its time to goo back

i couldnt believe it... our trip came to end. it was time to say goodbye to east asia and all the people we had met. the last day we rode our bikes for the last time to hikone castle. i was actually sad to leave my bike. i had grown fond of it.:) (the bell was the best part)
so that day happened to be the day me and Ting didnt wake up! We were supposed to meet downstairs at 830am. It was 855am when Jessica (Dr. Pengs wife) opened the door to our room and was like "wake up we have to leave!" Me and Ting jumped out of our beds and got ready within, no joke, 5 minutes we were downstairs. I mean we were getting ready as we walking down the stairs but yeah we made pretty good time :)
We got to the castle and it was so pretty. The blue and white architecture was amazing. The stairs was a battle to climb, but thats one thing this trip did, built up my endurance level. The one and only Hikonyan was there and posing for pictures. As we stood in line I looked around and realized, wow this is it, I will back home this time tomorrow. the tour guide took us around and explained each of the rooms to us. it was very interesting the amount of time and effort in creating one single item.
On our way back, me and Lauren were on our bikes heading back to JCMU. We followed Kathyrn and Bob back but we lost them in the process and were lost in Hikone. We figured no big deal considering Hikone is so small and being here for a week and riding our bikes everywhere that we would be able to figure it out. But to our surprise we were lost for a good hour. Riding back and forth, asking the locals to help us. But Hikone is a small city and English wasnt popular. So when we asked for direction it was confused faces both ways :) ... finally we found Lake Biwa and followed it back to JCMU. We ran and had 3 minutes to pack and be downstairs with everything cleaned and returned and have been checked out of our rooms. I was like a chicken with its head cut off. I was running back and forth trying to return my bike, cleaning out the fridge, packing and bringing down the bedding. It was a mad dash to finish because we were leaving for Osaka that night. I was finally done and we loaded into the bus. We said our goodbyes to out the students we met at JCMU and vowed we would stay in touch once they came back to Michigan (hopefully we do :D)
We ended for Osaka were we would stay in the O'hare for the night to catch our plane at 6am.