Goodbye China

The goodbyes started several weeks ago actually, as Ben, one of the medical students in Beijing for the year on a scholarship similar to mine, left right before we left for Portugal.  He celebrated his departure in a typical Chinese way, by going with his friends for kareoke, or 'KTV' as it is called here.  Chinese people LOVE kareoke, and it is even included in some more official business meeting dinners, with kareoke after dinner to let everyone have some fun and break the ice.  I had participated in one kareoke sesson in southern China when I went on a site visit with Adam and Dr. Qiao, but I had never been with my friends.  Instead of singing in a bar in front of strangers, in China you rent a room by the hour and then just sing with people you know!  There is generally still quite a bit of beer involved to get everyone loosened up to sing, but I thought it was much less stressful to be just around my friends instead of random strangers.

Ben, Alison, Adam, Esther, and a friend of Ben's

Adam and Alison singing one of their favorite songs ;)

The next goodbye was the banquet the office threw for us this past Thursday night.  We were told it would be a 'picnic' in the park, but it was actually a buffet dinner at a restaurant in the park, complete with certificate presentations, short thank-you speeches by Adam and I, and toasting.  Adam and I went around to every table with our drinks (in my case, peach juice) and toasted the people there to show our appreciation for their hospitality and help this year.  The food was not-so-good, but it was very nice of them to show us off like this.  Everyone took loads of pictures:

Adam and I with Shangying and Li Rong, our Fogarty twins, and Dr. Zhao, our cervical cancer mentor

Adam and I with Shaoming Wang, next year's Fogarty, and Hao, last year's Fogarty

Some students from our 6th floor office

The central guy is Unench, one of our better friends from the office

Everyone eating and making toasts

Dr. Qiao with us

After the picnic, the rest of the Fogarty folks got together for dinner and smoothies as we are all leaving China around the same time.  We are all heading back to different medical schools and probably won't see each other much after this, so it was a little sad.

The next day was my last day in the office, and I spent much of the day running around delivering goodbye gifts and saying goodbyes to people.  In China, you give a gift when you leave, and your closer friends will give you a parting gift back.  I got a set of really nice scrolls to go on the wall, along with some other 'schotsky' as Adam would say - things that sit around and collect dust, but were super nice of them to give.  After all the gifts were passed out and Adam  had left for the day due to having nothing to do, it felt weird in the office - no one wanted to work like normal, since it wasn't normal, exactly, but it was hard to know what to do otherwise.  One of the students, Luliang, solved the problem by breaking out his guitar and we had a minor jam session in the office.  We carefully kept the door shut in case any of the teachers from down the hall should wander down, and enjoyed ourselves.  Luliang played several Chinese songs, and then he asked me to play one - turns out Chinese students know 'Take Me home, Country Roads' just as well as American students!  I love singing and listening to others play the guitar and sing, and somehow this ended my last day at work on a good note.  Somehow the music expressed my mixed feelings of sadness and excitement about leaving, and I feel like all of us kind of connected with those feelings and each other through the music.

Sun Huikui showing off his new Western bandanas

Lu Liang playing the guitar