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More than three weeks have past since I left now. And yet the only thing I am really missing is playing Dominion with the family. After work Monday thru Thursday, we have English training until 6. Then we take a taxi somewhere and walk around and explore until we get hungry enough to go to dinner a some random new restaurant. Then we either walk around a bit more, or just head home, normally getting back at about 9PM. The internet works at the apartment, but due to its intermittentness, online gaming is not an option, and they block everything close to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, including blogger, so it is not very useful. For those of you that really know me, I brought along 3000 pages worth of books, but I already finished those so now I am reading the one series that Kris brought. And we still have 8 weeks left.

This is Moon Harbor, the expensive part of town right on Jinji Lake. We had dinner here last week with some of the visitors from Portland and then on Sunday we came down here and ate at an excellent French restaurant. It was delicious, but I was very disappointed that there was no bread. But I did manage to order my first thing in Chinese, hua sheng, peanuts. 

On Monday night, we went to a new part of town, a mall near Times Square, which was fun to look around. A bit too far to walk, but at only 10 RMB for a taxi, its very close. It is also very close to the Ferris Wheel Park, but we still have not gotten there yet, but we have been on various parts of the lake from which we can we it, so sometime soon we will get there.

Week 2

My new favorite breakfast. I think we'll probably get this every work morning for the rest for the rest of the trip, for a grand total of $20, at only $0.50 a piece. Its like a thin pancake with an egg on top and green onions and green beans and a sweet sauce. They also fry some of the batter before and then put that in for a little crunch.

Its delicious.

We started English lessons this week. We will be meeting twice per week with each group, Monday and Wednesday, and  Tuesday and Thursday. This week we were talking about travel, and outlining the various vocabulary and pronunciation necessary to get around in America.

Brown Hua, the General Manager here in Suzhou, took us out with the other Americans who are currently here, two of whom made the initial trip to Milwaukee to hire us. It was a fun meal all around, but the best part was when I got my Chinese name, Wang Sì Jì (pronounced Wong Si Ji with the inflection going down on the "i"). It means King of the Four Seasons.

First Weekend

Saturday we went to Walmart to get some more things for the apartment, and some groceries. We ate dinner at the food court.

Sunday, we traveled to the old section of Suzhou, where we visited this Taoist temple, the Xuanmiao Temple. It is on Guan Qian Street, which is a major shopping center, and also a major tourist trap. They charge really high prices for really crappy goods. You can haggle though, but most tourists will pay the 120 RMB for an item when you can normally easily haggle them down to as low as 10-20 RMB.

Afterwards we walked through the streets until we got to the Humble Administrators Garden, one of the four most famous gardens in Suzhou. It was, well, beautiful. It was also one of the first time since I got here that it didn't smell even remotely of smog.

There were many pagodas situated around the garden.

In one of them there were many examples of this, Suzhou Embroidery. It has been around for 1000 years and  this picture hardly does it justice.

Expats

This is the nearby expatriate bar and grill that we went to last night. It was our first taxi ride, and we got there by me writing down a bunch of Chinese characters and showing them to the driver. The cab ride was only 12 yuan, which is like $2. The minimum fare here is 10 yuan. The price per kilometer starts at 5 yuan, but goes down by 1/100 of a yuan for every second you are stopped. So by the time we got done it was 3.6 km at 3.3 yuan/km.

We ate outside, I had the seafood pasta bowl, which included octopus tentacles, and then we went in afterwards where Kris met some Germans, so he went and talked to them, as he is fluent in German, and I played pool and was the reigning pool champ for 3 games running. This British guy was there and was both the guy I beat to start playing and the guy who beat me. After I lost, I headed down 2 blocks to the Cold Stone, which is just as tasty, and just as expensive, as it is in the US. But it was a delicious way to end the night.


Nothing more until Monday now (Sunday night for all of you), as China blocks networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and, well, Blogger. So I write the posts on my computer in Word and then upload them quick when I get to work. The plan is to go to the old part of Suzhou and see the World renowned Humble Administrator Gardens and going wandering down the shopping street, Guanqian Street, filled with street vendors and stores alike.

Exercise

We walked around the apartment complex that we are in, hoping to find something to do, or somewhere to eat. Instead we found, well, apartments. So we headed south to Jinji Lake.

The view was marred only by the constant layer of smog, though I'm supposed to go back there during the heat of August when it sometimes gets burned off on the 100 degree F days. And there is nothing like pollution in the air to pollute the water. There is no swimming anywhere in the city of Suzhou. Or fishing.

Down the shore a bit we found a nice German restaurant, the Münchener Biergarten. Kris spent a year in Germany so he was excited to go.

And, just our luck, it was buy one beer get one free night.

It is a beer, but its a Radler, so its really only half beer. We both ordered two, but I only drank 1 and a half. Surprise surprise. Dinner was a delicious plate of cheese sausages for me and pork for Kris.

Afterwards we headed over to the local art center and movie theatre to have a look around.

We found the Moon Harbor, a little set of shops, probably on the high end, but as it was getting late we just head back home. Another angle of Jinji Lake.

We weren't too far from home, the movie theatre is the pink lights in the middle of the photo, as taken from my balcony. A fun night in all.

Third Day

So apparently the Chinese actually can make some fairly decent pizza.

This is Johnny, the manufacturing engineer. He is pretty cool. Almost all of the managers and engineers speak enough English to hold a decent conversation, enough to get the work done at least. None of the factory workers speak English though, they just laugh nervously every time I say something to them.

Second Day

Well so much for adjusting. This morning I woke up at 5AM and couldn't even fall asleep again. Thank goodness for books as I still don't have internet in the apartment.

Jevous and Sonny took us out to a restaurant that apparently only serves spicy food. It was great. I especially liked the lamb. And the rabbit.

This is Peter, he picks us up on his way to work every day, and then drives us home too.

After work we normally wander the streets around our apartments and this is the little convenience store near us that we have gone to both days now.

Also, new favorite appliance:
The air conditioner. It may only hit 80 most days, but the humidity is almost always near 100%, and I haven't felt a real breeze since we left Portland.
Oh yeah and the whole control for the AC is in Chinese of course so its a good thing video games taught me how to button mash...

The day ended with another outing to do some shopping and dinner at a restaurant that only cost 12RMB, so less than $2, but we probably won't go back as the only meat we found was a fish head...

Those green beans are actually starting to become one of my staple dishes, along with rice of course, they are hot and spicy and delicious.

View

The panoramic feature on my new camera:

This is the view from my balcony.

First Day of Work

I woke up at 5:30 AM, but it kinda felt like it was noon. Forced myself back to sleep until 8 AM, hopefully it won’t take too long for me to adjust to fourteen hours of my normal time zone.

Another nice view off my ‘balcony’ in the morning. That’s not fog though, its smog. I woke up (the second time) to these kids singing and dancing to This Time for Africa.

Breakfast was at Subway, it was just a bit off in most regards. Tasted great, just not quite the same.

At lunch time we went out to the bank and then Walmart. It was a big deal for them when they got the Walmart, but a lot of people think that everything there is too expensive. Its cheaper than it is in the US.

Lunch was at a Chinese grill, where the table is the grill. It turns out that cow tongue tastes a lot like bacon. It was mostly all delicious. One of the soups was actually almost dead on if they were trying to replicate cardboard in broth form, but there was an egg dish that was divine.

Home

After 21 hours of traveling to get from the hotel in Portland, Oregon to Suzhou, China I collapsed into this.

Goodnight.