Here is No Why

It seems I fail at this blogging thing. I leave in exactly 3 days and here I am finally writing a blog. In all fairness though I have been plenty busy and the internet here tends to annoy me.

Last week I finished up classes and took my exams.There's not much to report from my last weekend in Beijing except friday we went to the club (like usual) and I didn't get back until about 6:30am. The next days I went to the silk market got some last minute things and ate at a delicious veggie restaurant. The rest of the weekend has nothing to report.

Monday we departed Beijing for good and began our (me and four of my other classmates) three legged adventure. We caught a train that was to take us to Taishan. We were supposed to climb the mountain and watch the sunrise the next morning. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that the train only stopped a total of 1minute at the Taishan station and we missed our opportunity. I was really looking forward to climbing the massive mountain. We decided then to continue on to our next destination Suzhou. We arrived there at around 8pm and then had to find a place to stay (our hostel was not yet available). The next day we made our way to the Hostel. Let me tell you how much I loved our Hostel. Actually I can't, putting my love in words is impossible. I can only say that the area was gorgeous and genuinely Chinese the hostel was as well an old Chinese building with multiple gardens/court yards. I walked around a lot (and one night walked around until 8:30am). We went to the Lions Gate Garden and it was the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It was peaceful and so well designed. I was sitting in a pagoda in the middle of the massive pond and at one point (hundreds of tourists aside) could imagine the Chinese nobles that roamed this garden and how they must have felt being surrounded by it's beauty.

Sadly, our stay in Suzhou came to an end and we have now made our way to Shanghai via bus (which was way better than the standing tickets on the train we had to Suzhou). Not much to report yet. I'm not in love with our hostel here. It's a building built in 1924 by a Jewish family so the architecture is really neat and not Chinese in the slightest. However, it's not awfully clean and the horrible smell from the streets seems to made residence here as well. Tonight we plan to see the breathtaking (hopefully) lights of Shanghai.

That's all for now, I'll try to update once more before monday.

-M