Doing a little backtracking again...

Day 33 3-?– June 30^th to July 6

Wow I haven’t updated this in forever. Sooo much to be said.

Tons of free time was had, a good and bad thing. Managed to find 394 pokemon and have owned 302. Wooo! I know that’s terrible but hey I wanna catch ‘em all. Help would be greatly appreciated in this effort. (I’m looking for a Deoxys, Celebi, Manaphy, and Arceus. Maybe even looking into buying a ds so I can transfer all of my pokemans). Sorry done being a complete dork not taking advantage of ALL of my time here.

Got a chance to hang out with the new friend Will. I was allowed to invite a few people to the barbeque so I took Sarah and Will along. I really wish I could have taken Zack and J.C. I probably could have now that I look back on that. D:

Sarah and I left Xiaoshan and arrived at our meeting point by the map at West Lake around 11 and then made our way over with Will to Ling Yin. Since we had so much free time Sarah decided to go check out Ling Yin Temple (which is 45 kuai to go walk around just inc ase anyone’s curious) while Will and I went to the National Tea Museum. It’s funny as soon as we got to the museum a museum guide type person asked if we wanted to try some tea. I already knew where this was going but I didn’t expect to be sat with the same lady who did the tea tasting with Drew, Yasmina, and I when I went early in June. How convenient and hilarious. She at one point said I should know all the things she was talking about in Chinese to Will. I remembered some but certainly not all.

We walked back through the rest of the museum that we had missed. Will stopped by some of the mannequins and apparently really liked them. 

 

I think their realistic traits are too creepy for me (go google uncanny valley). I always think they’re going to come to life and grab me or something. I managed to get over this little fear long enough to take pictures with the things. (It was here that I learned my camera has a setting for taking photos in museums where it may not be allowed – LOL)

Oh and we had the barbeque July 3^rd because we’re just that cool. We had burgers, potato salad, apple pie, peach cobbler, cookies, and Chinese beer. At some point some people started playing beer pong. After things started to wind down we decided to set off some fireworks.

Ish was so cash yo.

 I really regret not taking any photos of our silliness on the 3rd/4th. I got to meet the rest of the ACI crew and geot a better idea of what was to be expected at Zhejiang University (Fuquan campus!). Although when I left the party I met up with Sarah (she had left to help Will find his way to his bus in downtown) I found a man with no arms writing some calligraphy. It was amazing but I had to grab Sarah to show her. 

I tipped him and he gave me one of his scrolls. This guy is so cool and I hope I can find him again and request some family/friends names if at all possible. Maybe just get Wilkes and try to frame it when I get a chance. Or even laminate. Hmm...

Went back to Hefang street where Sarah and I found an interesting little gag shop like Spencer's, or my Fairbornians, Foy's. They had all sorts of novelty items like shot glasses that made you think it would actually spill on you and tons of Halloween related goods. The outside was decorated accordingly. 

Really a fantastic end to a fun fourth of July. Happy birthday America. Or more specifically and correctly, USA. You've done a lot of stuff and you're hopefully maturing from the mistakes in the past.

-Kimdolion

Catching Up in Xiaoshan- June 6th

Day 9 – June 6^th

Happy Duan wu day! Dragon Boat festival is today but I did not get a chance to go out to XiXi Wetlands to watch any of the races nor did I eat any Zhong Zhu..? But since I ate some the day before I think that makes up for it. 

Spent the day with Drew and Yasmina. Raining again. But at least we got to the National Tea Museum of China. It was really fascinating. Seeing all of the pottery/ceramic work really made me miss my time in the ceramics room back in high school. I need to go visit Mabes Babe when I return to Ohio. Whenver that is…

Anyway when we were in this one room we played with an interactive camera that would take pictures of you in front of a green screen (of tea fields in the spring, summer, fall, winter, or random other tea related scenery). While we were doing this one of the information/museum ladies/attendees asked if we would like to try some tea for free. Clearly there’s a catch at the end of this tasting but we figured why not. She ran us through the rest of the museum and then up some stairs. On the stair well we saw a massive tea cake (compressed tea leaves to make shapes or other such sometimes with Chinese printed onto them) it covered the wall and was probably about 8 feet long. Or the diameter may have been about 8 feet at the most 12… My sense of feet is terrible… Anyway it was huge.

