Day 16

Well, today was pretty mundane, so I may not write too much, but hopefully I will start to write more often because I’m getting more time to stop and write. Things are sort of becoming routine, and the rush of everything is dying down, which truthfully I don’t like one bit, but I’ll try and go out and do new things, so I don’t bore too bad.

Today I guess wasn’t too boring. We had Chinese class, which means from 9:30-4:10 we don’t do anything, but after we did play soccer with some Chinese kids. I don’t know what I did, but my knee has hurt for about a week straight, and soccer really didn’t help that, so I’m going to try and not play every day. It was fun though, and super nice to actually be able to do something active. It was even nice enough to not have a jacket on! The weather here is pretty good but rainy. The temperature, except for the first few days, has stayed at about 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit. They say that in about a month it’ll be 80-90, which excites me to no end because I love that type of weather, but they dread it for some reason. Maybe they don’t appreciate it because they don’t have to deal with our tundric winters.

Yesterday after I already wrote the blog, we went to the Wushan Night Market, which was pretty interesting. They had all types of different things for sale like electronics, clothing, shoes, lighters, and a bunch of food stands. Though most of the clothing was for women, and the biggest size of shoe they had was about a 9, it was really fun. I got what I think was a meatball on a stick, but I’m not sure. It tasted good though. I also bought a knock off pair of headphones for 25 Yuan, which is like 4 dollars, so a pretty good night.

So, this weekend we’ll be going to Shanghai, and I really can’t wait. I’ve been looking up places to go see and places to go eat at. We’ll only be there from Friday until Sunday, so we’ll have to be running from place to place to try and see everything, which sounds like it might not be very fun, plus it’s supposed to rain. Great. But I’m still sure it’ll be an amazing time. The weekend after this one we’ll be going to Beijing for spring break. We’ll be there for about 3 days, and then it’s open-ended so we can choose what to do for the rest of spring break, which is amazing. I’m not quite sure where I’ll go or what I’ll do for those couple days, but I was thinking maybe going to the Gobi desert, staying in Beijing, possibly going to Taiwan, or working my way back to Hangzhou and stopping in small cities to see rural life more. One thing I don’t like about the big city is how similar it is with the USA. Not that that’s a bad thing, but they don’t practice many traditions here.

I’ll definitely write when I get back Sunday night or Monday. I didn’t have much today, but I will after this weekend. 

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Here's another picture of a courtyard thing in-front of a temple.