Settling down...ish.

Things haven't been as exciting after settling down on campus, but hopefully still interesting. We just finished 2 weeks of classes and next week we're going to a hospital for clinical work. I think we'll be shadowing doctors or at least be looking at different treatments. I even have a white lab coat and we might get those face masks..which would lead to some very interesting pictures. I'll see tomorrow what we do exactly. :)

Along with classes about diagnosis, acupuncture, massages, and "beauty care," we've also gone on field trips to different places like a herb museum and the national tea museum. The herb museum has some of the strangest things like animal statues...including one deer that has fangs. (vampire bambi?!) It also led out to this street market with lots of food, stores, and a golden Buddha. The national tea museum, on the other hand, was kind of in the middle of nowhere.



Last weekend I ended up meeting up with my family because they were in southern China and then they flew up to visit and sightsee a little bit. It was good seeing them again after the past few months and I've missed my brother and how we always end up doing the weirdest things/having the weirdest talks. We all went to Wuzhen, a village with a canal flowing through it and the town essentially on these small roads on either side, a night market, and around the West Lake. I found hilarious Chinglish signs like the one below:



Around campus, there's this little street market thing called "rubbish street" I've been frequenting to get dinner. I've also wandered around and there are tons of little stores and vendors...that contain many interesting shirts. One example: "muo si ni" which they translated it to "always want touching you" when it's really like "touching you to death."



As of now, I've visited both parts of "heaven on earth," which are supposed to be Hangzhou and Suzhou. A group of us left for Suzhou on Friday afternoon and it was a long, confusing, and very "local" (it was packed, not very clean, full of all sorts of people) train ride there and when we arrived, we stayed at this cute hostel in a very quaint street. It was next to a canal and full of little shops and people just walking around, talking, and old women synchronized dancing to classical Chinese music. The five of us shared a room with a small (shorter than me!!!) Chinese girl who is also from the same area we came from. She was really nice and we all had dinner together before walking around and just talking. The following day, we hit up the major tourist sights like Tiger Hill and the Humble Administrator's Garden. They were absolutely gorgeous (and full of funny signs) and we found lots of cool little spots to rest or practice our taichi/taiji (which we've been learning along with lectures). There are lots of hilarious signs around there too, like "take care of the environment and the environment will take care of your mood," "your health rests with your civilized behavior," and "crowd way. be careful!"



Oh, and Andrew, in response to your comment (I haven't been able to comment yet..), I didn't see too much dancing, but I can definitely see what you mean. With the exception of the random gogo dancers, that is.