It doesn't seem like long ago that we left home, but sometimes it feels like it was ages ago and I can't believe that we've only been here for 4 weeks. We have settled into life and work in Suzhou and I think it's safe to say it now feels like home. Shanghai was awesome and we loved it, but after living in Suzhou for a few weeks and going back for a day, it seemed as though there are entirely too many people there!! We stayed at the Mingtown Youth Hostel near People's Square and it was great.
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| Our room - Mingtown Youth Hostel |
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| The Bund (whilst under construction) |
went through the Bund sightseeing tunnel,
saw the views from the TV tower and the SWFC tower,
hung out in People's Square,
braved the masses at the YuYuan temple,
shopped on Nanjing Road,
walked the French Concession,
experienced (and were disappointed) the Qupi Lu markets and so much more. People in Shanghai love their icecream and their coffee. They also love their Hershey's chocolate!!!! We found a Hershey's store .. of all things.
We got heckled and invited into dodgy back doorways and alleyways to buy the best fake goods on offer. We fumbled our way through ordering dinners which usually turned out to be amazing and discovered that China really only sells half strength beers! You can buy the most expensive or the cheapest of cheap goods and there are so many chain stores and a variety of department stores that you can really buy whatever you desire. I was disappointed with markets as I thought we'd see more. We went to Qupi Lu as I had read it was great for cheap clothes, but it was just a junk jumble and really not a 'market' per say. It was NOTHING like the weekend market in Bangkok, which to me is still the greatest market I have been to. It's a street lined with dodgy stores, most of them selling the same thing, and then a couple of buildings with about 4 floors of little shops selling a jumble of assorted goods. I inspected so many fake iphones, and fake they were. It was laughable and also pretty tragic and I felt disappointed. The real iphones here cost more than they do at home and the government has blocked wi-fi! I think there are talks being held with apple about reducing the price of the iphone, so i will wait!!! I am not going to buy one without wi-fi though, because what's the point. You can buy electronics galore - who knows if they are real or fake but. Riding the metro (subway) was easy and a breeze to get around on. We saw stars in Shanghai also! I think they must have been clearing the sky for New Years celebrations. We saw and heard so many random crackers and fireworks going off and we still are, even now! After 6 nights in Shanghai, we bid it farewell to head for Suzhou - our new home!
We were picked up (by someone from U-Learn), handed train tickets and waved off at the station. We had no idea where we had to go or what we had to do and were amidst masses of people. Luckily we're smart (ahem) and could interpret what our tickets said, and were pointed in the right direction once or twice ... and we made our train to Suzhou. The train ride was great ... but arriving in Suzhou and having to lug our stuff around was truly not great, but we made it and that's all the matters and it brought a huge sigh of relief from us both. We were met at the train station by a girl from work and brought straight to our apartment. After a 5 minute inspection (standing around in the living room and me busting to go to the toilet, but having no toilet paper and not bothering to search for tissues) we headed off to the local supermarket to buy sheets and pillows and doonas and toilet paper!! as our apartment was devoid of all but furniture. That was an experience. We came home, dumped our stuff and went downtown to eat Italian dinner (of all things - it was Ping Ping's choice!). She is a downtown local and showed us around the old town and it really is pretty by night. It was great to see and we caught a taxi home and had to make our bed (which is extremely hard) before falling into it, exhausted! We had a week before we officially had to start work, but we had a meeting at the office with our new boss on Tuesday morning, then we headed to the supermarket once more to purchase a whole array of kitchen wares. It felt as though we spent so much but we really only bought necessities and all up, our two shopping trips only cost us about $200 which really isn't much considering all the we purchased. I think it all became a bit much for me and I slept the rest of the afternoon away. We had wednesday free to ourselves and i think we explored downtown during the day? I can't remember. On thursday we had to go and watch the other two american teachers from work do a couple of classes and i think on friday we had to go into the office for some reason also. We had saturday free and sunday were back in the office for more watching of classes before I had to take my own classes on Monday!! Talk about being throw into it, but no amount of planning can really help until you do it for yourself.
So that is us making our lives in China in a super nutshell. I have so much more I could say but I will save it for another time. Right now, I should finish planning for tomorrow, organise my clothing and go to bed!
xoxo
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