Host Families

At 8am we moved to the track to find our host families. But before that, we had to do some Kung Fu for the camera. Basically, they just wanted to film Alayne and Sam and it was really funny watching the cameraman jump closer and closer to Sam until she fell over laughing.
Anyway, we were assigned partners and after awkward forced photos with them, we were on our way. As soon as I got in the car, my 12 year old host brother began asking me a whole host of questions, like an interview. As soon as I mentioned that I liked badminton, my host dad did a U-turn in the middle of the road and took us straight to some sports complex to play.
I was very lucky to have a host family that could speak English very well! My host dad and grandpa were fluent and my host mom knew English pretty well. Others had families that knew barely any English at all so we had very different experiences. The family took me to all kinds of sites around the city including a temple (not sure which one, they all kind of look the same) and a kite festival, where my kite was stolen! We went out for meals most of the time but when we did have home cooking, it was actually really good. After the 2 days, we all really missed each other, but it was definitely a perfect time for all of us to have a break from being together 24/7. It was a very different experience from what we’ve been doing but it was nice to be able to see how people actually live here in China.

~ Thomas McGill