The last month. It's hard to believe that it's come, and now gone. June was, to say the least, a very fast and busy month. Not only were there classes to teach, but also tests to administer and people to see.

One of my classes ended in the first week of June, but the rest ended in mid-June. What I did was to space out my tests too, so that some of my last class periods were actually testing periods and that other classes had a free time for the last class. The main purpose of the last classes was mainly to get them prepared for their tests and/or to say goodbye.

My last week of testing was the week of June 12. It felt like a long week at times because I was testing all three of my Freshmen classes that week. So that would be 93 students coming in and out of my apartment for conversation tests. Given 10 minutes each pair, I must have logged in about 470 minutes of testing that week. I was very relieved by the time I finished. It could be fun listening to them, but 470 minutes total for me can be a little much.

After the testing was done, there were a lot of dinners and banquets. One, of course, was a banquet the deans and brass of our department plus our foreign affairs officers. We even got some nifty-giftys from them. Most dinners were with friends that we had made over the year, or years for the other teachers. For each meal, I found a common trait. There was always too much food. It's disturbing to me to see so much food just sit there uneaten. It was a shame to leave so much good food on the table, but my stomach couldn't take anymore.

I had two days where I went out to take photographs of the city. We went to different places and saw different things. One of the neatest places to be is the old parts of Wuhu. The houses are small and tightly packed together. There are no wide roads and all the people are outside their doors doing work in the alleyway so that everyone can see each other. One of the times I had gone with Terry and some of the locals didn't think that a foreigner should be taking pictures of such "old and ugly places." On the contrary, both Terry and I found the old parts of town to be full of character and interesting things. For the locals, everything is commonplace, but for us, everything is new and exciting.

One of the interesting places in Wuhu that I saw was a place called Flower Street, or Hua Jie. The street was very narrow, but it was full of little shops. All the shops were owned by local craftsmen who created things like baskets, mats, beds, poles, and buckets. There was a whole smorgasbord of bamboo goodies on that little stretch. My friend said that most of the goods actually went to farmers because the city folk rarely used their products anymore. If I didn't have my friend to explain some of the uses of the products, I really would've been in the dark.

Meeting with students was also a very key part of the last month. Some classes had parties while some classes just came en masse to my apartment to visit me. A lot of them gave me gifts to remember them by. Some were small, but some were downright large. Sometimes they sang; sometimes I sang. We just tried to enjoy what would be our last time to see each other.

Then, the fateful day came--June 30th. All the luggage had been slowly packed in a piecemeal fashion for the past 2-3 weeks and I was just throwing in the last minute things. It was a sort of quiet departure. None of my students came out to see me off. Some were in the middle of an exam that morning; others couldn't resist the urge to go home right after their last exam. So only the foreign affairs office and the department deans were there to see me off. We shook hands, I gave them my business card, and I was off.