Today we had our LPI's (language proficiency interview) as the beginning of the end of training. We are all required to achieve a level of Intermediate Low, though I was lucky to come in at around that level, so I was hoping to reach Intermediate High. I think the interview went really well though, so I'm actually even hoping for an Advanced rating, though I don't know if that would really be accurate in terms of my functional communicative ability. Tonight we're throwing a big appreciation dinner for our hostfamilies. We've put together a slideshow with tons of photos of them, of us with them, and of us all over Chengdu. I think they're going to love it. We have the weekend free, though between starting to pack up and planning for classes, I have lots to do. On Tuesday we move out of our homestays and into a downtown hotel for 3 days of final info sessions, meeting with bigwigs, and swearing in.

Things have been pretty relaxed over the last three weeks though the heat and humidity has shot back up now that the students have come back (so ironic -- the only bearable weather was while they were gone on break). As John, one of the other trainees, said: "I think the population of China just doubled... last week everyone had babies and they grew up to be 20 and this week they all decided to enroll at Sichuan Normal!" The campus feels so different with all the students back for the fall semester, and it's really psyching me up for getting back to Lanzhou and getting to know my own students.

Last Sunday around noon my hostfamily asked me if I wanted to go to a park that afternoon with them and and another trainee's family. I figured it would be a nice hour or two long stroll and told them to count me in. Two months in and I can still be so foolish.... An hour later they called me: "Kexin! Kexin! Maybe we go soon." I said, sure, I'll be down in a few minutes. They replied "Okay get in the car now." Okay. We drove for a while and met up with another car where Derek, another trainee, was sandwhiched in the back between his host brother and host brother's little friend, who we christened BobDog for all the BobDog children's boutique clothes he was rocking. Derek didn't know where we were going either. Hostmom told me we were going to a place where the modern peasants were, and when we arrived, it turned out that we were going fishing! In a small concrete pond that I'm willing to swear had nothing but minnows in it. After 2 hours we tired of fishing, and then we played MaJiang for about 3 more hours until the hostfamilies were ready to roll. The Chinese play MaJiang incredibly fast as a rule, and Derek's poor hostdad would let out these huge yawns & put his head down on the table while waiting for us Americans to make our moves. We felt the same way. There was also a children's huge blowup fort behind which they would completely inflate and then deflate in between individual children coming up and wanting to play on it. The air inside smelled like ass as it was released directly at those of us bucolically playing MaJiang, and they would frequently deflate the fort while children were still on it. We tried to rescue a few of the children from being swallowed by the mammoth and foul-smelling collapsing toy, but the waiguoren (foreigners) were far scarier to the children, who ran away back into the depths of the fort.