Since Danny ditched me to go to Taiwan, I had to fend for myself this weekend. Ok, to be slightly more accurate, we tried to find me a flight but it was really expensive to fly on the weekend and I didn't want to take off work. In the end I stayed here while he attended his cousin's wedding. I made him promise to write a post about it but I don't have exceedingly high hopes since he has currently posted a whopping total of two posts.
Anyway, I had a really relaxing Saturday sitting around the house and catching up with various friends in the states via skype and google voice. The only productive things I did all day were clean up a bit and make a bowl of spaghetti. I had wanted to go for a walk in the park but it is still cold here and I got lazy.
Sunday I tagged along with some of the grad students from the observatory on a trip they planned to pick strawberries (cao mei) and visit an ancient water town (Zhu Jia Jiao).
Picking strawberries was really messy. The spaces between the rows of plants were super narrow and covered in thick gooey mud. It was sort of like walking on an incredibly muddy balance beam. They told me to bring plastic bags to put over my shoes which I did. Unfortunately the bags kept getting stuck in the mud so I gave up and just got my shoes really muddy. By the time I finished collecting berries I was really muddy and tired but I had a box full of berries.
Next we took the bus for about a half hour to the water town. I may have mentioned in the post about Xitang that I was trying to go to all 6 ancient water towns. This was the second one I saw.
Zhu Jia Jiao was smaller than Xitang but pretty similar in the architecture. There weren't any little museums to wander through - just restaurants, snack booths and shops with touristy knick knacks. Unlike Xitang we didn't pay a cover fee to enter. I think it was actually sort of a shame because it meant it was not quite as nicely maintained and didn't offer as much to do or see. It was still a really pleasant day and I enjoyed the company at lot. We got lunch and walked around the shops. I bought a musical instrument and a photo album.
While I looked around Zhu Jia Jiao my strawberries sat in a cardboard box on the bus for a few hours and started going bad. Oh well. All in all it was a pretty nice trip.
2 posts?? I only read one! Where is his second post?
ReplyDeleteHe wrote one about the stray cats that live in our building's doorway... if you missed it you didn't miss much. The other one is about Chinese New Year and had a really cool video.
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