Day 21: Fin

Today was our last day. We woke up at 8:00 to see Mike off, and then spent most of the day doing accounting and marketing for the park. It rained all day, so we didn't get a chance to see the park, but it is essentially finished, except for a little cleanup. I wrote a one-page, single-spaced, account of the making of the park, which I think will be given to various potential donors. Once I revise it to a final draft, I will post a copy here for those of you that are interested. It's a bit more cohesive than these posts, but it won't give you any new information.

This evening the principal of the local school took us out to dinner at what I think is the only restaurant in Gaoxiang. We hadn't eaten there yet, and although the facility is somewhat plain, the food was pretty good. I'm not sure what it was about this dinner, but Eric's uncle started asking me lots of questions about my life, so I ended up speaking a fair amount of Chinese at dinner. I didn't mind the questions, and it was very helpful for me to practice Chinese. Perhaps the most frustrating part was trying to explain my father's job. He's a consultant, but I don't know how to say that, and moreover, neither Eric nor Cherry knew how to say it in Chinese, so I had to go through a somewhat clumsy Chinese-language description of what he does.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we've spent three weeks (to the day) here. It feels like it went very quickly, but it also feels like we accomplished a great deal. I'll at least be posting to let you know where I am, and I'll also post when something interesting happens. But this post essentially concludes commentary on the park. Obviously that is subject to change if more happens.

Sorry for another short post, but today was another fairly low-key day. Good night.