Today we started off with some touristy things. First we went to Confucius' Temple, then Confucius' Mansion, & ended with the Kong family cemetery (which is Confucius' family name). At all the spots we had a tour guide who explained a lot about the history of every place we visited, but at Confucius' Temple & Confucius' Mansion I met a new person named Eric (his Chinese name is Feng Lu Yao). We compared a lot about the United States culture and the Chinese culture, and he thought it was so funny that guys and girls switch boyfriends and girlfriends so often and things like that. He also laughed when we said we never ate heads lol. He told us there's one Chinese dish that's just fish heads. But the three things I thought were the most interesting was when he was talking about the huge test to get into college, the political views between China and Japan, and also how he's scared to come to the United States because many Chinese men and women are outcasted when they go there. The test they take to get in college determines what level school they'll go to and everything like that. You can't apply different colleges like you can here. You can only pick one and hope you score high enough to get in. Second was the political views, and I thought it was interesting when he said he respected the people but not the political views in Japan because many people in China hate all of Japan because of the history the two countries have had together. When we were at dinner there was a fly and one of the Chinese hosts called it a Japanese lady and tried to swat it... so that shows you what some older Chinese people feel towards the Japanese lol. The last I thought was pretty sad because I see a lot of foreigners outcasted here in the United States and he didn't know why. I didn't really have a good reason for him, but he seemed kind of frustrated that it is like that. Once we said goodbye to Eric though we headed over to the Kong family cemetery (where over 100,000 descendants of the Kong family are buried) and saw Confucius' grave. The whole cemetery was very beautiful. Afterwards we went to our farewell dinner presented by our hosts from Qufu Normal University. I tasted my first pig head which I didn't realize it was that till after dinner lol. Someone showed me a picture of there's from the other table and I couldn't believe it. Always so many heads at the dinner table lol. After dinner was done we said our goodbyes and thank yous and headed back to the hotel. And that ended Day 10
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