Feb 11-14, 2010

February 11-24, 2010

That was A LOT of fun! I met Caleb, Dad and Linnea in Shanghai on the 13th where we checked out a couple temples, the Yu Yuan Gardens and a huge market place. We continued on to Wenzhou on the 19th and pretty much took it easy until the 22nd when they left to go to Beijing. Fangyu (a girl I met in Calgary through Bob; Dan's uncle) invited us to join her family for a new years dinner. It was a really yummy lunch with most foods that were recognizable. I did try turtle soup, pork tongue and ear though.

I don't suggest the ear, it was weird. All the days after that were pretty much us being typical tourists.

The temples were neat but pretty touristy so I don't think I really got the full effect. There was a fancy fire pit in the middle of the court yard where people took incense and prayed, the Buddha was huge and there were smaller statues lining the walls. I'm not really sure what they all represented, but they did look pretty cool. The Garden was incredible! It was so pretty and serene. One day I would like to do something like that to my back yard. There were fish ponds and rock walls, lots of trees and flowers, and little resting houses to sit and contemplate life. It was truly a marvelous sight. The market place was VERY touristy but tons of fun! We learned how to barter properly and ended up walking away with lots of cool buys. I came out with a very pretty tea set, two traditional Chinese dresses, a jewelry box, a kimono house coat thing, a calligraphy set, a stamp that has my name engraved in Chinese, a pearl necklace, some mittens and about 8 scarves. I think we walked 8 hours a day everyday we were there.

Coming back to Wenzhou was nice. We pretty much just relaxed and putzed around a bit. I had my first experience with getting sick. There was a tap in Dad and Caleb's hotel that was labeled drinking water, it was next to the normal tap. Either way I ended up puking the whole night away…:-S lesson learned; don't drink from any tap no matter what it says!

They headed off to Beijing leaving me in my grey metropolitan Wenzhou. I had one day to relax before returning to school. I caught up on laundry, relaxed and read a book. It was one of the best holidays I've had.

School was good; I had a whopping two classes on my first day back and was finished by 10:30 in the morning. My first class was filled with 3 year olds I think there were about 8 of them; a few of them cried the entire time. The second class was better. They were a bit older and half of them were at Jordan's School the previous semester so they knew the drills and were more involved in my games. I wandered around the city after my classes not really doing anything except adding a bunch of stuff to my "I want it" list; like an electric drum set for only 5600 RMB which is $875 CND (they are about $6000CND in Canada) I have to think carefully about this purchase though as it is almost one full paycheck. :-S. There is also a dress I tried on that's sooooo cute I'm having a hard time not running back to the store this instant to buy it. It's 600 RMB but that's fairly expensive. I'm not sure the usual prices for dresses outside of the shopping malls, but I assume it's around 100 RMB.

I have made a new friend named Jody who wants to learn better English so we have decided we will teach each other. I went shopping with her once so far and learned that she has expensive taste :-S ha ha.

I have caught yet another cold. This one is more sneezing though, I think it's the same one dad caught. I can't wait until my immune system gets used to this air and can start fighting all this garbage! Well I guess that is all for now, I will talk to you all soon. Xoxo Julia