Shanghai, Suzhou, Good friends and good times

Lots to write about after my national holiday travels. The story begins with an 18 and a half hour train ride on hard seats to Shanghai. Oh my! I can't even begin to describe what this is like. First off the seats do not recline so you are sitting with your back straight the entire time. As far as leg room goes there is none and then there is the fact that not everyone on the train has a seat so you are surrounded by people who must stand for their 18 and half hours. Sleeping was off and on as much as one could do until you woke up from feeling sore or some limb or the other had fallen asleep. But I was with five other people so we kept each other company and offered as much comfort in the form of leaning on each other as we could. Let's just say that all this was totally worth it.
MISTER DONUT
One of the first things you see when you walk out of the train station in Shanghai is a lovely little sign that says "mister donut." For all those of you out there who are thinking 'donuts who cares its just a donut' you are sorely mistaken. Donuts in China are like ranch dressing...almost impossible to find. This was our treat to ourselves when getting into Shanghai. We sat and ate donuts and drank coffee..it was magnificent. Besides the fact that we all smelled really bad from the train and sweat..we just didnt care. All that was on our minds were how great it was to have donuts once again. Living in China makes you appreciate all those little things in America that we all take for granted like cheese, ranch dressing, donuts, burger king..and the list goes on and on. While we were at this place there was a little Chinese girl, the most adorable little thing. She couldn't have been older than maybe two. She has this plastic fruit which she proceeds to bring over to me and set on my tray one by one and then walks away. SO CUTE!! I can tell you right now there is no more adorable thing in the world than Chinese babies when you are a foreigner (except when they piss on the floor at the post office..on the street..pretty much anywhere they need to go). This was a great way to start off our day.
THE HOSTEL
We then hopped a taxi over to our hostel which was absolutely the sweetest hostel we have stayed in thus far. The rooms were nicely sized and clean. In fact the whole place was in great shape and very modern. The also had a bar called the Travellers Club which is a great place to meet the other people staying at the hostel. I met so many people there. People from Ireland, Guatemala, Chile, England, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, and of course America too. I got along with these people great mostly because there was a pool table and me being the social person (and half pool shark) that I am I played them all. Of course I did my little 'this is my first time playing' charade and then proceeded to amaze when I was actually good. This one guy I met from Ireland (Nial pronouced Nile) was an awesome pool player and actually just an all around awesome person. These guys I met from Germany also played and they were just great to hang out with. I love meeting new people especially from other countries. Weirdly enough one of the guys asked me what my family name was and I told him it was Wiele. Turns out this is his first name. We were instant friends. I got numbers from everyone I met so that we could keep in touch since most of them are here studying and will be in China for about as long as I will. I met this guy from California who is just about as cocky around the pool table as me..we were also instant friends. His name was Issac. There are pictures that were taken by this big group of us and they have promised to send me the pictures which I will add later since I do not yet have them. Before all this though we got to the hostel and took all of our stuff to our respecitve rooms and immediately showered since we smelled of what I can only describe as dirty feet and B.O. After this we all gathered together to go and explore the town.
