Today is our last day in the village and it is quite bitter sweet. While we are all upset that our Microcampus experince is ending, and do not want to say goodbye to Xizhou, we are very much ready for Christmas break. None of us are ready to say goodbye to the spicy potatoes, popsiscles, Tai Fei Chao Fan, or of course, all of our local friends. When I first arrived at Microcampus, I thought that it was going to be FOREVER until I got back to Shanghai, but the time has gone much too quickly. I felt like it was just yesterday that we were sitting on the bus in anticipation.

This entire trip, the weather here has been impecable. Every day has been sunny and not very cold. We have our daily meeting in the sun and soak it all up. Today, something strange happened, the sun did not come. By the time the daily meeting came around, everyone was astonished at the lack of sun. We did not know what to do. We still had our daily meeting outside, as if it was sunny. During lunch, the sun came out for about 1 minute, and we all ran to bask in it. 

I am guessing that you would assume that today would be a very chill day, as it is our last weekend here, but you are wrong. As our Inquiry Projects are due for a first review tomorrow at 2:00, and our Service Learning projects are due on Tuesday, we were all pretty busy. I slept in as late as I could and still eat breakfast, then completed my wellness reflection for Week 3. After that was done, I watched Mr. T attempt to get the hacky-sack off the roof for about a half an hour. Then, I finally settled in to work on my Inquiry Project. 

Last night, we went on a horse cart ride to the tounge of the lake, as I had planned as apart of the evening planning activity. The ride was about a half an hour, and I enjoyed watching the scenery as we went by. After we got to the tougne there was almost no light left in the sky and stars were beginning to appear. After establishing some baseline rules, a few people split off to have some still time or a quiet talk with friends. I initally stayed with the group, talking about things like service learning and inquiry projects. 

Today is the due date for Phase Three! This means that after today there will be no more researching, just sharing. This is quite frightening. You have to understand, for the past 6 and a half weeks I have been gathering information and researching my topic, all for this one project. I know that I have gathered a ton of information, more than I ever could've imagined, but there is just so much more I could learn.

Our group recently went on a three day hike up the Cong Shan moutains. Up there there was a lot to observe about the atmosphere, my chosen sphere. I noticed that around dusk there were huge winds that came through. This made it rather difficult to set up a tent. The reason for these big winds is because warm air rises, so all day the warm air from the group is rising and pushing the cold air up so that it is around the top of the mountains. Then, when the sun goes down there is no more warm air to rise so the cold air falls down the side of the mountain and creates massive winds.

After waking up at 6:30, packing up our tents, eating breakfast, and enjoying the sunrise, we began to hike up to the peak of the mountain. The hike started with more than 200 stairs. Yes, I counted. After the 200 stairs, we came to a very extreme path. I lost track of time while we were on that path, all I know is that after that torture, the grassy field was bliss. We stopped and rested at a flat part for about 15 minutes, and then continued. 

As apart of my inquiry project, I attended a funeral today. It was very very different than I had expected. When I first walked in with Katie we were very, very nervous. We didn't quite know if it was proper for us to be there or what was going on. We first attempted to talk to some of the ladies who were preparing food, but they were swamped. Then, we kind of wandered around for a little while not knowing what to do. After that, a table noticed our lost looks and invited us over to sit with them. We were shy at first, but eventually went over there.

Our group seems to be having some difficulty cleaning the dishes thuroughly. Apparently, there are more fun things to do in Xizhou. (What are they talking about?) Because I am a proud memebr of the dishwashing committee, it is my job to inspect the dishes after the people on dish duty are "finished" washing. Recently they have not been up to snuff, so Mr. T, Katie, and I decided that we needed to have a little talk about dishwashing. I gave this talk due to my supreme dish washing skills and incredible lecturing talents. 

After a long night of camping with many adventures such as, Kelly waking me up because she thought there was a duck in our tent, Kelly laying on top of me, not being able to feel my toes, and a duck sitting on top of our tent for about an hour we finally got the reward we had all been waiting for. First we woke up at 6:25 to see the International Space Station. we sat chattering about 5 meters from the water and watched the illuminated night sky in anticipation. After the initial shock of seeing it I finally realized that there are people up there right now.

Yesterday Kelly and I combined wellness and still time. We ran about 2 miles to a close by village and sat and did our still time there. As I sat and just observed the people going about their lives I noticed both differences and similarities between this village and XIzhou. I noticed that people there seemed to be rushing around to do things more, where in Xizhou there is a more relaxed atmosphere. I noticed that if I smiled and said ni hao to someone passing by, they would simply return it with a weak smile.

Today is the first day of Microcampus in which we are using our regular day-to-day schedule. This means that today is the first day of WIPPIS time. WIPPIS is a four hour block in which we have time to do Wellness, Inquiry Project, Pitching in and Still Time. This is easily the biggest responsibility that we are given throughout the trip. It is our job to manage our time in a way that we can get everything done. We have to do this without reminders from teachers. This is a huge responsibility in terms of time management.

Today was the day of the daunting 3 hour bike ride. Let's just say that I'm not "the best" on bikes. Let's also say that it wouldn't be unresonable to asume that I was not looking forward to this. While I made progress on my biking "issues", I still didn't feel quite ready for this big of an adventure. We started off the bike ride with heading down the busy street that connects Yang Zhou Ran and Shi Fang Jie. I didn't really "enjoy" that part.

Day 1 was a day full of much sitting, many bathroom breaks, and even more bonding. As soon as I walked into the Microcampus meeting spot at 5:15 am, I could feel the nervous excitement. It was buzzing from person to person with each connection and realization that we made. As Mr.T "encouraged" parents to let us organize and take care of our bags on our own, we could all suddenly grasp what this month is going to be like. We would be responsible for more than we had in our entire lives.