Farewell Chengdu...It was good while it lasted

Today was our last day at the lab school.  We did not actually teach any and were very busy throughout the whole day.  This morning we went to the public high school that is near our school.  It is the school where the students from the middle school will go when they finish the 9th grade.  The school was quite large, but looked very similar to the lab school.  The 12th graders are very busy studying for their college entrance exams. How well they perform on these will determine where they will go to college.  They must also pass these tests in order to graduate.  So similar to our SAT but also a little standardized testing like the CRCT in GA and SOLs in VA.  After the high school, we hurried back to the lab school to meet with all of the English teachers from the primary and middle school.  We had a discussion on what worked, what didn't and what needed to be changed.  This was quite interesting, because they were very frank with us.  Apparently they didn't like that we kept our office door shut.  When the reason why we usually kept it shut was because it was so cold!  After the meeting and lunch, we left campus and drove in the bus to another Experimental Primary School in the city.  This school is unlike our lab school which is private, it is a charter school that gets money from the government.  It was about 10 times nicer than the lab school.  It is an experimental school in that they are trying out having smaller class sizes (only 30 kids as opposed to the 40 or 50 at the lab school) and the use of technology.  I want to work at this school just for the teacher's lounge. It had leather couches and flat screen tvs!  It was insane!  It was interesting though seeing how another school in China works and how it is different than the one we have been working at.  In the years past, some of the GSU students have been placed here for teaching.  We were all thinking why weren't we?

Well tomorrow at 4 I will be off on my journey and adventure.  We will head to Shanghai for 3 days, then take a train to Beijing and stay there for 3 days.  I really have no idea what the Internet situation will be, so you might not be hearing from me for a few days, or maybe you will if you're lucky!  My time here in Chengdu has flown by and I cannot believe that I've been here for almost 4 weeks!  My how time has flown.  Tomorrow will be bittersweet as we all say goodbye to our new friends at the school and our host families.  We all already teared up a bit today when we thought about telling David goodbye.  But lucky surprise, we found out that David will be coming to Atlanta this summer!  Which we were all very excited about hearing.  This will make the goodbye a bit easier.  All of us girls, are very blessed to have had him as our guide here. He definitely made our trip and we will always remember him.  Saying goodbye to my host family tomorrow will also be quite sad.  I know I will always remember them, and they will always remember me, their crazy American girl who served them pounds of pork.  What an experience...and more adventures to come.