Hand-painting our own umbrellas in Hangzhou

Today, we ended our short but amazing trip to Hangzhou. To begin our day, we had breakfast at our hotel. When we finished our breakfast, we had to check out of the hotel. This was a bit sad because even though we had only been in Hangzhou for two days, for me, my level of fun had already reached the level of fun that I had experienced in Shanghai. We then left the hotel to go make custom umbrellas at the Workmanship Demonstration Pvillion, hosted by a seventh-generation umbrella painter. However, these umbrellas weren’t going to be waxed so they would not be resistant to rain. We had great fun decorating and viewing one another’s creations as we wondered what in the world they were supposed to be. When we left the umbrella painting place, we ate lunch at a fancy traditional Chinese restaurant. We got to spend valuable time with our friends and peers whilst enjoying great food. From there, we made our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and then to the bullet train station. The train ride was stunning, seeing as we were riding in one of the fastest land vehicles in the world. After the train ride, everyone was really tired and we were dismissed to once again visit our host families.

-Recorded by Stephen Jackson

Today was our last day in Hangzhou and to wrap things up we painted Umbrellas at a museum and it ended up being a super fun experience. Although I am not talented artistically I had fun talking to other people around me and thinking of the most ridiculous thing I could paint on my umbrella to within the best of my abilities. And this was a wrap to our Hangzhou trip we took the bullet train back to Shanghai which took about an hour and it is one of my favorite parts of the trip so far as I am into infrastructures such as Trains and planes a not having a bullet train in America and not having been on one it is possibly a once in a lifetime experience.

-Recorded by Evon Bronner