A couple weeks ago we had a holiday weekend that lasted 3 days, it was very nice to know that we would have time off. Friday afternoon came along and a friend of ours in the college program let Ashley and I know that she was going to Nanjing for the weekend and we were invited along with. So Ashley and I decided to go with her and stay in Nanjing until monday when we would return to school for tuesday. As the afternoon got later the three of us met up to eat dinner and then take a taxi to the bus stop which would drive us to Nanjing. Ashley asked if I had my passport on me and i jokingly said "no..." (though i actually did) at which point Zoe stated that she did not have hers with her. We were slightly low on time so Ashley and I went to the bus station to wait for zoe while she went back to get her passport. Ashley and I made it onto the bus and began waiting for Zoe to show up. the problem was that it was about 5pm and it took her almost a half hour just to get back to the dorm. when she finally got to the dorm, grabbed her passport and went to leave she could no longer get a taxi. Basically every taxi that was driving past the school was busy and had someone in it. So as our bus left for Nanjing, Zoe was unable to make it there in time for the bus and had to wait until the next day to go to Nanjing. Two others luckily came with us (Robert and his wife Wei-Ling) and so wei-ling was able to speak chinese with the cab drivers in Nanjing and take us to our hotel. the bus ride only took about 4 or 5 hours, but we arrived at close to midnight so we were tired. When we finally arrived at the hotel after walking down a dark allyway we come to find out the hotel is not necessarily the "nicest" hotel around, as it allowed for rooms to be charged by the hour. We were to tired to look around for other hotels and so we stayed the night and woke up around 8 the next morning. we all decided it would be best to find a better hotel (and safer) to sleep in so we checked out at around 9 or 930 and had breakfast. the breakfast was a regular chain that had baozi/jiaozi food and some noodle dishes. After calling some hotels we were able to book a hotel. Zoe arrived soon after and so we went to the hotel to drop our stuff off and begin looking around the town. After a while of shopping we stopped and ate at a fairly good place that translated to "return flavor", it was a lot of simple dishes (kind of fast food like) but overall pretty good. After this we continued to walk around and decided to get massages before going to bed. The shops were fairly standard, mainly clothing shops and trinket shops, though i wasnt really able to find much of anything cool. the next day we ate breakfast at the "pacmans" chain that exists all over china, it was not as good as the hangzhou pacmans though. We went to a shrine that day (Dr. Sun Yet Tsun's burial area) that was extremely large, and literally wandered around there all day (around 6 hours or so). The bus back was EXTREMELY packed, before we even got on the bus we werent sure if all of us would make it onto the bus or not. literally 50 people were shoving to try and make it onto this bus, luckily we all made it on without too much problem. We went to a korean restaurant where we had fairly good sushi before heading back to the hotel to sleep. We again rested and awoke the next day to head home. We decided to buy train tickets to head back, as they were cheaper and were supposed to be nice and easy. the train ride was supposed to be about a 6 or 7 hour ride back (instead of the 4 hour bus ride), but we were ok with that. the train ride ended up being super packed the entire ride there, oh... and it was delayed at took over 10 hours to get us back. We arrived in Hangzhou at about 4am (keep in mind this is now a school morning/day) and took a 30RMB/person (5 of us) hour long taxi ride back to Zheda to get some much needed rest.
the train ride was a very interesting ride, in that at one stop a bunch of farmers got on and sat near us. I assume they had not seen white people very often before as they were amazed that we were on a train going to Hangzhou and liked to ask us plenty of questions. At one point the ones sitting near Zoe literally pulled a WHOLE duck out of a back and began to ate it (well... it was cooked, but it sure had all the parts on it). I watched a movie i had already seen on my ipod but decided i had plenty of time to watch it again (the movie Push), when i finished the movie my ipod died and we still had a couple of hours left before making it back to hangzhou.
The following weekend the group of central students went to Wuzhen, it is an old style town (now inside a city sort of) with a lot of relic type things there. it was not extremely large, but it was very interesting to see the many things that they had. I took a few photos of the area but it began to rain so it was hard to get good photos of everything. The trip was only a day trip so we headed back to Hangzhou and the rest of the weekend was uneventful.
this weekend that just ended was very relaxed, Ashley and I went to Pizza Hut and ordered a half and half pizza, her half was popcorn chicken and my half was... Smoked salmon. haha, it was smoked salmon, with squid/calamari, crab, and to top it off had wasabi sauce on each slice. It is very weird to see the menu of american chain restaurants, most things are normal, but it seems that they like to vary a few things and create dishes that would never really sell in the US (though they are good). Saturday Ashley and I went to a foreign book stored and bought a couple of books (mainly to save for our trip to Xi'an which has a 21 hour train ride... though we bought soft sleeper seats this time so we wont really be bothered by anyone). We then headed back to the college and studied and relaxed. Sunday came around and Ashley and I were going to go to West lake to study/read but it began raining before we left so we had to cancel our plans and stay at the college.
Today has been uneventful, I had another Tingxie (test) over the latest chapter in class and will have my Central History class tonight at about 7. Next week are finals and so I am winding down getting ready to finish the semester and begin travelling around China. I am excited about all the places I am going to (a total of 4 trips in 1 month) going from Xi' an to Huangshan to Tibet to Shanghai. Each trip is a week long while the trip in Shanghai will be our final week in China before leaving to go home. It seems like it is coming up suddenly though I still have the month of May mostly free to explore Hangzhou and take small trips nearby, but then once that month ends I will be travelling a lot before heading home. Hopefully I can blog more, though next week i will have finals and may not have much time to do a lot besides study.
