SHANGHAI!

Well, after over a day and a half of traveling, I finally arrived in Hangzhou. I missed my flight in Hong Kong and had the luxury of staying at the Regal Airport Hotel for the night, which was perfect because I was beat from the 16 hour flight. At the time I was frustrated that the bed in the hotel room was so hard, little did I know I had a bed made of 2 x 4's waiting for me here in my little room in Hangzhou. I woke up early the next morning, flew into Hangzhou and had plenty of energy for my first day. The city here is packed with people, and with every person comes a bike, they are everywhere, I never thought I'd complain about finding a parking spot for a bike! My first meal here was at a little welcoming lunch for me at Andrew and Stellas apartment a few hours after I flew in. (Andrew is Pinghua Hu's english name, one of the business partners, and Stella is his wife). The first week was jam packed with shopping and showing me the basics of the city, along with of course teaching class. Then my first weekend here we took a 2 hour train ride to Shanghai. A friend from Hangzhou University has a cousin there who greeted us at the train station and showed us the city. We visited "temple square" which was beautiful. It felt odd to see other foreigners there because in Hangzhou we are just about the only ones. It was such an amazing experience to see the temple grounds that were built over 400 years ago. I felt like I was in Mulan! After a couple hours at temple square we of course went shopping! "Shelly" was able to bargain for us and got us some great deals. Bargaining is so much easier when you have the language instead of just a calculator and charade skills.We also visited another huge tourist attraction that is a huge street just filled with shops and resturaunts and is kind of like down town disney. We spent nearly 45 minutes there just taking pictures with a bunch of chinese tourists. For dinner we met up with Erins friend Nico, he is chinese but was raised in Italy so he has a really cool accent. Nico and Shelly were so kind and giving, they helped us back to the train station and we headed back to Hangzhou. Shanghai is such an amazing city!