Let's try again

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It's raining today so I'm trying new things. Yesterday evening, Henning, Pam and I went to a talk at the Bookworm. The author has written a book about journalists in China from mid 19th century to 1949. It was a very interesting talk and the author thoroughly enjoyed the whole subject which translated into an enthusiastic and informative session. The glass of wine didn't hurt either.

It had rained a bit while we were listening to the talk but stayed dry until we returned to DongWu. However, this morning it was gently raining and has been ever since. June is apparently the wet month here and so far they seem to be correct. It should clear the air a bit which will be pleasant. We went on the bus ride around the lake on Saturday and felt a bit foolish since it only took about half an hour. It took longer to get to the starting point than to get around the lake. However, the bus driver of the city bus that we took to get to the expo centre actually drove into the expo centre parking lot to make sure we know where we were going, dropped us off and continued with her official route. Extremely nice and quite charming!
On Sunday we decided to bike out to the lake and ride our bikes around. And this is where I was going with the explanation given above. By Sunday morning, we could barely see the ferris wheel across the lake because of the smog/pollution/mist. We stopped at Starbucks for breakfast then continued out to the Suzhou Outlets and stopped there to look around. Very interesting modern architecture and lovely landscaping but a lot of the shops are empty and the prices on the merchandise in the shops we looked at were high by Canadian standards, let alone Chinese. I don't know who shops there because most of the expats don't earn that sort of money. Great housing and often a driver but not high salaries from what I hear. Sunday evening we went for dinner at the home of English friends who live in SIP.

The photos, if I can figure out how to add them, are oleander, of which we have massive amounts. All along the canals and hedges and just reaching the end of their blooming time. The top photo was a couple of weeks ago, by the canal just outside the DongWu gate and the bottom one is down the back alley toward Fenghuang Lu. We pass that way regularly when we want to avoid the pedestrian traffic on our street. Now I'll try to post this and see what we get!

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