New Pictures!

Yes, they're finally here.. sorry about the delay! This first one is from Friday, May 18th - Thursday, May 24th. It was hard limiting my pictures to just 60, but hopefully they'll still give you a good idea about what I was up to:

End of Week 2 & most of Week 3

This Album is Thursday, May 24th to Saturday, May 26th so it only has 22 photos in it for now- I'll definitely let you all know when to check it again :)

End of Week 3 & Week 4

Miss you!

-Shanghai Noon-

It’s crazy already being back in Nantong after that crazy fun week of traveling, but I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of sleeping in the next few days… Luckily it’s only Saturday so tomorrow I can sleep in as late as possible! But yea, as for the rest of our trip in Shanghai, we definitely did a lot of walking and sight seeing. Yesterday (Friday) I started the day off by having the good western style breakfast at the hotel (good means best I’d had yet… definitely nothing compared to mom’s scrambled eggs and bacon!) and then headed to the subway station with a group of people to check out a science and technology museum the Professors recommended that we see. The subway was surprisingly clean (I think it was cleaner than Chicago’s subway station Jennifer!) but the museum wasn’t all that cool… It really reminded us of the Seattle Science Center but there was a lot of stuff still under construction, so I felt like we weren’t able to see most of the cool exhibits that weren’t done yet. But they did have a spider one, where they had a preserved body of the largest spider in the world… yea it was definitely dinner plate size- not cool!

After taking the subway back to Nanjing, a popular shopping street in Shanghai, we got lunch at McDonald’s (which miraculously tasted just like the McDonald’s in America) and shopped one last time before going back to the hotel to get ready for the Acrobatic show we were seeing with the whole group. The show was pretty cool, but we had seen a lot of it already in the one we saw back in Hangzhou so only a few acts really stood out, like one where 5 guys on motorcycles drove around a giant metal cage somehow without ever missing a beat or hitting each other! That night I decided to stay in to give my foot a rest and just hung out with Shaina and Kristian and watched movies on HBO.

Today was check out day, so once again we were woken up by a phone call, packed, got some breakfast, and met the group down in the lobby. Before heading back to Nantong though we still had some sight seeing planned, the first being the famous Pearl Tower landmark of the city. It really reminded me a lot of visiting the space needle, but supposedly it’s over twice as high- I just wish there wasn’t so much pollution to I could’ve seen more of the city then what was just around the tower! After that, we stopped by the maglev train station, which claimed to have a ‘bullet train’ that could reach 430 km/hr. Well the ride was ridiculously short and we actually reached 431 km/hr, which I believe is around 260 miles/hr… yea, pretty crazy stuff! It was weird just to take the train to a destination and head back, but cool just so we could say we had at least been on it and not just seen it. By this point I think most people were ready to head home, but we had lunch and then another visit planned to a huge museum full of ancient Chinese artifacts covering 4 whole floors… So my plan was to take the express tour and at least LOOK at everything and only read portions of the information they had on each exhibit. My technique worked well, but unfortunately the people I was with couldn’t keep up so I got a little ahead of them. While this happened, a women passed me who I swear looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out exactly who it was… Well I passed her again, and again, and finally it hit me- was that Cameron Diaz? Suddenly I found myself more interested in finding out if I was right instead of reading about the history of the Chinese monetary system… but none of the guys thought it was her. Yea I was ready to bet 500 yuan it was until Tony, a guy on our group agreed with me, and we even heard her talk which basically guaranteed that it was- no one can copy that voice! So that was pretty random, but it turns out she was traveling all throughout Asia promoting the release of Shrek 3- who would’ve thought she’d visit that museum!? SO random…

Well after powering through the museum and getting my 3^rd starbucks of the trip (yea, I found 3 different locations… I now know where I’d live in China if I had to!), we took the bus back to Nantong which is where I am now, exhausted and looking forward to lots of sleep. Once I post this there will hopefully be three more before it and if I get on it, two more photo album links will be posted as well- so enjoy, and thanks for reading my rambling.. I really appreciate it! Feel free to give me feedback on the pictures and posts, and maybe even a couple videos that I hope to post soon too- love and miss you all!

Hangzhou and Shanghai, China

So I sadly don’t have internet here in Shanghai (unless I want to pay for it… yea, I don’t!) so sadly the last two posts I wrote haven’t been posted yet either… I have a feeling I’ll hear about this from some family member (probably Jennifer) so I’m sorry about the delay!

