The End of Qufu

Sorry I didn't send anything out yesterday, things got pretty hectic very quickly, and I just didn't have the time to write out anything that would do things justice. We started Thursday with rehearsals for the closing ceremony, and it was here that I discovered that my kids were going to sing a Taylor Swift song, a Justin Bieber song that stole the chorus from Lovefool, and Beat It. To say I was dissapointed in their music choice would be a pretty accurate statement, but what can I do? I used their rehearsal time to meet with other teachers and plan fun games and stuff to do instead of teaching. Miles and I were going to do Baseball again, but it poured all morning, so we had to just use games we knew to keep them busy. We took our jobs very seriously, and if you've never seen Miles chew out a kid for not moving during musical chairs, you've never lived.

I'd like to start talking about what happened Thursday afternoon by saying that the Chinese insistence on grand ceremony has begun to grate on me. Photos had to be taken of everyone in the rain, which cut significantly into lunch time. Then, it was time for class goodbyes, which had significantly less crying than they did in Inner Mongolia, which was very nice. My kids taught me how to write my Chinese name (赵云), so I signed everything using characters. The closing ceremony was pretty bland, and mercifully ended on time, unlike in Jangxi, where they had to sit for five hours. We all ended the day too tired to do much other than lay around our rooms and watch movies and turn in early, which was good, because I've walked a hell of a long way today.

Why have a walked a long way? Well, today was the Tour de Confucius, wherein we visited his temple, his home, and the Kong family graveyard. All of these were quite neat to walk through, even with heat and humidity that completely outclasses the humidity that we complain about in Minnesota. I could talk about what I saw, but I really didn't understand much, as very little is in Chinese, and the stuff in English is poorly translated at best. Don gave us five pages of the greatest Engrish ever. I'm going to photograph them and put them on Facebook as they deserve to be in a museum. However, I do have a couple of notes to make. For one, the whole thing would have been much nicer if there were fewer tour groups. Why? Well, in China, every tour group comes with a guide, and that guide comes with a tiny loud speaker that doesn't make anything louder, but does make it significantly more grating to your ears. Now put one of these everywhere, and you have something capable of completely breaking the serenity of a temple. The other thing is that every time I see white people I'm shocked. Today it was a group of German students about my age. I greeted them in German as I passed, and they all seemed really confused. I think I'm going to speak German to every white person I see here from now on.

Other than that, I would really advise looking at my photos on Facebook, as they are worth seeing, and do the whole experience far more justice than my words ever could. We have another lazy susan dinner tonight, and then we're going back to the hostel for a couple of drinks. I hope nobody disappears this time around. Oh, speaking of that, Abbie's back in Beijing, and is doing just fine. Our train leaves around Noon tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to a night out in Beijing before going to Guyuan for our final camp. If I knew anything at all about Guyuan, I'd say something, but I don't. At least it's the last camp. We'll see when I can send out another transmission.

-Cooper