Day 7 in China

Today marks the last day of our trip but the most exciting one because we finally get to go shopping. Although we were allowed to shop, it depended if everyone was on time to leave the hotel. Thank goodness all of us were on time and had our time to shop.

We visited the Tunxi Ancient Street to shop. What we could buy there was their sweet desserts, tea leaves and some souvenirs. We had a total of 40 minutes to shop which most of us felt that it was too little. The street definitely was not very long but some of the shops were relatively big and there were really unique things like paper fans where the guy would make something nice out of your name on the spot. The shop had quite a long queue, therefore we felt that we did not really have enough time.

Next, we went to have our lunch and walked across the street to take the West Lake cruise. The river that the boat was travelling on is a man-made river. The view from the river was not fascinating at all but the breeze definitely is nice. I enjoyed the breeze and saw some nice buildings. 

Alighting from the boat, we went to Yue Fei Mausoleum. There we learnt about Yue Fei who is someone who loves the country a lot and fought for the country. His mother carved something on his back about bring loyal to his country. He is said to be buried now at the Yue Fei Mausoleum and there is a nicely rounded grave at the back of the temple. Although we are not sure if Yue Fei is really buried there but people still give respect to him and pray there.

That was the last stop we went before heading to the airport. It's really saddening to be heading to the airport because it means that the OELP trip has ended. We had our own dinner at the airport and checked in right after. We had quite a lot of time after entering the departure hall and we were given coupons to shop inside. We already had our lunch, so we decided to just get ice cream. Some of our classmates did not use their coupons at all, therefore we decided to bless others by buying the ice cream with the coupon and just giving them out to random strangers.

By chance, I gave an ice cream to an air stewardess who is also taking the same flight as us back to Singapore. On the plane back to Singapore, just before we land, she came to my seat and gave me and my friend a bag of things to thank us for the ice cream. It was unexpected as what I did was just give out ice creams because we had extra coupons. Definitely more blessed to give than receive.