Hangzhou

We only have 15 minutes before our internet goes down tonight. We only paid for one night, so here goes.

Today we toured all day starting at 8am.  We began with a bus ride to West Lake where we waited for some people to use the bathroom. That was a half an hour! Evelyn came back with a popsicle.  Then we got on a flat Chinese ferry boat for a ride around the lake.  It was beautiful. There were many different types of boats in the water. It was beautiful with mountains on three sides and pagodas all around.  I gave the rest of the junk toys away to kids and one family wanted to take a picture with me because they were so excited about it. Their one yuan has a picture of these three small pagodas in the Lake, and we were able to see it. Evelyn didn't take in much of the lake because she was chatting away with an Chinese family and two Chinese teachers who wanted to practice English. Evelyn said there was water fountains shooting out of the water, but I missed that!

Next we went to a tea plantation. It was simply beautiful. The tea was growing on terraces in the mountains, and forests. There were four kinds of different teas, the inferior they export.  You could taste the tea if you want, and then of course they want you to buy it! They told us that the green tea has lots of antioxidants, and you should drink one after every meal.

We then went to lunch. They usually 15 dishes.  

Next was the Budda Temple. There were over 300 buddas carved in the mountains, and there was a cave with some it in. There were lots of gardens to walk around in. There were thousands of people there. Bonnie said she is sick of so many people. Wants to go home.

Then we went to the Yellow Dragon Cave Park and watched some musicians play Chinese instruments, and Chinese Opera.  Very nice. I three one yuan (15) in the luck pond, but missed.

Finally we headed to dinner, and ate the same type of thing we had for lunch, except for the addition of chicken feet. I had a bite. Evelyn chickened out!

3 of us headed for wonderful feet massages, and now we are home to pack to leave tomorrow for Guilin.

Hangzhou

We toured Suzhou in the morning and went first to a leaning tower of pagoda. We could not go up into the pagoda because it has problems and is leaning, but the gardens around it were very beautiful. There was an older man in the park that must have had a stroke and couldn't move one side, and he was drawing these beautiful pictures of different areas in the park. He wouldn't sell them...but he would show anyone all of them.

We next went to a silk factory. We watched how they would soak the silk worms, then attach a thread to a machine and collect the silk. Fascinating.  We were then sent to the store, but I just  don't have room to bring home a wonderful silk comforter. I did pick up a couple of pillows. Don't know how I will get them home!  I better buy a new suitcase.

We had a buffet lunch, which was pretty good. They tried to make American food. 

Then it was off for a 3 hour bus ride to Hangzhou. We stopped once at a rest stop and took a picture for Mike and Rich of some fish that was vacummed packed! It looked very interesting! We thought of you fishing in Alaska.

Hangzhou is the 5th most popular tourist site in the world, according to our tourguide, Henry.

There are 30 million tourists that visit here each year. 7 million people live in the city, and it is twice as big as Shanghai. Doesn't seem like it because there aren't that many tall buildings.

75% of the world's shoes are made here. Hangzhou Travel Guide: Hangzhou Tour, Hangzhou Hotel, City Map

We went to another pagoda, and climbed the stairs, or took the elevator. We met up with our other friends that went to Tongxiang. That was exciting to see all our old friends again!

We then went to a shopping street where our tour guide tells us has lots of local crafts( sound like craps, which a lot of it is). Jon Marie and I found a McDonalds and treated ourselves to dinner. Then off to a yummy dinner. Chinese food! Very tasty. Another 13 dishes to choose from. Our last city was spicy food, this city is more sweet food. We even had fried bananas in a hard coating. 

Finally to our new hotel where we will be for two days. We were disappointed to find out we have to pay for internet! So, we will only get it for one 24 hour period.  We are cheap, or are we just out of money?  Ha Ha! Re-dick-o-us, as our tour guide is constantly telling us!

 

Suzhou Hangzhou

Photos:

Early morning in Suzhou. Doing laundry and eating breakfast. Buying lotus root on the street, and the friendly policemen.

