Last Day in Tianjin/ Last Weekend In Shanghai

This week was the culmination of language classes and the end of the program all together.

We had our final examination of the language class (Lu Jie Ting rocked the house on it)

Me with the Dean receiving my certificate with my grade




Me with Wen Lao Shi and Zhang Lao Shi.... They think they're hilarious giving me bunny ears.


I'm going to miss the language classes a lot. I really enjoyed going to them everyday and I learned a tremendous amount. I am definately going to continue my study of the chinese language in some form. I really hope I can visit China again.


I was very sad leaving Nankai.


After Tianjin we has a 10 hour train ride to Shanghai (hooray........ another train.....)

The first day in Shanghai we saw an international Chinese language school, beautiful garden, a jade budda temple, and the waterfront.




Argh! (Me behind a statue in the garden)


One of the classes in the school we visited. They were native english speakers who were learning chinese. This class was about the same level I studied at, but this little kids woulda whooped my butt in chinese.
The school was run by a company and I was tremendously impressed by their efficancy and the atmosphere in the school.

On Saturday we went on a 3 hour bus ride to Hanzhou. This was an ancient imperial capital. Here we met Dr. Liu's brother and toured his factory. He got us all gifts and treated us to a very nice lunch (The best on of the trip). We also took a boat ride on this big lake.

The trip to Hanzhou was alright. We spent a lot of time traveling. I do feel like I didn't get to see that much of Shanghai.


Me on the waterfront in Shanghai on our last night in China.


This trip was amazing. It was a lot of work. I did not mind doing the work because I did learn a lot and I had a lot of fun.

Again I think it was an amazing experience and I am extremely glad I had the opportunity. I learned way more than I ever thought I would and I ended up falling in love with China (except for the whole communism thing. I can't wait until they get democracy, I hope I don't have wait to long because it would be exciting to see China become the largest democracy in the world. Anyway thats a sidetrack and a dream of mine and something I can research as a government/political science major)

I cannot wait for opportunity to go again. The experiences I had and the memories I made will last a life time.

I'd like to thank Dr. Liu for setting up the trip. Like I've been saying, I learned so much and have been inspired to continue learning about Chinese language and culture. Thank you for the opportunity.

Now I do have 1 more blog to post to meet the requirements but I am going to wait till I've been back in America for a couple of days. My last post we be overall impressions of China and my favorite parts of the entire program.

Until then, Zaijian!

-Justin