Finally, I welcomed the highlight of our trip along the east coast: the trip to the Hotchkiss School, a boarding school in which I will spend the next two years.
   I woke up early in the morning, and walked around the inn my family lived in after breakfast. It was a typical New England summer morning, with wet grass, gentle breeze, and warm sunshine. It got a little chilly, so we went back to the room, packed and left for school.
   Hotchkiss was only five minutes' drive from Wake Robin Inn, and when we arrived there wasn't a living soul, except for a couple of squirrels, on campus. The campus was huge, so we walked and walked but had no idea where we were and where we were going. The only people we saw were some old townies on the golf course. I wasn't a huge fan of golf, and I had no idea why it was called a sport. You get to see a lot of overweight people playing golf and are pretty good at it: it's a sport that doesn't demand too much real physical activity, but money and free time.
   The sun started to shine even more brightly, and without guide of any kind we were pretty lost inside the campus, so we decided to drive east to Salisbury, a nearby little town, bigger than Lakeville but still insanely small. On our way to Salisbury we drove pass the Salisbury School, an all-boy private school. I had the fortune to have met one of the kids from that school during the summer camp in Beijing, and it was pretty much the best thing happened in that horrible camp.
   We stopped in between two lakes and had a nice view of both of them. The water was so clear that it almost appeared transparent. All the grasses were visible, and some people were lucky enough to have owned their own decks and motorboats in the area. I instantly thought of two summers ago, when I was in Vermont visiting my friend's host family. They also had their own boat, so we swam and went tubing in Lake Champlain. Having known that Hotchkiss owned part of the lake behind the campus, I felt pumped to think that in the near future I might be able to relive that awesome experience.
  
   It was almost time for the campus tour, so we drove back to the campus, and caught two other visiting families. The tour guide had just graduated from the school, but he still offered an amazing tour around the campus.
   Hotchkiss was huge, but nearly all of the activities were inside the Main Building, which made it easy for students to navigate during the class time. Only science classes took place in another building, and I didn't take any science for the upcoming school year (don't be surprised, I just want to have a different experience), so I would pretty much spend the majority of my time in the Main Building. Besides, dining hall, auditorium, chapel, and the school library were all attached to this building, which meant that I really didn't have to step outside of it except for sleeping at night. This sounded great, because nobody really wanted to get out of the room during the harsh New England winter.
   The students dorm looked spacial and cozy. I had been assigned to a board-day double, which meant that I would be sharing a room that was slightly bigger than a single but smaller than a double with a day student. The singles looked big enough for me, and I really couldn't think of a reason to say not to the soft bed and huge closet. The common room looked nice too (I think it's because the tour guide showed us the largest common room; others were probably half as big as the one we visited), and there were TV, microwave, huge couches and sofas for everybody to hang out and relax.
   We also saw the athletic center, which was huge. I hadn't decided which sport to take, though, but the tour guide shared the same concern when he started as a prep, and he assured me that I would have a great time trying out different sports and making new friends during that process.

   When the tour was over, we met Mr.Iannuzzi, or Charlie, as he would like to be called. Charlie was the associate director at the admission office, and he was my interviewer during my application for Hotchkiss. If not for his help along my application, I would never end up being in Hotchkiss with a generous amount of financial aid. He was really the one to thank for, and he was so nice and accomodating. We updated each other a little bit, and he told me that he would like to visit my old school in Guangzhou this fall when he would be doing the international admission tour. There were already two students in Hotchkiss who were from the school, and he would like to meet more. Also, Guangzhou had a growing population of students thinking of going to America for high school, so he would like to branch out to the city and other inner areas in China as well. Hopefully a lot of kids at my former school would benefit from this idea, and I really do know some students who are intelligent and courageous enough to step out.
   We had a very nice conversation with him, and when he asked me what I thought of the town, I told him that I wasn't intimidated by the isolation of the school at all. People liked to say that Hotchkiss was in the middle of nowhere, but yesterday when we were driving around the school, we actually found out that the main town near Hotchkiss, Millerton, which was in another state and wasn't nearly as far away as it might sound, had a lot to offer. CVS, Grand Union, and some other nice little restaurants would be the main places for recreation in the near future. I thought I would hate this kind of life, but I actually liked it; it's just like the NYC tour: I thought I would like the city but I ended up hating it. There's also a Chinese restaurant in Millerton, and we had such a huge meal there for lunch. My dad missed Chinese food so much that he ordered a table full of rice and vegetables, and he had a great chat with the owner, who, not surprisingly, knew a lot about Hotchkiss and the Chinese students at the school. It would be nice to visit her and the restaurant in the near future, too.
   So everything goes well, everything is good, life's so good, as Charlie has said so many times during our conversation. Going to Hotchkiss is the most successful decision in my life so far, and I hope I still think like that a month later (I'm sure I will, haha).

   In the afternoon we drove three hours to Middlebury College in Vermont. I knew this college through my last trip to the state. I planned to have lunch with my host mother, who lived in Burlington, south of middlebury. The only reason we wanted to visit Middlebury was actually to meet up with her, but we accidentally fell in love with the town. I had always thought that it would be a tiny town with nothing fun to do, but I was proved wrong. Maybe it's because we just came out from Lakeville, which was truly an insanely small town, so under comparison Middlebury seemed big and eventful. But New England summer was awesome, and our walk after dinner was comfortable and surprising. There was no traffic light on the roads: cars all stop for passengers to cross the streets. There were a lot of locally based shops, and major chain department stores had not encroached this place and contaminated the atmostphere. It was a really self-contained entity, with much to offer and even more see. My host mother shoot me an email telling me the places to visit tomorrow, including a poetry trail on which the famous Robert Frost had paced. We were really excited to visit th college tomorrow.

   Now we are staying at the legendary Middlebury Inn; it's much nicer than the inn we stayed last night. It had a really historical touch (like the town itself), though it's full of old people, but the British style afternoon and morning tea they offered made it up.
  
   Every goes well, everything is good, life's so good, as I have said so many times today.