Another wonderful day of touring, and the weather was not too hot!  We got up at 5:30, and I went for a walk around the hotel. I think the best part is being able to walk around and really see the city, and not just the tourist sites they take you to. You really get a feeling of how the people live when you do that.  And no worries about getting lost....you just show someone your hotel card and they point this way and that way and you eventually find it!  Besides if you really get lost you can catch a taxi!

After my walk and shower, Evelyn and I headed out for a little walk. We had heard that the hotel breakfast was horrible, so decided to skip it and head to the bakery. I met up with a nice policeman who spoke English. We were just standing there thinking about being brave and crossing the street when he came over and asked how he could help us. We told him we wanted to cross and he said no problem, stopped the traffic and we got safely across the street.  I told him about my son being a policeman and we had a nice photo together.

We found the bakery, and another snack shop and loaded up for the day!  They had these really yummy buns with a meatball inside that they were cooking. I stood in line for a couple.

 Evelyn has been sick again, so she didn't really eat all day, fearing for the torture of having to find a bathroom. She made it thru the day, and seems better. The sickness has hit several people in our group. One guy was miserable all day, but we couldn't stop and take him to the hotel, otherwise we would miss our tours.

Suzhou

Pagoda at night, garden with Evelyn, Jon Marie, and Mary. Diane in garden. John Marie with her new friend!

We have traveled by bus for three hours to Suzhou. Pronounced shoe-show.  It is a much smaller city than Nanjing is. We passed many factories and farms, including duck farms. Yum! This city is known for its beautiful stone bridges, pagodas, and gardens. It is also known for its silk factories. 

We arrived here and went directly to a beautiful garden called The Humble Administrator's Garden. There is a story behind the name, but too tired to write it tonight. It was a beautiful garden, but crowded because it being Sunday. I had a bag full of junky presents that the students so nicely gave to us, but we had no room to take them. I handed them out to kids on the way. They loved it!  We walked around for an hour and took pictures and enjoyed the bonsai garden along the way. A couple of people had to go back to the bus because the crud has hit again. Terrible stomach flu. I haven't had it yet....knock on wood!

We ate a typical Chinese lunch, always they give us too much to finish. Then it was onto the hotel for a short 30 minute rest. We then headed out to a silk embroidery factory. It is just simply amazing the artistic pictures they create out of sometimes single pieces of silk. There was a Mona Lisa piece that looked just like the original, and all done by hand.   People begin to learn the art at age 15 and go to a basic school for 5 years. At this point they can make 1200-1500 yuan a month (about 175-200$).  Slave labor, I call it!  They can make more than 2000 a month if they have at least 10 years experience ($285). They can earn bonus's for finishing faster. One girl was demonstrating and had been working on a beautiful piece with storks on it, for three years.

I would have liked a beautiful panel that cost 12,000,00.00 ($17,000) but I controlled myself.  I settled for a much less expensive piece featuring birds. On one side the flowers are yellow, but the other the flowers are red! Amazing!

We had dinner next door. Another typical dinner with way too much food. But yummy!  Yea Chinese food!

We then headed to the canal for a boat ride on a junket to see the beautiful lights at night. This city has many canals and is very green. There is no honking allowed in the city! What a huge change. Peaceful and quiet after the noise of Nanjing, and our bus driver honking every minute at anything!

  

Last Day and Closing Ceremonies!

It was a cool day!  And I mean weather wise. I couldn't believe it, but it felt like Alaska at the highest temperature!  We really didn't sweat today!

We are exhausted after packing up for leaving tomorrow!  The kids showered us with gifts over the last couple of days!  We even got gifts from the school at the closing ceremony. We had started an exchange table in the workroom so that if you didn't want a gift someone else could have it, and you should have seen the treasures. Everything from stuffed animals, ceramic vases, Hello Kitty, Olympics stuff, beaded creatures of all sorts, snowglobes up the gazoo. We all tried to keep the nice things like silk embroidery pictures, blouses, jewelry, chopsticks, fans, and Chinese cups.

