Day 13 – Starting our last full day in China we had a lesson with the older lady who spoke yesterday. She taught us about marriage and family in China. It was a very good lecture and she kept my attention. She even told us about her own family and how 4 people in her family have PHDs. After that we had to share our business plans. My group’s idea was a water bottle that could boil water and you could make tea. You could also drink that tap water because it would boil it and filter the water. Dr.Gao told us that this wouldn’t work because of the energy required (we couldn’t use a rechargeable battery) to actually boil water, so it could be a tea/ water warmer.
Once everyone was done with their presentations we went back to the Japanese restaurant and I had cheese stuffed chicken again. It was still as good the second time. A small group of us decided to go to the old summer palace before our farewell dinner. We took a taxi there and the traffic was pretty bad. Once inside the palace it was gorgeous. All of the flowers and trees made it look very nice. We wanted to see ruins and so far all we had seen was 1 crumbled bridge and a lot of people sleeping. We took a tram to the back of the palace to see the ruins, but you had to pay to get it. Any other day I would have paid easily, but since it was out last day we didn’t want to take any more money out. Getting a taxi to be able to go back to the hotel was a challenge because no one wanted to pick us up. Eventually we did get a taxi and made it back safely.
Our last dinner was a traditional Chinese dinner, served on a lazy susan. I was so thirsty that I drank my can of sprite in about 2 gulps. I needed to order another one. We had a great time talking about the trip and the transformation our group had made over the past 2 weeks. We had all become good friends from being somewhat strangers 2 weeks ago. Our group had gotten so close that we were “fighting” about turning the lazy susan and telling other to hurry up so we could get food. We were talking about how it would be interesting to watch video from our first meal and our last meal. We were sad to leave China and we were more upset about saying goodbye to Ruby and Vivien the next day. We will probably never see them again but will keep in contact through email.
fawcettplus3china2012 