Friday, March 20, 2009

Farewell Yangzhou!







I can not believe that today was our last day in Yangzhou. The trip has gone by so quickly. I wanted to write our final evening entry tonight, but I am fading fast. I will have to come back and fill in some of the details later. We enjoyed some of the beautiful scenery of the city today. We started off by taking a boat ride on the Slender West Lake. We had a beautiful clear day and really enjoyed the lake, garden and scenic views. We took many photos! The morning was relaxing and enjoyable and just what we needed. After we left the lake, we made a brief stop on the way to lunch to a "display" building. This building displayed everything that was made in Yangzhou and shows visitors the plan for the future. We all left with gifts, the children received another stuffed animal and the parents received a "prospectus."
We enjoyed a nice lunch with a variety of steamed dumplings that are specific to Yangzhou.
After lunch we made a brief stop at another garden to meet Yangzhou's highest official in the communist party. Cindy knows his name, but I can't remember! After the meeting we were heading out to do some shopping. Since Yangzhou is famous for lacquerware, my plan was to buy a piece of lacquerware with the Pagoda from Slender West Lake in Mother of Pearl inlay. I had a specific piece in mind after speaking with Mindy and Cindy. Well, of course anytime we meet people here we receive a gift, and guess what we received? Yes, the exact piece I was planning to purchase! Since our suitcases are completely full, we did not purchase anything during our shopping adventure. We were in an area that was undergoing construction, but was more traditional. The streets were very narrow and decorated with red lanterns with a variety of arts and crafts shops including papercutting, knitting, lacquerware, jewelry, etc. However, there were also many bikes, scooters, cars and people all attempting to use this same small lane. Not your typical day at the mall! We headed back to the hotel to meet Guangjie and prepare for our final banquet.
We enjoyed catching up with Guangjie for a little while before dinner. She brought all of the girls Chinese silk purses with a bracelet and statue inside. We were all so happy she came and made our final evening so special. At the banquet the video of our trip was playing on two very large screens. It was great fun to re-live the past week. It actually seems impossible that we really had this experience. We received our final gifts and we were very pleased. BLAS and YCWI made us a photo album scrap book, and two group photos that were on wood with stands (unframed but finished) and a copy of the DVD of the trip. One member of each country made a short speech along with officials and all of the guides. Everyone was very emotional when the time came to say good bye. We exchanged emails and hugs and pro misses of meeting again. I hope our Yangzhou Yahoo list will be active with our new friendships. Robin and Patty helped to organize a donation site through OCDF for Yangzhou families to donate to a tax deductable fund for the children at the orphanage. We think this will be a great opportunity to give back to YCWI. We are hoping we will have a site where we can share our videos from the trip. Diana does not want the trip to be over. Several times today she was calling Yangzhou her "home town." She is so happy that we came and has learned so much about the people in China and how they live differently here compared to the U.S. We are preparing a power point for Mrs. Washburn's class back in Granite Bay to share some of the things she learned.
We have an early bus ride tomorrow, so need to be all ready to go by 7:30 for our trip back to Beijing. We will have one night on our own with the Karen and Emi before we fly home on Sunday. We will not have a lot of time, but our hotel is in a central location and we can walk to several places. We are hoping to visit the "night market" to look at scorpions on a stick and other interesting food choices. Note that I said to "look" but Emi and Karen may be daring since it is our last night of the trip.
I will up load a photo album of today soon.
Can't wait to see all of you soon.
Love to all,
Deb and a sleeping Diana

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