So following my last post… the next morning, after our crazy fun first night in Hangzhou, a bunch of us were not too excited about this boat ride on West Lake we were going on. It was nice and relaxing I’m sure, but I got a little motion sickness and the lack of air movement made me feel pretty gross and sweaty from all the humidity, but that was something I was getting used to by that point! The boat took us to a park like area with a pond that was pretty much orange from all the coy fish in it! From there we went to another park, known as the Yellow Dragon Cave, but the cave part wasn’t really as cool as the rest of the park. We wandered around there which was definitely a bit trying for my foot, so I tried to take it easy and rest. We ended the day by visiting the #1 tea plantation in all of China which was definitely the highlight of my day because their top quality green tea sobered me up and helped relieve some pain associated with my leg (which at this point I had only told Jennifer about because I didn’t want the parent’s to worry about a bad bruise). But before we could get back to the hotel, the tour guide suggested that we see a show that was supposed to be the best in the city. What he meant by show we weren’t quite sure, but at dinner the group leaders got everyone to agree to atleast check it out. We had seats in the upper balcony kind of in the back (but what could we expect for deciding to go so late!) and when the show started, I don’t think there was a single person who wasn’t on the edge of their seat for the entire thing. It was definitely more of an acrobatic/kung fu/crazy stunts show than anything else! There were so many dangerous looking stunts pulled (half of them done by children) that I swear they wouldn’t be legal in the U.S., but I guess atleast no one got injured! The show definitely made the long day worth it, so some people continued the day by heading out while I once again headed in to give my foot a rest.

The next day, Wednesday the 23^rd, I woke up with another fabulous 7am wake up call, packed up and got on the bus heading to our final destination- Shanghai! On the way we visited another water town called Xitang. I think the main purpose of going there was because Mission Impossible 3 had a few scenes filmed there, but the town itself was no where near as cool as Wuzhen… and on top of that it had the most polluted water I had ever seen and it smelled worse than anything I can describe with words… yea, it really was that bad! It was still cool walking through it, but it was another humid day so most of us just wanted to get back on the bus and head to the big city. It took us a few hours, but we eventually made it to Shanghai where our first stop was a pearl shop where we learned about how pearls were made in China. We then checked into our hotel, got a nice shower/nap in, and met in the lobby to take a cruise around downtown Shanghai. The view was amazing- I got a couple nice pictures but it was so dark out that even with all the bright lights of Shanghai most pictures didn’t turn out. While on the boat I also saw the English district where Grandpa Z told us he was stationed at the end of WWII! I looked and looked for the Royal Pub but I had no luck and just decided to try again later. That night everyone was pretty exhausted and most just stayed in and either hit up the hotel’s bar or watched TV until falling asleep.

So today, I had an actually GOOD breakfast in the hotel, and headed out for our first entirely free day of the trip! I walked with Professor Bintong and about 8-10 guys of the group to an area of Shanghai known as Old Town where we shopped a lot and enjoyed my FIRST STARBUCKS of the trip! I had heard there were many American restaurants in Shanghai but seeing a Starbucks was definitely like finding a gold mine… Yea so after that amazing experience, we shopped a little more and then I headed in early not only because it was the most humid day ever, but my foot was swollen again..! Yea, if we didn’t have to walk so much I know it wouldn’t have taken so long to heal, but none the less I went back to the hotel and probably had the best shower of my entire trip thus far. After resting some I joined a bunch of people ordering dinner from Papa Johns (yea, as in the amazingly good pizza I live off of in Pullman… in China!) and then got ready to hit the town. Blake, a guy in our group, knew of this famous club called Cloud 9 but we didn’t know if we’d be able to get in with the clothes we had available, so we went to a different popular club known as Babyface which was PACKED but still a lot of fun. I headed in early compared to the rest of the group which turned out to be a smart idea because there was some drama, so all in all it was a great first day in Shanghai. The city is so big that there’s no way I can experience is all in one day, but hopefully my foot feels better and I’ll do my best to see more tomorrow-

