Our OCAC 8^th grade school trip to Hangzhou started off with a great start. It was my first having a field trip out of Suzhou with the whole grade. I woke up very early that day, I was super excited, I had to get to school as soon as I could, and not knowing what our trip would be like got me feeling curious and also wanting to get on the bus right away. The minute I stepped into the classroom all I could see were the big luggage’s and big smiles on each and every student. 

 

The first destination of our trip was the XiXi wetland park. This is one of the most beautiful wetland park I have ever been to, I highly recommend this place. At first, I thought this park would be the same as any of the parks I have been to, but as I walked further in, my eyes brightened, it was like a fairyland! Many different types of flowers, plants, fruits, shinny ponds with ducks and fish in it, and also many vacation houses that looked amazing. The first few kilometers were pretty easy for me, I found raspberries and strawberries in the bushes, I confirmed with the biology teacher if these are really raspberries, with the teachers approval I started popping them in my mouth, they were obviously not ripe, because they were super sour! The paths in the park weren’t very smooth, we had to go through many steep stairs and paths, which was challenging because it just rained the other day and the floor was very slippery, I was afraid that I could fall any second. Due to the damp and hot weather in Hangzhou, I was starting to get tired and annoyed. The weather in Hangzhou were one of my dislikes of that place, it made me feel sticky and yucky. Me and my friends were starting to get dizzy, and we didn’t want to walk anymore because of our sour legs. However, the vacation houses got to our attention, and distracted us until we arrived to the end. I was so tired I couldn’t speak, I really hate walking because it takes a long time and it’s kind of like torture to my feet. Luckily, we found a KFC right around the corner, so I bought an ice-cream cone for me and my friend. 

We had our dinner at a not so great restaurant and went to our 10 people dorm……. The dorm was a huge disappointment. The bed was super hard, the blanket had hair from the previous person that lived here, the shower had bugs all over the place, there were no toilets in the room, but at least there was a water            heater outside. The rest of the night we stayed in a big room and played cards for 1 hour. Thankfully we brought snacks and kept our phones and stayed up till late, it was actually pretty fun.

 

The second destination of our trip was the green tea leaf garden. The tea leaf garden was enormous, rows of green tea leaves could almost cover up the whole surface of the mountain. The workers at the supplies station gave everyone an apron, a basket for the tea leaves, and a huge bamboo hat. The tea leaf picking wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be, their were mosquitos and big spiders all over the place which I hated, but at least I tried something new and gained satisfaction from all the hard work. We waited until the professionals were done stir frying our tea leaves and went on with another long walk around the tea leave mountain. This long walk was the longest, the worst, the hottest, and the most tiring walk I have ever taken. After walking six kilometers, the best thing happened, a group of young adults were eating barbeque under the bridge were resting on, a girl in that group must have thought that we were such poor things and ran up with a hand full of barbeque for us ( even though I didn’t get any…).  2 hours later we arrived at a tea leaf museum and made our own matcha, it really hurt my wrist a lot, turns out we were stirring the tea none stop for no reason, because the tea tasted horribly bitter and also light at the same time.

 

The third destination of our trip was the Qian Tang Jiang Mountain. Another long and torturing long walk. This walk was particularly tiring, because it didn’t even count as walking, we were basically climbing the mountain, me knees were hurting so much from all the stairs. Not even being able to walk half of the way, me and my friend started to get low blood sugar, thankfully I packed few pieces of candy. We also encountered a very mean granny with a big axe who was screaming at us and pushing us, which was very dangerous seeing that there were no bars on the side of the road. Many of us emotionally collapsed, but with the help with the people around us we managed to gain a little more confidence and went the whole way. I really want to thank my friends, because even though they were also very tired, they still encouraged me and helped me get through the whole way, this made me believe that even in the toughest situation your friends will always be their for you. That’s one of the things I learned from travelling. Our last walk of that day was tiring but the view was magnificent! It was like walking in a forest with little crooks. It was very fun because we had to jump from rock to rock on the small streams to get to the other side, many people got their pants wet, but it was still the best thing that happened that day. 

 

The fourth and last destination of our trip was walking along the Qian Tang Jiang River. The view wasn’t amazing, all I could see was just few bridges and the river. I was promised that we would see big tides on the side of the river, but sadly there was nothing. We went to a museum about power source near the river, it looked pretty interesting, but I didn’t really look at the museum, I just looked for a place to sit for a short break. After visiting the museum, we went to the best restaurant we had the whole trip, the food was really good compared to the other restaurants we had in the first few days. 

 

The whole trip overall was very tiring, but I liked how we could cooperate with each other, and the late-night chats and snacks in the dorm, and how many new activities I tried during the trip. If the school had prepared a few more activity’s that weren’t walking the whole day, I would have had more fun. 

 

  

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