We spent time in our classes reviewing and playing games. I did Bingo and gave away all my extra books, paper, magazines, pencils, and candy.  Evelyn's group spent their precious learning time practicing for the program, all three days of it! While the rest of us taught and worked, she sat and sang, Celebration!  I'm not jealous!

We had our usual lunch of rice, soup, red stir fried cabbage, greens with tofu, meatballs that didn't really taste like meatballs, egg custard..........ugggg, looked like boiled blood, and a yummy yellow sponge cake. The Chinese people don't get cake.

Patrick, our Chinese helper, sat with me at lunch and talked about recruiting teachers. I asked what he would pay me and he said 10,000 yuan a month (About 3,000 a month for both of us).  He said he would pay my husband that also. He would provide us housing and a driver to take us to school everyday. He even said Kevin could come and either attend the school, or go to the American school.  Hey Rich! What do you think?  I think we investigate it! We could get rich, Rich!  We could travel all over Asia on our breaks. And they include airfare too!

The program started at 4:00 and it was fantastic! We all had to stand on the stage at the beginning of the show and they had children come up and present us with gifts, a bag with a book full of pictures drawn by the kids, and stuffed teddy bears! Large!   Too bad most of us have no room to take them home!

There were several teachers who were chosen with their class to perform. From our Alaska group, Lisa, Sue, Evelyn, and Mary were in the program.  There were rollerbladers, tap dancers, singers, magic acts, folk dancing, and  more. Very well done. 

The show ended after about an hour and within minutes the gym was cleared and parents were taking their kids home! They were excited to start their one month vacation.

We came back to the hotel, went for a foot massage, and then started packing. All the gifts we couldn't fit in went into several bags and we took them out of the hotel and passed them out to people, including kids, to take. We were quite the spectacle! Wonder what they thought of us!

Off to tour tomorrow for several days!  They are storing one of our bags for us at the school, and will deliver them to Shanghai when we are ready to leave! Yea! Less to carry around for a week!

Underwear

On the bus ride to school our boss, Sally, always gives us an update for the day, sets up massages for the evening, and gives us a pep talk. Sally is Chinese, and although she lives the states and has for a while, still thinks and speaks as a Chinese person, speaking without guile and with honesty, not even realizing that it might be better said in private. She is wonderful. The cutest and nicest, person and has never meant to embarrass anyone, we all love her!.  This morning she asked for who was in a room # and then told the girl that one of the buttons was missing from her pants when she sent them to be cleaned. They just want to make sure that we don't blame them for it. Anyway, the next room # she called was for Dave. In front of the entire bus of teachers she said, "The laundry people called me and are holding a piece of underwear because they want you to know that there are holes in it, and they don't want to be held responsible."  There was dead silence.  And then the laughter began, and went on and on. It was classic. Dave was a good sport about it. I asked in a loud voice, "Just where are the holes in the underware?" More laughter!  And then, "Could I have a picture for the blog?" I know there were more comments going on in the back of the bus! We were all having fun with it, and poor Sally didn't understand why we thought it was so funny! She did not mean at all to be funny, just stating the facts!

I don't think we have laughed that hard in a long time.  To protect his privacy I have only included a side shot of him! But not his underware!

Happy Shopping!

Everything is an adventure!  We stopped by the supermarket on the way home after the dinner for a couple of items. The market is on 4 floors and you have to walk clear across the whole floor to get to another level, therefore you really have to shop on most every floor to find what you need. I am trying a new kind of soap because the tide bar makes my clothes stink like mold...could be the humid weather, but we will see.

Anyway, we went thru the seafood section and were amazed at the live turtles, snakes, and frogs. Yum!  I didn't take a photo of the duck or chicken feet, but they looked really yummy! Too bad we don't have a way to cook it!

Enjoy your lunch! I'm looking forward to Chuck a Rama! Or Golden Coral!