Suzhou, China

We’re just two days into our first week of traveling and already I’m loving it- it’s a nice change of scenery! Our first hotel that was in Suzhou was really nice, and I definitely am excited about having hot water ALL day long, as well as a western style toilet! But unfortunately we only stayed in this hotel for one night, so today I woke up to the LOUDEST phone ring ever at 7am… we all had wake up calls at that time so we could get out luggage packed and out in the hall at 7:30AM… why? Yea I have no clue because we weren’t leaving until 8:30AM, but it was nice having more time than I normally would to get ready and out of the hotel. At 8:30AM we rode the bus to the silk factory which we had missed going to the day before because we ran out of time. There we toured the entire factory and saw the whole process of how silk was made. Holding the silkworms was pretty cool, as well as seeing the workers making silk comforters which looked like a long and arduous process! Another interesting thing was comparing the efficiency of human workers versus the machines. The machines were over twice as fast, making the process of creating silk fabric look a lot easier than it really was. After walking through the factory we went through the numerous stores selling silk products such as bedding, various artworks, accessories, and of course clothing. Everything was pretty expensive compared to what we could find on the street but like our tour guide pointed out, at the factory it was guaranteed to be the real thing and made there in the factory. So a bunch of people bought clothing while I got some gifts for my family in the last section of the shopping area. Also in the shopping area was a small café and they even had a runway where girls modeled the various traditional Chinese silk clothing that they sold there- pretty cool stuff! We stayed there a little longer than expected, but we were waiting for Shaina to get out of the hospital because she had gone back to get another IV and to just make sure she was recovering alright (long story short, a girl in our group got really sick, most likely because of the food, and needed some medical attention to help her recover faster). We ended up eating lunch in Suzhou to give her more time, where we were serenaded by a woman playing a Chinese guitar-like instrument (known as a Pipa I believe). We then headed on a couple hour bus ride to the water town known as Wuzhen. The town was very different from the cities we were familiar with- there were lots of traditional buildings and things like hand crafted wooden beds. There we also walked through a sort of museum explaining many traditions of the Chinese people and history of the area. After spending a few hours there we were definitely excited to get back on the bus because it was one of the hottest days we had experienced so far. From there it was another 2-3 hours to Hangzhou, the city we were to stay in for the following two nights. Once we arrived in Hanzhou and got dinner, a lot of the group got a nap in and headed out to a popular street we had heard was well known for its bars and nightclubs. I went out with a group of 10 or so and the first bar was fun, and even had a cool band that played some popular classical rock songs. The drinks we ordered there definitely different… like I didn’t know a B-52 was a shot lit on fire, which I then proceeded to blow all over Ryan because being under 21 I obviously had little experience with bars in general..! After about an hour and a half at that bar, we headed out hoping to hit up a few more places along the street but the next club ended up being where we stayed for the rest of the night because it was SO fun! They had amazing service, gave us our own booth on the upper level, and had springs under its dance floor so it moved while you were on it… yea, it might not sound that cool but it definitely was the highlight of my night because we were so ridiculously entertained by it! Unfortunately my ankle started to really hurt which I had injured during the soccer game on Friday so I had to head back to the hotel early, but the night was for sure my favorite night out in China up to this point in the trip!

Our First Day of Traveling

Around 9 in the morning we left NTU and traveled to Suzhou by bus, which involved the oh so fabulous ghetto ferry ride and driving on the bumpiest roads I have EVER been on! I think just about everyone planned on sleeping on the bus but even getting 5 minutes of rest was a challenge. On the ferry boat though I got off the bus to get some fresh air (well, the freshest China has to offer) and help my headache and other motion sickness symptoms to go away (thanks dad for passing that on by the way…J). But while I was on the top deck, I somehow struck up a conversation with two businessmen working for one of the leading textile companies in China. One was Chinese and the other was French, which was really cool because I hadn’t met many other foreigners yet even though I had seen quite a few. I ended up talking to them about business, soccer, education, you name it for the rest of the boat ride and I even took a picture with them before heading back to the bus… too bad I definitely can’t remember their names! Anyways, when we finally reached Suzhou, we checked into our hotel (which was NICE- check out the pictures) and headed to lunch, which was good but the lychee I bought off a street vendor outside of it was SO much better… lychee is everywhere here and I only know of it (and love it!) because of my family’s many vacations to Hawaii where my parents had lived for a few years after getting married. It was nice finding something familiar to me that was sold in such massive quantities and used as a usual flavor in candy/sweets. After lunch we went to Tiger Hill, a popular tourist attraction of a temple in Suzhou where I got some nice pictures. Next we headed to a place called the Administrator’s Gardens which was built in the Ming Dynasty. It was huge for its location, being that it was right in the city. A sign said it was 5.2 hectares but I seriously don’t think I’ve ever heard of the measurement in my life! Anyways, we spent some time there, shopped a little outside, and then had dinner at a restaurant outside of the silk factory we are touring tomorrow. So the rest of that night was free time which most people thought would be spent at the hotel’s pool, but sadly we had to pay to swim, so most of us had a couple drinks in the restaurant in the gazebo in the garden area of the hotel (in the picture of the view from my room’s window). After that I stayed in, because my ankle was definitely swollen and not getting any better, so I iced it and watched weird old movies on the HBO channel on our TV. Pretty packed day if you ask me!

