Movin' on up to Hangzhou

---

After being in Shanghai for about two days, I head to my destination for at least the next year, Hangzhou. Although I had been in China for the past two summers, I have actually never been to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is located southwest of Shanghai by about an 80 minute train ride (if you catch the speed train). The city is best known for its lake called Xihu (or West Lake because the city was originally built to the east of the lake. Now the city surrounds the lake). The Chinese have taken great pride in Xihu and it has become somewhat of a mythical lake with many folklores revolving around it. So expecting nothing and everything, I made my way on to the train to Hangzhou.
When I disembark from the train with all my bags, I try to make my way to find the person from my program that was supposed to meet me at the train station. I almost run over an elder lady because my back on my chest blocked my vision for short people, or most Chinese. As I come out of the terminal, an excited young lady comes up to me and shouts my name, obviously she is the one who is supposed to meet me. Her name is Karen and she becomes my best friend over the next couple of weeks in helping me set up my life in Hangzhou, from internet or bank accounts to translating most of the menu at the local restaurant. She is a graduate student in education also Zhejiang, but her classes are at a different campus. I ask her how she knew it was me without me seeing the name card she had made. She says there are no other tall white guys on the train (which she was obviously correct about).
So begins another adventure where I am the only white person around me. One of my friends pointed out that I must like attention because everyone must always stare at me being the only tall white guy around. I don’t know if that is true or it’s just that white people don’t know the coolest places to hang out, haha.
We pull into my neighborhood which is on a hill above my school, and we go up to my apartment which is on the second floor of a walk up. The program advertised ‘western style’ apartments. I do not think that my apartment qualified in any way, shape or form as western. Although the bedroom was a decent size, the A/C unit was broken (and would not be fixed for three days… now I have stayed in many hostels in the steaming jungle with no A/C, but those were more of an adventure. This current situation was more like I was jet lagged and needed to have a nice place to sleep, but it would not happen for the rest of the week. This constant lack of sleep led to my swine flu scare - see future post).
The bathroom made cruise ship facilities feel like a luxurious bathhouse. It was basically a closet with a toilet in one corner and a shower head in the other with no sink or mirror. This was quite shocking at first because my favorite part in the morning is staring at myself in the mirror when I get out of the shower (you can never get tired of looking at perfection, haha… seriously). However, my fears were quelled when I found the kitchen sink had a mirror next to it. Also, I subsequently found out that have a shower and toilet in such close proximity can be very convenient.
So although they offered to get me a new apartment, once the A/C was installed I decided to forego the normal luxuries of what I was used to because the apartment location was simply amazing. It is about a five minute walk from campus, however, I did not learn until later that my classes were about a 20 minute walk (huge campus), and it is about a 20 minute walk from the lake. Most importantly, my apartment was only about a five minute walk from the main set of bar streets in Hangzhou.
So that pretty much sums up my movin’ on out to Hangzhou… write more later.

---