Exploring

^Luxun's home.  He is a famous and relatively recent writer in terms of China's long history of literature. 

Once a boy scout always a boy scout.  We spent the whole weekend exploring Zhejiang province, and Saturday morning we set out early and headed to a mountainous region and walked through Qianzhangyougu (literally translated as 10,000 foot deep valley). It really started to feel like spring with sunny weather and temperatures in he high 60's, so I decided to jump into the river for a swim. The mountain water wasn't quite as warm as the air…

^Picture taken at the aforementioned Qianzhangyougu, this was pretty much my last photo that day and even up until now because as I was handing my camera to friend that day, the camera dropped on the rocks, and then that wasn't good enough as I watched it tumble into the only perfect camera-sized hole in on the rock.

This was all after a night of good fun in Shaoxing.  If you can believe it, China has a lot of developed cities outside of Shanghai and Beijing.  In fact, if you come to China or have studied anything about its development, you will know that second and third tier cities are becoming almost as important to China as its first tier cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.  Back to my point, in the afternoon we got our historic site fix by going to LuXun’s home. Then logically, a few of us found out what Shaoxings night scene was all about at a place called SOS and then G+.  The four of us guys that went out huddled up in the front of G+ and had a pep talk about how tonight was going to be a success.  So we get inside and its a typical Chinese club, (no dancing, only tables), which are full of drinks and food that the 4 people at the table will never finish (I’ll explain a little bit about face (mianzi) in another post).  Then we're just hanging out and a guy literally throws me into the wall as he walking out.  Now when you’re walking through a crowd of course you’ll bump into a few people but this was no bump.  So without giving it much thought I shoved him back and he starts insisting that I go outside with him.  I try to turn around and ignore him, but he grabbed me by the neck at which point in a 3-2-1 countdown, I exploded on this guy and all hell broke loose.  Fortunately, they tossed him out, gave my friends and I a table, we met 6 new friends, and then went back to the hotel for some junior high style fun and played spin the bottle.  Yeah, I'm not sure if you've heard of the 7-year hypothesis, but it essentially claims that at any point in an Asian woman's life, she looks and acts like she's 7 years younger, and that night was no exception.  Ahh, Junior High, the good ole' days.

^G+ in Shaoxing with our new Chinese friends.  You won't find a single picture in China without a peace sign.

We followed this all up by heading to Hangzhou on Saturday night, and we ate the some local delicacies such as mud chicken (use your imagination and it's about what you're thinking), and even ventured out and had scorpions and snake meat.  We felt it was important to have some controlled variables in order to compare cities, so we went to the G+ in Hangzhou, which was just as good as Shaoxing or Shanghai.

Then by Sunday afternoon after a long day of seeing West Lake and Tiger Run, an ancient mountain known for its pure water springs, our group of 30 plus students couldn't agree on anything, and from there a little argument broke out.  If you attend any study abroad with other American students you're bound some have small cliques within the group, and some people won't want to do what the group is doing, it's just human nature.  However, if I could impart one piece of advice, it would be take charge of your own experience abroad, find the things you love to do, and own your experience, but keep in mind that their are other people on the group to consider, and Wang Kai (resident director) does his best to keep everyone happy.