Last Week

My second to last weekend of the semester ended up completely wasted. Classes were done as was my culture class presenation on the Chinese media, so I just wanted to relax. I pretty much just hung out and didn't do any work until Sunday.

That Monday, I had my speaking class final which was moved up because my teacher was leaving town. With only the Sunday night preparation, I did well. I only screwed up once when I thought he was saying minorities (minzhu) in China when really he was saying democracy (minzu) in China. The format of that portion was pick one of two surprise topics and give your opinion. My other choice was Sharon Stone, which made me think of Fatal Attraction as I hadn't seen the inflammatory comments she made yet.

Tuesday, I went with my girlfriend, Chang Xiu, to Danyang, a.k.a. Glasses City, which is a huge center of Chinese glasses manufacturing. I bought two pairs (one of which has already broken) for like US$19. Chang Xiu bought these colored contacts for her and her roommate. I decided since I didn't have another final until Thursday that we mineaswell go from Danyang to Suzhou, spend the night and sight see in the morning.

We got to Suzhou by bus at about 4 p.m., checked into a hostel and went to the Master of Nets garden. After checking that out, we walked around the city for a bit and went to this place that had traditional Suzhou food.

Wednesday, I went to see the silk museum. It was pretty small and only 7 kuai, but in addition to various silk displays and weaving, there was this silk worm breeding room. I had silk worms in cocoon, worm stage, and nasty-looking full development stage. It was completely disgusting seeing hundreds of these things, but interesting and I took some pictures.

Next was this part of the historic city wall, with a garden next to several canals and bridges. The ticket included a kind of amateur Kunqu opera (I think that's what it was) and a ten minute bought ride. Nice scenery. I was about gardened out already. After that, tried to take a real boat ride, but timing didn't work out. We ended up eating bizarre Chinese fruit next to a river and then heading back on a 4 p.m. train. I got back and studied like crazy.

Thursday morning, my reading class test went OK. There were several questions from chapters he said wouldn't be on the test, which I ended up mostly guessing on. I had only half written my essay that was due with the test, and hurriedly finished it in 50 minutes before our 12 p.m. luncheon banquet. I doubt I got an A, but I think it was a good B performance.

I feasted on CIEE's dime at the luncheon at Swede & Kraut, a German restaurant that also serves other western food. I was so full after chicken parmesan, croquettes, salad, and a brownie with ice cream that I pretty much did nothing the rest of the day except go to the gym later that day.

Friday, I wrote five of eight pages of my culture class paper, which still is unfinished, despite yesterday's deadline. With the banquet that night and KTV after, plus goodbyes the rest of the weekend, there just wasn't time. Not too worried as the professor said, "Just make sure you hand it in before you leave China." I guess he didn't consider my staying the whole summer when he said that, but I think it still gives me a little time. The banquet included our teachers this time, and me and classmates toasted our teachers with baijiu and gave them gifts. Afterwards was a picture frenzy followed by several people singing Chinese songs (2 classmates, 2 Chinese roommates). KTV was the standard fair (sp?) but very fun nonetheless. I went home at 3 a.m., a group stayed out till 7 a.m. though since we had the room rented until 5:30 a.m.

Saturday, I got up around 11 a.m. to say goodbye to a classmate. I spent the vast majority of my day packing. Chang Xiu and I went to see a movie at night. We ended up seeing the Chronicles of Narnia dubbed into Chinese, as of the selection of 6 movies, it was the only one with tickets available at the time. Hung out with people until 5:30 in the morning after as many of them were leaving the next day.

Sunday, I went out with more people who leaving for lunch, finished packing, went to the gym one last time, went to dinner with my roommate this semester, my roommate from last semester and another roommate who's a good friend of mine. After that I puttered around on my paper adding a page. At 10:45, I left on a train with my classmate, who happened to be going to Beijing as well. We had hard seats, which I was kind of dreading, but were OK. It just meant I would wake up every 30 minutes to one hour to readjust myself.

I arrived at 9 a.m. and some of Jerry's (my roommate from fall semester) friends met me at the train station. They took me to the place I'm crashing (another friend of Jerry's apartment) for free until I find a more permanent place. I can live there up to a month until the guy comes back. As of now, it's empty until the other roommates get back in a couple days. It's pretty dirty and thread worn, but for free I can't complain. I went in to my internship at Asia Weekly for a quick meeting. I will be working from 9 to 5 Tuesday through Thursday, starting tomorrow. I got back to my place and walked around for about two hours. Beijing is so huge! It took forever to go such a tiny distance on my map, and I discovered almost nothing interesting, besides a grocery store which sells decent looking cheese.

Right now, I'm in an Internet cafe since where I'm staying doesn't have Internet access. It's one of the seedy World of Warcraft one's you read about in magazine stories about China. It's 11:15 p.m. and really crowded. I have all my pictures on a thumb drive, which doesn't work on the computer I got. Hopefully I'll post some pictures from Suzhou and the farewell banquet soon.