This summer, 10 students and two faculty members are traveling to China to enhance their Chinese language skills while experiencing the country’s vast and diverse cultural landscape. Please enjoy this next blog post below from Emmanuel ’27 as he reflects on a heartfelt farewell to his homestay family, a nostalgic bullet train ride, and the group’s joyful reunion over dinner as they begin the final chapter of their journey in Beijing.
Waking up after a long night with my homestay, I realized that today was the day. I packed my room, and quickly, it looked just how it was when I first arrived. My homestay mom gave me breakfast, and before I knew it, I was getting in a taxi and saying what hopefully wasn’t a “goodbye”, and instead a “see you later”.
I arrived at the CIEE office earlier than the others and watched as Cam, Oscar, Zariah, and Jeanne all arrived within the hour. We all laughed as the late messages from the rest of the group began to flow in, even though the others managed to get there relatively on time. We then boarded the shuttle bus and made our way to the station.
Arriving at the station at 12, while there were some difficulties getting through TSA (I got my sword confiscated, and Isaac got his deodorant and sunscreen taken away), we managed to get on the bullet train early.
Back again at the bullet train, I couldn’t help but be a bit sentimental as the last time I was on one was with my homestay. While we didn’t share a last name or any features in common, they felt like my blood family. From waking up and having breakfast, to having family dinner and watching the youngest son run around, I’ll miss each experience and memory I shared with them. I never learned how to say homestay in Chinese, but even then, I never would have used the word, because they were more like my 中国家 (Chinese family).
We arrived in Beijing around 5 pm, and got on a tour bus, where we met our Beijing tour guide, Li老师 (Teacher). He gave us an overview of Beijing and before we knew it, we were at the restaurant for the first of many group meals. Seated in a private room for just us, dinner was a chance for us all to fully reconnect over a meal, which hasn’t happened since the beginning of the trip. We shared our favorite memories with our homestay, laughed at Brandon’s reactions to a bidet, and watched a Chinese vocal performance. We left the dinner, realizing how close we had grown not just as friends, but almost as a family.
We left dinner and moved into the hotel, and called it a night, looking forward to the following day.
