Today we went on another excursion! We visited another canal city, named TongLi. It’s like Suzhou, but smaller I think. Today we went with the whole group though, with the moms & the study abroad kids. It was soo fun! It was a lot nicer than Hangzhou yesterday I think, but that’s only because yesterday Hangzhou was SO crowded and it made everything a lot more unpleasant. There were tourists in TongLi, but not as many, so that made it seem so much more peaceful. We went to two historical sights, one was a tour of a wealthy family’s home and the other was a wedding-themed building. Both were pretty cool..but I think once you’ve seen one Chinese house, you’ve seen them all. They didn’t vary so much in structure and appearance…just in what was inside the house. Anyways, we had a tour guide named Jerry took us around and told us the history behind everything (and our bus driver’s name was Tom :)) and after he took us to those two places, we had free time for lunch/shopping.
Jerry, the moms, Dan, and me & Joanna went to a seafood restaurant because my mom really wanted to have some seafood. It was delicious, as always :)
After lunch my mom REALLY wanted to take some pictures dressed up in old Chinese garb (there were opportunities all over the place, because TongLi is such a tourist town…basically, you rent the clothing for 10 yuan and then just take pictures with your own camera). So we dressed up in super embarrassingly extravagant clothes, and everyone walking by gawked at us because we looked ridiculous and also because we spoke English, and we wore like 10 layers of clothes and it was super hot. BUT, it was all in good fun. And now we have something VERY memorable…so that was good. Then, we all split up and I went with my mommy shopping around for a little bit. Everything was so cheap, so my mom bought a pashmina scarf and I bought some bread-ish-like thing (I don’t even know what it is..its kind of like a cracker, but like flatbread too) to eat later and also to bring back to America for gifts.
After that we went back to Shanghai, which took a 2 hour bus ride through which I completely slept through. Then me and Joanna showed the moms around the neighborhood (at least where we go), so they saw student street and all the good places to eat nearby.
Then, since it’s Dan’s birthday today, we took him out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. The food was like Cantonese-American; they served a lot of Western food but also Cantonese food. They even served kimchi quesadillas! We didn’t get it though…maybe we’ll try it later. It was a pretty good dinner though. And it was cheap! Only 150 yuan for 5 of us (= $4 per person). Plus, their menu was translated into English and it had the greatest names. There was "Peanut with disabilities" and "Many jam with disabilities." We weren't in the mood for disabilities though, so we didn't order it.
After that, we took taxis to Wanda Plaza (Wanda guan chong) to eat dessert. Dan chose to eat at a Haagen Dazs, which is a lot different here. It was like a sit down restaurant, and they give you a menu and all. So, we ordered 3 dessserts which were AMAZING (see pictures). It was INCREDIBLE. Usually I don’t eat Haagen Dazs, but I really liked it here because the ice cream here isn’t as sweet as it in the US because the Chinese don’t like sweet stuff. So everything was like mildly sweet, and it was DEEELICIOUS. I ordered some Japanese bento-type thing, which included a green tea cake, red bean soup w/ almond tofu, 3 chocolate-covered ice cream balls, and some fruit. Joanna ordered a giant ice-cream filled cream puff tower, with 8 different flavors of ice cream, each scooped between two cream puff-like pastries. And Dan chose a tiramisu ice cream cake. It was sooo good :) We’re all super full now though…I haven’t been this full in a while. Bleh :(
Anyways, tomorrow it’s back to work! This weekend has been too much fun. Me and Joanna are totally forgetting about our work. Tomorrow we have two company visits, and then Nikki, Joanna, and I need to work on our project. This is the last week of the international relations course! Then I get to start learning Chinese :) :) :)
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