Our Last Days in Changzhou

Last night I cried and cried thinking about leaving China.  Today is our last day here, and I am so sad to be leaving!  I have come to love so many people here that I've had to and will have to say goodbye to and that's just sad stuff.  I've fallen in love with the culture and the food.  I could seriously live off of noodles and dumplings!

This may sound silly, but I feel a sense of belonging here that I've never really felt.  Like, all the clothes here don't have sizes and fit me perfectly!  The hair accessories are strong enough for my thick, slick Asian hair.  And everyone here is obsessed with cute things!  I love that it is normal here to act awkward and giggly, because awkward I definitely am.  I guess it is an Asian thing?  Not only do I have similarities with the people here, I just feel like they are overall very kind and accepting to all.  They don't care what you're wearing or if your hair is never in anything but a ponytail, and the no makeup look is the usual look.  I know I shouldn't feel self conscious in America, but sometimes it is hard when I like to roll out of bed 10 minutes before class!

Another thing that may sound crazy: I'm a fan of the language barrier.  I love not being able to communicate with people!  I like to not be obligated to social interactions.  I know enough Mandarin to get by with the simple stuff, and Google translate is good enough these days that I really don't have anything to worry about except a dead phone battery.  I'm a little nervous to be back in a world where I understand everything and have to respond to everything!

Despite these things and how sad I am, of course I am very excited to go home.  I am excited to see my family especially!  But I'm also excited to see my beautiful mountains, drink tap water, and breath clean air.  I can't even imagine a blue sky anymore, it is always white here!

We've had lots of fun this past week to celebrate our last days here.  I've blogged about some of it, but here are some of the little things that we have done!

We enjoyed the night market one last time!  I will miss the night market so much!  Bailey tried a new treat that Shey recommended.  It is fast frozen (liquid nitrogen?) cool whip and giant cereal pieces, covered with fruit.  I though it was weird, but Bailey sure had fun with it!

Bailey also loves the crawdads at the night market, but rarely buys them because they're a more expensive option.  But what better night to buy crawdads than your last visit to the night market?!

Little Sadie took all four of her first grade teachers out for dinner!  It was actually a really awkward experience as we showed up two days early because of a miscommunication.  They took us out anyway!

Last week we all went out for fried dumplings for Dillon's birthday!  We will never get enough fried dumplings!

Last night we tried to say goodbye to Monica and Andrew but we were too sad, so we pushed our goodbye to tonight!  Last night was delicious, though, we ate at Grandma's Home.

We also watched some little kids in their roller skating lesson.  These lessons have been popping up everywhere!  They're so freaking cute!

I can't believe how small some of the little roller skaters are.  Like, this kid looks hardly old enough to walk!

Those are just some of the things we've been doing with our spare time!  The rest of our time has been filled with packing, blogging, and Netflix watching.  I can't believe it is all ending!