This is posted once again...

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Well we finally got internet here at Zhejiang University. The problem is that many of the websites are blocked. After many proxy tries and fails, I was told that this website works in China, and so far it seems to work so thats good.

Friday – We got to China around 2:30 in the afternoon on Friday and then took the 3 hour bus ride from Shanghai into Hangzhou. We arrived here after a long traffic filled ride and went to eat dinner pretty soon after getting our luggage into our dorms. After dinner that night, w were all exhausted because we hasn’t really slept much on the plane ride and went to bed around 8 or 9

Saturday – Professor Hong grew up in Hangzhou and his family still lives in this area, so he took us up one of the mountains to go hiking. We hiked Red Jewel Mountain, which is considered by many of the locals to be a “small hill” but myself as well as all the others on the trip would greatly disagree. We ended up hiking for about 3 1/2 hour straight with only one or two 5 minute breaks in between. The mountain as well as the view from it were absolutely gorgeous! We then walked a little bit around West Lake on our way back to campus, and again went to sleep early after the adventure that we had.

Sunday – On Sunday we headed back out to West Lake to explore the lake a bit more. We had to take taxis up there since we didn’t know how to walk there and finding 3 taxis because you have 12 people is not an easy thing to do, especially in China where most people use public transportation for everything. The lake is absolutely beautiful though. We took a boat to one of the islands in the lake and walked around there for a while taking in all the beautiful scenery. After that we rented small electric boats that we got to drive around an enclosed area for an hour and it was very relaxing. We then took a trip out to Walmart and stocked up on traditional chinese snacks and fruits.

Monday – We had orientation Monday morning which got all of us excited because we thought that we’d finally get the codes to use the Internet. We were wrong. They told us the people that we needed to talk to in order to get Internet but that didn’t help much at all since they were having problems with it. We also had our first statics class which doesn’t seem too bad for now. Professor Hong is teaching us that class. There are 7 americans and 11 chinese students in the class, so I hope they dont mess the curve up too badly.

Tuesday – We had statics again, yay! The mechanics class is 2-4 in the afternoon while ours is 9-11 in the morning. We’ve wanted to hike the mountain that is right by our dorm but haven’t really had time to so we decided to do that yesterday. It was more than a thousand steps up the mountain but the view was absolutely gorgeous. It was well worth the trip! A few of the guys decided that theyre going up every morning at 6:30 for exercise but I think they’re crazy. Although we are talking about going up around 4:30 am soon to watch the sunrise from the mountain top which will be absolutely amazing!

Wednesday – Today started off with a chinese culture class at 9. That lasted for an hour and a half and we learned all about Chinese histrory and the different dynasties that have been here throughout history. After that we went to the Hu Qing Yu Tang Museum of Chinese Medicine, which used to be, and still is, an apothecary. The museum was all about traditional Chinese medicine using herbs to cure illnesses. We got there around 11:45 and then were free to roam the museum, eat lunch, and shop on Hefang Street until 2 o’clock when we were to leave. At 3 we had a second Chinese culture course on the Intangible aspects of Chinese culture, such as art, sports, customs. It was very interesting to learn about all of it.



Well the food situation is better than I expected. As most people know, I am a very picky eater and don’t like much at all (I brought a lot of snacks with me just in case). But I will eat some of the food here. I am still not a huge fan and people ask me if I really eat anything at all, but a lot of the food I am ok with. People have learned that we always order cucumbers because its one of the few things that I will eat. The fried rice here is absolutely amazing though! It is a lot different than a home but so delicous!!



I would try to post pictures of some of the things that I have been doing, but with the proxy being so slow and unpowerful, I dont think that it would work very well, if at all.

Until next time,

Sara

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Photos

Red Jewel Mountain
The American Students at Red Jewel Mountain

Mountain
View from the top of Red Jewel Mountain