wonder what they thought of us!

Off to tour tomorrow for several days!  They are storing one of our bags for us at the school, and will deliver them to Shanghai when we are ready to leave! Yea! Less to carry around for a week!