Off to Summer Institute/Estrogen Room

• Final exam
• Instead of a typical written exam we went on a scavenger hunt through Kunming to accomplish some tasks and we couldn’t use any English at all
• It was a lot of fun and especially helpful that our teacher repeatedly told our class "You guys should REALLY know how to say, 'Where is the Provincial Library in Chinese"

• The easy one was trying to find the Yunnan Provincial Library which I could have sworn was a place that I had been to before so I convinced my group that we could walk there
• We had our teacher with us as our supervisor to make sure we didn’t cheat (she took my map of Kunming away from me but it was in Chinese so it really wasn’t that much of a help anyway) and we got to what I thought was the library so our teacher took our picture in front of the wrong building
• We eventually found it and I deleted the photo of us in front of the wrong building just for pride but we got a lot of other good pictures out of it too

• The most fun tasks were those which didn’t involve trying to find something
• Singing a song
• It took us forever to find a Chinese person to sing a song with us because Chinese people are just so reserved 
• We finally pried a song out of a 10-year old boy (whose mother had to chase him down after he ran away in terror) and luckily he picked a Chinese kids song that has the same tune as "frere Jacques" and "Are you sleeping?

• Playing the game
• Then we had to find one person to play this Chinese game called "The Eagle and the Chicks" where the chicks hide in a line behind the mother duck and the Eagle tries to grab one of the chicks
• It's a great linebacker drill:  http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa112498.htm

• Got lost at the end
• We got really frustrated at the end because the last landmark the final wanted us to find was by this restaurant which we had some difficulty finding but we found it
• Then our teacher gets a call and our boss tells her that we found the right chain of restaurants but the wrong location
• This causes me to become a heat-seeking missile and become completely oblivious to everyone around me so I end up finding the landmark but then I realize I'm all alone
• Luckily I passed the final but I was still pretty frustrated
• KTV
• Later that night we got our first experience of KTV compliments of Teach for China
• It was really fun and I noticed that we really Americanized it because instead of the reserved Chinese way of sitting back in the leather couches and singing a song all of us Americans crowded around the TV and sang Adele as loud as we could

• Trip to Lincang
• We had way too much luggage
• I think all 13 of us ended up bringing about 3 bags with them and we had a heck of a fun time trying to stuff all of these into the cabs

• And as you can see by the picture below, we effectively boxed out people so that we could get all of our baggage on the train

• 8 hour bus ride
• The title says it all but it wasn't that bad
• We watched Kung Fu Hustle and Mission Impossible 4 in Mandarin on the way there but if I had to choose it would be transportation by train all day, every day
• I did love the scenery though so if you're going from Kunming to Lincang I say take the bus but by 2 seats for yourself so you have some legroom

• Arrived in Lincang to the estrogen room
• The Summer Institute is being held at Teachers University in Lincang, Yunnan, China and I love the room they put me in
• You can tell girls lived there the semester before and it's just so funny that they didn't take any of the decorations down yet