Picture time!

Today is a day off. As we've scooted around town the past few days, it is very nice to have this Sunday to relax. Yesterday was a different kind of day. After trying out a new Szechuan restaurant for lunch and enjoying the food and low cost, we headed back to our dorm. We realized we hadn't left much time before we had to meet for our outing and we had to buy our books before we left. Thankfully, most of us did find our books and bought them in time. It was amazing to be able to buy all my books for about twenty dollars instead of hundreds of dollars. No ridiculous markup here!

After book buying, we took off for a tour of the Xixi Wetlands. Our tour was put together by people who work for a local English-language magazine about China and Hangzhou called InTouch. They shuttled us to the wetlands in buses and even gave us some drinks and moon cakes for the occasion! This weekend is Mid-Autumn Festival, where families get together to celebrate and eating different kinds of moon cakes is very important. They are pretty tasty; they are dense pastry cakes filled with nuts, bean paste, egg yolk, or even meat. We arrived at the Wetlands Park and we were provided with umbrellas since it was raining. We all laughed at how wet we were becoming on our wetlands trip. We then took a boat tour around the wetlands. It really is a pretty big area and we saw some birds and one flying fish. The strange thing about our tour was the photographers and cameramen that followed us and recorded our tour. InTouch magazine did the tour for us for free and apparently, it was a pretty big publicity opportunity for them. So, much of our night was recorded and we were quite spoiled with attention.

After the tour we had a great supper with lots of dishes we couldn't name right away. We ended up with twenty-some dishes at our table...way too much food than we could ever eat. I tried abalone for the first and last time. Then, we were given a very nice Chinese tea set as a gift for coming. And then, our entertainment started up. Two craftsmen starting working in our room and made gifts for us. One man could make figures out of reeds and I got a very nice dragonfly from him. He basically made it in three minutes. We watched the other man for a long time. He made clay figurines on sticks, which doesn't sound impressive, but we were mesmerized. He could make the most ornate figures in 5-10 minutes without any problem. His hands and figures worked so fast that sometimes I looked away and all the sudden a figure he had been working on would suddenly have full arms and legs. The most fun thing was that he could take requests and make anything you could name without hesitation. People in our group got dragons, a bear, rhino, tiger, and turtle. I asked for a panda and got a very cute panda holding some bamboo. We were quite amazed by him and ecstatic with our free gifts!

I've been taking lots of pictures these past few weeks and thought I'd share them for all those who are not on facebook. These links should work for sharing. The pictures and comments will probably fill in the nooks and crannies of things I haven't fit into my blog yet. Enjoy!

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002433&l=719e8&id=1181220088

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002468&l=4c89f&id=1181220088