After our little rush we stopped to a small room with a long dark mahogany? Table and a lot of chairs around it with a lady sitting on one side. She had a pretty fascinating set of stuff set in front of her, fairly small tea pots, glass and ceramic, little animal things that were a dark almost forest green color, and tiny tea cups. The tiny tea cups were the 3^rd best thing in this array of stuff. Oh and tea canisters duuuuh, 

We first tried green tea of the local area, then black or pu’er tea, jasmine, and finally ginseng oolong. /////watching the flower bloom in the jasmine was awesome and the sweet after taste of the ginseng oolong was amazing. I quickly learned that the latter is my favorite. The little animal things turned out to be color-changing pets when you pour hot water on em. I think they were the coolest. The second coolest was the cup/pot (served as both?) that as all white except for two animals, a dragon and a phoenix, that also changed color like the pets. They turned into these brilliant green and orange. Ah I couldn’t resist buying a set when we were shown the shop nearby. Drew also got a color changing cup. I think they might be called Don su…? Augh need to check/verify this. Yasmina bought a tiny cup set thing. One small like what we used and then long and cylindrical. They had very pretty floral designs on them.

We left the museum to check out the Green Tea Restaurant as recommended by Annika. Ended up seeing her there later on as well. We had crab and (fowl?) egg, fried cabbage and pork, drunken soybean (I think it was just slightly salted water), pumpkin and shrimp (more like krill… Shrimpy shrimp as Yasmina called it), a very dry brownie, a pretty tasty peanut butter ice the sand (….something along the lines of shaved ice with peanut butter… As we ate we saw a lot of food go by ( we sat next to a windowed wall), in particular, we saw bread boxes with ice cream on top. It turned out the boxes were completely hollow but still looked really good. Baked anything and ice cream are kind of difficult finds. I plan on stopping by a bakery to see what they have instead of living off of lame choco pies as delicious as these little bastards are.

We returned to Ling Yin kinda damp from the rain and took an hr break to figure out how I was supposed to get back to Xiaoshan that night and for a rest. Decided to try to find the night market of Nanshan road but I think we ended up at the Wushan one. I’m still unsure.

The first shop we actually walked into and checked out was something akin to Nirvana or any of the shops in Yellow Springs. Very heavy scented with incense and oil cones with tons of patchwork or brightly colored (perhaps Tinker :P) clothing. Lots of little knick knacks. We even saw a postercard? Of Chairman Mao that said Chairman Mao is a red fucker in our hearts. I have no idea what that was supposed to mean but it was kind of hilarious to see.

We stopped at a little snack stand with a guy who knew some English. He pointed to the right and said sweet and pointed to the left saying salty. They were 5 yuan and I figured why not? And grabbed a sweet disc. They were like these odd cookies we tried thanks to Travis but I can’t really describe em. They had sesame seeds on top. It was sweet and tasty. We ended up getting a crowd around us as we waited for the vendor to heat up the little baked disc. I’m not sure if they were expecting fireworks to shoot out from the disc, were fascinated by foreigners, or what… It was kind of awkward being surrounded by people with no clear reason for such a gathering. Not quite like a flash mob.

I rushed off though because I had to find my bus back to Xiaoshan. I’m not sure if it’s just me but I really have a terrible time with buses. Even the small bus routes in the PTVA. Gah. I am doomed even more so here. I’ve taken up writing down … attempting to write down the characters for the bus stops. We’ll see if that’ll do me any good. Hopefully I’ll figure it out soon before I run out of cash thanks to cabs…