Suzhou and life since Taiwan

Last week I mostly caught up on work, papers, etc. cuz mommy and daddy nethero are coming on Tuesday! Yippee!!! Last Monday I went to Tianzifang with Magnolia, Sup, and Diggory and we ate delicious “new york style” pizza. It was real pizza. J

Friday we had an optional field trip for our shanghai metropolis class to the harbor new city. When the Expo came to Shanghai, they moved the ports outside of the city cuz that was prime space. Now they’re like an hr away. We went over the longest bridge in china/world? Not sure how long but it took like 20 minutes to cross at about 60 mph. They had windmills and stuff in the water (for research we later found out) so that was cool. We got there and there was nothing to do but look at the harbor.

the harbor. cool huh?...

Magnolia and I trying to find something to do for an hour and a half at the shipping yard... haha

Then we went to a shanghai electrical plant place where we had a tour but it was poorly translated cuz it was complicated weird words that the girl didn’t know in English. We accidentally left without magnolia, but I realized after about a minute so no big. Haha. It took us almost two hours to get home. Sooo annoying.

Friday night we went out for our friend Linh’s 21^st bday and ate delicious thai food at tianzifang. Yum!

Saturday I just did hw cuz we have a test tomorrow.

Today we went to Suzhou. It took us about 20 minutes on the high speed train. Suzhou is a “Water town” outside of shanghai with lots of gardens and temples and such. We first went to the “Humble Adminstrator’s Garden” (great name huh? so chinese), which was actually really pretty.

The Humble Administrator's Gardens. :) changing leaves!

me at the gardens. notice the random chinese man, starting obviously

Then we had a very Chinese lunch, where we accidentally ordered way too much. (my fault, mommy nethero has definitely instilled the fear of never having enough food in me, even though we always have enough for an army- as she would say) couldn’t find a taxi so we took some bike rickshaws, ended up being a half hr ride. Poor drivers… then we went to the Yanmen Garden, which is on the edge of the old town. It had a big pagoda, which we didn’t feel like climbing. We walked around and took pictures. It was nice, similar to the other gardens. Basically they’re all the same within a region in China. Water, wholly rocks, maybe some lily pads, no flowers really. But it actually looked like fall, so that was nice. Leaves in shanghai aren’t really changing…

me and people at the yanmen garden place

at the yanmen garden- looks pretty similar to the humble administrator's right?

Then we saw the moat around the old city and a piece of the old wall that used to surround the city.

me at the moat

Then we searched for coffe shop for awhile, fail. Looked for a taxi for over a half hour and almost took a (somewhat) random bus, but finally find a taxi. So we went to Tiger Hill, with another pagoda. We didn’t feel like climbing the hill so instead we hung out in the street where there were some carnival games and food and such.

Alex trying to shoot balloons

"Oh look, a white blonde person with a gun! Let's stare!"- the crowd of chinese people watching us

We couldn’t find a taxi (Suzhou has a serious shortage of taxis). So we went to the tourist info center and asked them to call one, but they couldn’t. so instead this guy volunteered to drive us. So we put 13 people in a 7 person van. Fun times. Then we trained back. While we were waiting, this crazy fast train flew through the station. America really needs to step up our train game. trains in china rock. And they just built the fastest train in the world, from shanghai to hangzhou (where we went for mid autumn festival break, but we didn't take that train cuz it wasn't finished yet). oh ya, and they build all these trains in like 6 months. I guess that's what you get when you have 1.3 billion people and low labor standards. :)

Note: People say Americans are loud and obnoxious? Those people should come to china first. Chinese people are so loud and talkative, ALL THE TIME. On the flight back from Taiwan last week, the flight attendant actually had to ask the Chinese people to be quiet. And they always sound like they’re mad (yelling), but that’s actually just how they talk. And the women have really high pitched voices, which makes it even better. They also honk excessively, like a “hey what’s up” on the road. I see you. I am not even moving so why are you honking at me? And even if you’re standing still, drivers still want to drive exactly where you are, even though the rest of the road is empty (this applies more with bikes and mopeds). Also the concept of the line hasn’t made it to china yet. (waiting in line I mean) on the subway, they won’t let you off cuz people are so anxious to get on. Getting on the train today and going through the ticket machine thing, this woman in front of me had her probably 8 yr old son in front of her and used him as a pushing device. He stuck his head out so that he was head butting them and then she pushed. A few times people wouldn’t move so the poor kid’s neck got crunched, but no problem, anything it takes to get on first. As if we don’t have assigned seats…silly, silly people.

Anyways, home now. Meeting with a guy from IES Chicago (from the headquarters of the program I’m doing) cuz they picked a few of us to talk with him. I dunno what I’m supposed to talk about with him, just entertaining I guess…that’s it for now!