Goodbyes

We have completed our 6th week of this journey! Sorry for the lack of a Week 5/Week 6 post but I'll write about things that happened in both weeks, don't you worry. The reason this post is titled goodbyes is because this week we had to say goodbye to both our translator, Sophia, and the students from Utah, who were here only on a 6 week program. I have made so many good friends here and it was sad to see them go, but now I have a reason to plan a Utah vacation!
Sophia was supposed to be here with us for 2 more weeks, but her mother unexpectedly got sick, and so Sophia returned home to Xi'an to take care of her. The story of her going away party is a nice one so I'm going to tell that here.
My roommate Stevie had mentioned to Sophie a few weeks into our travels that she wanted to buy a nice tea set for her husband. Sophie said that was a great idea, and she envied him because she wished she had a nice tea set of her own...and we thought "Bingo!! Now we know what to get Sophie as a thank you gift at the end of our trip!!!!" So we asked her to take us shopping to look at tea set, but at the same time we were also secretly trying to figure out which ones she liked best. She took us on the bus to this street with an underground market...kind of like the basements of the shops above but they were all connected. And the market was full of different vendors selling tea, and tea pots, and cups, and whole sets...anything you could ever imagine needing to serve tea! It was a really interesting trip, with so much to look at and teas to smell. Once we had an idea of what to get her, and also looked at things for Stevie's husband, we continued on the rest of the day's shopping adventure...but planned to come back the very next day on our own! So right after class, we booked it to the bus station, waited for the bus to come (I can read bus schedules now, so cool!) and took it back to the same place...found the perfect tea set, bartered with the shop owner, succeeded in getting it for the price we wanted, figured out the buses again, and booked it back to afternoon calligraphy class (because we were planning on presenting her with the gift after class). Needless to say she was very surprised! She new Stevie and I had been sneaky! Our calligraphy teacher wrote 谢谢 (thank you) on the board and then we said our thanks and took a group picture. I know this post is getting really long, but she means a lot to us and we miss her a lot! Hopefully we will be able to visit her in Xi'an when we take our trip there in a couple weeks, but if not I have her email. So happy to have made such a great friend here, she helped us with so much and truly has a pure soul =]