THE CITY AND NANJING ROAD
We took the subway over to Nanjing road which is comparable to Michigan Avenue in Chicago except much bigger and with way way way way way way more people. It would be impossible to depict the incredible amount of people that are all over in Shanghai. I thought when we went to Beijing that there were a lot of people but OMG so many so many. We walked on this road for a while taking pictures and stopping every once in a while to get directions to the bizarre. The bizarre was freaking amazing. There are so many little shops with all sorts of trinkets and things to buy. They dont bargain with you like in Beijing which was kind of disappointing but hey I can always go back to Beijing to get the price I want. I did end up buying a pair of house shoes that are pretty sweet. When we got there we first went to this garden which was absolutely beautiful. We spent an hour or so there taking lots of picture and just enjoying the scenery. China also has a funny way about their signs. I have included one here. Wo I China (I love China). We walked around the bizarre for a while longer and then made our way over to Jin Mao tower which is this incredibly tall building right next to another new incredibily tall building. We took the elevator up to the 88th floor observation deck and stayed for a couple of hours taking pictures and taking in the sights. One funny thing is that since there were seven of us we had to take two taxis. There are three girls who have the best Chinese of all of us who usually do the talking when we go anywhere. These three girls all got into one taxi and left the other four of us to another. This we didnt seem to realize until we were in the taxi. I knew where we were going and what it was called so I told the driver and we were on our way. It all worked out in the end as we did make it to our destination. Woohoo! The view was amazing even given the fact that pollution in China is super thick and we couldnt see that far as you can see in the pictures. But all the same it was still spectacular. After we left there we were all starving as so decided to try and find a western restaurant to eat at since I mean we are in Shanghai and can get really good western food. We spent over two hours looking for food, walking up and down the Bund (the big river in Shanghai) and did not find anything within our price range or what kind of food we were looking for. In the end we ended up eating Subway which made us all very very very happy. After that we were all dead tired from all the walking around and so decided to go back to the hostel. The girls all wanted to go to bed but I thought that was a waste so I went with Armand (the french guy we were with) into the Travellers Club. I am so glad I didnt go to bed. Going to bed would have made me miss a great opportunity to meet lots of cool people. While I am all for the sightseeing and what night I am also a party girl at heart and love to be social. Armand and I spent from around 11 pm until 3 Am in this bar and I dont regret a second of it. The others wanted to wake up so super early to be able to walk around and all that. Truthfully I think that spending all of your time sightseeing and going to bed early so you can get up early is kind of a waste. You miss all sorts of other parts of traveling by just doing this. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing to want to go out and see all sorts of sights but that is only one small part of traveling. I refuse to miss out on the night life just to be able to see 8 AM. I met so many great new people that I feel that it made my trip that much better. The next day we woke up fairly early (the others much earlier than me) and we made our way back to Nanjing Road to do a little window shopping. The great thing about China is that not all the shops are on the main road. There are all sorts of salesmen walking around with little pamphlets saying "shoes, watch, bag, sunglasses." They take you into these back alleys where they have little private stores set up where you can buy all the designer things you want at very not designer prices. I got myself a cute little Chanel wallet after visiting several shops to get the price I wanted to pay. After a little shopping we stopped off at Burger King and had ourselves some whoppers. Oh the little things in life how sweet you are! The girls then wanted to go and see some sort of art district and me not being the most arty person absolutely did not want to go. So Armand and I went on a boat cruise instead. For 50 Kuai we spent an hour on a boat on the Bund and I am so glad I did not go to the arty stuff. Dont get me wrong I dont mind seeing art and checking out things like that but I cant spend forever starting at one exhibit like the people I was with can. I know I would have just been a damper on thier fun and there is no harm in to each his own. The boat ride was wonderful and I got a lot of great pictures from it. After that Armand and I made our way back to the hostel to wait for the others. Mind you we spent an hour on the boat and almost an hour getting back to the hostel where we found out the others were hardly even finished with their artsy tour. I told them not to rush as this was their kind of thing and I hate to be a downer on whatever brings people happiness. So Armand and I spent the next few hours drinking Tsing Tao (Chinese beer), playing pool, and meeting great new people. One thing that did tick me off a little was the fact that the day before I had suggested we eat lunch before we went to the Jin Mao tower because I was already starving then. Then it had taken us so long to find a place after that. Well then the next night as we are waiting I get a call from the others that they are done and want to go to dinner. I ask them where they are and tell them that Armand and I will meet them. They ask me well should we wait for you or should we just go ahead and eat? I told them they should wait and we would be there soon. They called back a minute or so later to tell us that they would not be waiting. So while the others ate at a great italian place and had pasta and real salad Armand and I had hostel pizza. Oh well I guess. We waited for the others and played some more pool and then the others arrived and we all got ready to go out. During this wait I met two guys from Guatemala who were really cool. They were looking to go out as well so I invited them to come with us.