Soccer in China

So we're leaving for Suzhou in just under 8 hours and I'm hardly packed, but of course I'm putting that off till the last minute..! It's our first week trip away from Nantong where we'll visit Suzhou, Wuzhen, Hangzhou, Xitang, and Shanghai. I'm pretty stoked for the 4-star hotels, sight seeing, and of course the SHOPPING

Anyways, I know I haven't mentioned much about what I do outside of class here on the weekdays, and really it isn't much besides hanging out with the other students I'm here on the trip with, our China buddies, and occasionally playing soccer, visiting North Street right outside campus, maybe going downtown for dinner/sight seeing, and of course spending time online and talking to friends and family with the most brilliant software program ever called Skype. Of course I have stories for just about all of these events but probably the best story that sums up just how most of this trip has gone happened Friday afternoon. A bunch of the WSU students were in charge of planning this big party/talent show sort of event and when Friday finally arrived lots of people were either practicing what they were doing for the show, or helping out in some way. So when someone announced that there was a soccer game at 3pm in class, no one really felt like playing because we all had stuff to do. Well, by the end of class our professor who's in charge of the whole program told us that the soccer game was mandatory for everyone to attend either to support or play because it was us against a group of Chinese students and that there would be a local news station there (notice this is EXACTLY what he said).

So shortly after 3pm I made it to the field, not dressed up to play because I had played two days before and then worked out just the day before so I was a little sore and needed a break.. But when we got to the normal fields, we found out that the game was actually on the huge stadium field. A little surprised, we head over there to find that we are actually playing the school's soccer team, there's a decent crowd there to watch, and the news station isn't local, it's for the entire freaking province! On top of that, we had just enough people willing to play and some of them were hurt but attempting to play anyways, so our chances weren't looking too good. As the game started up I really began wanting to play, but I was wearing jean capris and flip flops, and the dormitory was on the other side of campus so the walk alone would take up most of the game. So what did my professor do? He made one of the China students lend me their bike (which was the most rusted sad hunk of metal I had ever seen in my life with the weirdest seat that was so low I looked ridiculous) and told me to go change. After getting used to riding a bike for the first time in years and avoiding the pointing and laughing by all the Chinese students I passed (I'm still not sure if it was because my bike was so ridiculous or because I was so wobbly and unbalanced!) I finally made it back to the game in the only clean stuff I could find that was suitable to play soccer in. The only pair of tennis shoes I brought were these checkered slip-on Vans and I never intended to play soccer in them but none the less they would work. But as I tried to head out onto the field my professor stopped me and said "You can't play in those shoes, they aren't right! Here let’s trade shoes". Now my professor is a 5'7 small Chinese man that definitely had smaller feet than me but he refused to believe that and continued to take off his shoes. After getting over the slight awkwardness of the situation and him telling me that I indeed did have giant feet, I ran out on the field to play.

The game went well other then the fact that most of our team realized they were horribly out of shape and some even got a little banged up. I unintentionally tripped a guy so bad that my left shin bruised deeper then anything I've ever experienced before... and with my turf burn right above it from a previous game I played in I definitely looked like I had been beat up or something. All in all it was a fun 90 minute game (yea we also didn't know it was going to be THAT LONG) and we lost only 5 to 4.

Funtimes... gotta love being told something totally different than what actually ends up happening! But like my dad mentioned to me earlier today, that's just a typical guy for ya :) Haha- Anyways it is LATE here and now I have even less time till I need to be packed and leaving and I would like to get a few hours of sleep.. Night!

Videos

So I'm not the greatest at operating a camera, but here is a short video I took while inside the temple on Wolff Hill, followed by a video of a traditional Chinese dance. Enjoy :)