arrived in hangzhou on thursday. finally got time to come online.
tuesday - thursday
so I got sick already. feels like bronchitis or something - although ashleigh insists it's not contagious.
tuesday we went out for a nice dinner, buffet style. I got to try lots of interesting foods - although there was so much I couldn't have tried everything :) after that we went to the night market, and I bought a pair of sandals. spent 8 kuai, and the girls at the massage place say they were worth about 5 kuai, so I didn't get ripped off too badly. in fast, they first asked for 19 and I said 5 - it's hard to offer an amount that I know is less than what they're worth.
we got a massage after that, and had fun talking to the girls. after thta we just went home, I think.
I'd been coughing a fair bit on tuesday, but thought it was just the pollution... then either tuesday night or wednesday morning I had a big coughing fit, and realised I was getting sick. I vaguely remember being awake and coughing a lot wednesday morning, then somehow I managed to get back to sleep and stayed asleep until sometime around 1, when ashi started watching loud movies. I ended up watching movies with her again - evil hypnotic tv! and made myself some nice ginger tea. that was kinda.... interesting. I managed to buy some lemons and ginger, but couldn't find sugar so I got honey instead. then I had to wash the pot and a cup (well, I started washing them and then devon insisted on doing it), and use a dishtowel as a cutting board, and my pocketknife to cut things... the gas stove was confusing, too. even devon had trouble getting the thing to stay on, and I'm not used to how quickly the temperature changes. if I turn off an electric stove, the water will keep boiling for ages...
somehow we spent the whole afternoon in fron of the tv, apart from the trip out to get food for ashi and tea ingredients for me. eventually me and devon got up and went for another massage. I kinda forgot to eat any real food, so when we walked out I was starting to feel sick. got some food, was only able to eat a little bit of it, then went to the club for a few minutes to say hi to everyone before heading home.
thursday morning I ended up getting up at 8am because I kept dreaming that it was 9:30 or 10 - and my train was at 10:31. got to the train station with plenty of time to spare, and a few snacks to eat. probably should've brought some real food, but my stomach was feeling funny and I didn't think I'd be able to eat much.
I managed to sleep a fair bit on the train. now it's nearly 4, and I think I might reach hangzhou fairly soon :) it's been a crowded train ride most of the way, and I picked the wrong pair of pants for sitting in all day, so I'll be quite glad when I can get off. although I'm not looking forward to getting my suitcases off the train... some nice guy helped me get them on. I'm not even sure if the aisle's wide enough for me to carry both at once.
oh, and there was a little girl on the train earlier with a t-shirt that said 'critical mass'. lol :) I wonder whether her parents were aware of what it means, or if they just got it because it had pretty bicycles on it...
thursday-saturday
so I ended up playing travel games with people on the train, and then the girls that were getting off at my stop helped me with my luggage :) I got a taxi to yuquan, but the taxi driver didn't know where liuxuesheng lou was, so he dropped me vaguely near it, and some other guy said he'd take me there... he took me just past it, to some student hotel thingy, and they eventually figured out I was in the wrong place and sent me to the right place. I didn't have enough chinese to figure out what was going on, but some other student showed up and helped translate, and I got a room. I'd just put down my things and gone back to the front desk, and the rest of the group was there :) our rooms are all over the place - mine's on the first floor, pete's on the 4th, ivan's on the 6th, and the rest are in a different building altogether.
we all had dinner together, then went to bed. friday morning we wandered around campus, then after lunch we got our bank accounts and some photos for the mounds of paperwork we'll have to go through on monday or tuesday. the bank took a long time - but they had a computer giving out numbers, so we didn't have to stand in line. mostly we sat outside, where it was a bit cooler.
me and james went with cynthia to the hospital - he had some rash because he was allergic to penicillin or something. it was weird, but a lot cheaper than I expected. got antibiotics and some chinese medicine, turned down the tylenol and cough syrup (I brought a whole bottle of buckley's with me).
back in my room, I moved furniture around so that my air conditioner wasn't blocked - and then discovered that when I plugged it in, it flipped the breaker. darn thing had a short circuit. I managed to tell the front desk that my air conditioner had a problem, they said to go back and wait for someone to come... but after a while it was dinner time. I went to go tell them I was going out, and as near as I can tell, they said the guys that fix the air conditioners were eating too.
that evening we wandered outside campus to find some place to eat. after that we went looking for ice cream... at some point ivan and james went home, then when we got to where we though one haagen daaz shop was, it wasn't there. pete bought an ice cream cone at some little shop, me and him went home, and tina and jon went looking for the other haagen daaz. supposedly they found it two hours later. :)
saturday morning I had to wait for the air conditioner guys again - I was told they'd come sometime after 8:30, and I think it was pretty close to that... I was really tired, maybe because I'm sick. I had lots of sleep but it still wasn't enough. by the time they'd replaced my air conditioner (and left dirt everywhere) I'd been awake too long and was too hungry to sleep. it was too late to get food at the cafeteria, too. I wandered out to the store, bought some stuff for my room, and saw a place serving food beside it, but it looked too crowded, and I was too tired to handle chinese, so I just stayed in bed for a while... then I found some chocolate I'd forgotten I had, and that gave me energy. I unpacked all my stuff, put the empty suitcases away, and realised it was lunchtime. headed to the cafeteria, and pete and john had just ordered, so I ate with them, then bought more stuff for my room. now I've got my laptop plugged in in pete's room - he has a little power bar with western sockets. supposedly the corner store has those too - I'll have to buy one later. :)
we won't get proper net access for quite a while still - more than a week, at least. there are a few comps with slow internet on the second floor, and a faster internet cafe just outside campus.
I'm hoping to get time to go buy some electronic stuff before dinner - speakers, maybe an mp3 player, a camera, etc - so I guess I should go do that now.
didn't get any electronic stuff. looked at some high-end things and ran out of time. went to some other shops after dinner and saw reasonably priced speakers, but didn't buy them. maybe I'll go back tomorrow. cameras are more expensive than I realised, so I'm not sure if I'll gte one, or just get a phone with a cheap camera built in.