The end of summer, the end of the Tianjin program!

So now that I’ve updated all of you on my 10 day trip (finally), I figure I should let you know everything else I’ve been doing with my time.
First, I have some exciting news: I’M DONE WITH CLASSES!
10 weeks of hellish studying followed by two weeks of “I should be studying”, and I am done!
I finished my final exam today and immediately put on celebration heels and a dress, and am now at Helen’s with August and Melissa, drinking a wonderful yogurt smoothie while reading and… doing this.
I started reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ – I’m only a few pages in, but I’m hoping it will get more interesting.
Annoyingly enough, the hotel we’ve been staying in for the summer is shutting off the electricity and water for the next two days, so they are paying for us to go to a different hotel for the two nights. Very troublesome, since I would like to use these next few days to pack up etc.
Everyone leaves on Monday!!! I am going to take the bus with them to Beijing and just find a cheap hostel to stay in for the what, 20? days before my fall program starts.
I’m looking forward to an opportunity to explore the streets of Beijing. I fully expect to get lost, but I won’t do anything foolish to get into trouble so don’t worry!
So whattt else have I been doing?
When I go out I go to Helen’s, and then dancing! Which is very different than clubs in the US of A. We’ve had some fun nights, returning when it’s daylight, and having to climb over the wall to get back on campus. I am bruised. I don’t go out too often though – one night a weekend at most.
Here's Helen's for you:

We had the first annual Madison Tianjin Rat Race a few weekends ago, set up by Jake and Neil. They did a fantastic job setting everything up – it was an awesome day! Most of the people in the group participated, and we all started it off by gathering at Helen’s for a pancake breakfast, where we were divided into groups of 3 or 4. I was in a group with Rachel, Albert and Drew. I don’t know Albert or Drew very well, so it gave me an opportunity to get to know them and have some fun. The rat race brought us all over Tianjin, and included activities like taking a picture in front of the local statue of Zhou En Lai, getting Chinese people’s phone numbers, going on a fair ride and then taking shots (at least we didn’t have to take the shots before the ride), one member of the team proposing to a waitress, taking a picture at the zoo with a panda, eating chicken feet (a Chinese food I as exempt from since I’m a vegetarian, thankfully), and a lot more.
It was a great day – here are some pictures for you!:

So what else…
We went to guwenhuajie (Ancient culture street, a very popular local attraction – you can buy anything Chinese there (Swords, fans, qipaos, everything!) - last Saturday. We were there for something like 3 and a half hours, and I bought a few things for friends back home ☺ That’s you!
I also bought a kite, since recently while in Shanghai Rachel bought this awesome gigantic squid kite, and I wanted to fly one also! So we got back from ancient culture street and went to the Tianjin Tower park to fly our kites (August, Alex, and Angie also bought one each). It was beautiful! I haven’t flown a kite since I was around five, so I had completely forgotten how fun it is! We flew them or a couple hours, and my kite went so high! Until…Until it dive bombed into a group of children on rollerblades, from like 40 feet up…
It was awful! Thankfully, no one got hurt, but I felt terrible ☹ Watching in slow motion as my beautiful rainbow kite kamakazid into them…

So I’m not sure what I’m doing this weekend, but I’m sure it will involve celebrating the end of the program. I fully expect shenanigans.

Then everyone leaves and I’m…ALONE???

Miss you all, wish me luck in the coming days – I'll be staying in a hostel in Beijing, and I think I’m just going to explore and take pictures, which I will upload here so you will hear from me soon!