GOING OUT
We all got ready and then hopped a taxi to a spot the front desk said was really popular among foreigners. We ended up at this club called Club G something. It was fantastic. I met this guy there named Luca from Italy through the Guatemalans we were with. He was a really nice guy with a girlfriend of three years and we talked about everything. I think I fell in love with his accent and his name. Super nice guy. We partied into the wee hours of the night and finally made our way back to the hostel. This would be our last night in Shanghai and our train wasnt leaving until 10:50 the next day. So I figured we would be able to sleep in a little. NOPE. We got to the train station obscenly early and waited utterly exhausted for our train. I will absolutely be going back to Shanghai!!!
SUZHOU
We got into Suzhou about half past 11 and proceeded to find a taxi that would take us to our hostel..to no avail. We ended up hopping on a bus that did not in fact take us to our hostel but which the hostel had told us would. We then got off the bus and took another taxi to the street our hostel should have been on. We then spent three hours looking for our hostel trying to ask people direction (we had the address written in Chinese and yet still....). We walked up and down up and down this road until finally someone told us the correct place to find our hostel. It had been right in front of us the whole time UGH. We then showered found something to eat and hit the sack for an hour or so. After that I felt so much better. We then made our way to this night market that they have in Suzhou and walked around for a few hours looking at all sorts of stuff..taking pictures etc. It was great. For a while we also walked down the street where earlier we had been searching for our hostel and actually stopped to look at things since we were feeling much better. We stumbled upon this random small little shop that carried western chips and candy. Now in China you can find things like Doritos, Cheetos and whatnot but they taste just a little different. This place had the real deal. We all stocked up, what a great find! After a very long day we went to bed to await our adventures for the next day. The next day we woke up at a descent time and had a great western breakfast at our hostel. From there we went to the silk museum which was smaller than we expected but still a good place to visit. From there we caught a show at an almost impossible to find museum that was entertaining but we didnt understand anything since it was all in Chinese. I have included a video of this. From there we went to the Lingering Garden which was absolutely beautiful. We took lots of pictures and then stopped at a silk shop next door where I got a new pair of silk pajamas for a steal. Then we had dinner at a nice little restaurant and made our way back to the hostel.
HEADED FOR HOME
We woke up in the morning fairly early as we had to catch an early train back to Shanghai to catch our train back to Handan. Another 18 and half hours on hard seats UGHHHHH. This ride was better than the way there though as we all got to sit together which made things a bit more comfortable. On the trains they have a cart that comes by with a guy yelling "pijiu, pijiu" which in Chinese means beer. This guy passed us at one point and Erin yelled pijiu back at the guy who offered her the cart. She got up and walked down the aisle yelling pijiu to the amusement of all the Chinese people (I think it made a dreary train ride for them a little better) and sold two bottles of water for the guy. It was awesome. I cant tell you all how glad I am to have Erin here. Not only has she helped us out immensly getting settled in and helping us to communicate but she has this great personality that you cant help but just love her. We finally made it back into Handan at 4:30 Am on monday and came home to crash since we had a full day of teaching ahead of us. All in all the trip was a great success and I cant wait to travel more. I love it here in China and cant express enough how i feel this is going to change my life and me as a person for the better.
ARMAND
On a side note I want to talk a little about this French guy we were with. His name is Armand and he is the most animated guy you will ever meet. He is funny and just a great guy to know. He is also a sneaky little bastard. The theme of our trip became "where is Armand?" This is because every time we turned around that is the question we were asking. He would sneak off without any of us noticing all the time and it became sort of a running joke for us to ask "where is Armand?" He is not a teacher like the rest of us but here on a job for 5 months. He was a friend of Kim's roommate who needed someone to travel with. I am so glad he came with us. Coucou Armand. We love ya!!

All pictures are relatively in the order as I have described my trip so just follow along and you will get an idea of where they are taken at. And the video is uploaded on the following blog.
Until next time....