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Hey whoever is reading this! I can’t access facebook… because I’m in CHINA!! but this should forward to my facebook as a note automatically. Feel free to comment on it, but I won’t be able to read it until I get home on July 9th. Anyway, I’m currently in the city of Hangzhou. It’s quite interesting. There’s a gigantic river that I can see from the apartment on the top floor of a 17 story building (actually 15, but floors 13 and 14 are left out…). The river smells like… river…. and not a clean one, which is kinda of bad cuz our water apparently comes from it. Filtering water before drinking it is kind of annoying =/ Anyway, here’s some of my first experiences/impressions of china

-takes forever to get here by plane
-very humid, but not too hot (like hawaii in spring)
-there are way fewer cars than the US for a city of this size
-for some reason, there were VERY FEW cars on the road last night. We drove for about 2.5 hours on the freeway and only saw 30 or so o_O
-KFC is really big/popular here
-The international terminal that we arrived at was GIGANTIC. The building (room) that our plane gate emptied to was so big that I couldn’t see either end of the building…
-there are very few white people here, and I tend to get stared at a lot
-A chinese Large is an American Medium (for clothes)
- People drive crazy, but not as crazy as I expected
-The guards outside of the police station didn’t like it when I tried to take a picture of the building. It was a big building and there was lots of marble inside. Obviously expensive. The Chinese government should spend less on making its buildings big/pretty and more on its police force and enforcing traffic laws
-The reason people drive crazily sometimes is because in some locations, there are no stop lights or stop signs….
-Went to a department store sort of like a mix between Macy’s and Bloomingdales. It was about the same prices as the same clothes in the US, so I didn’t buy anything
-took a taxi to a “chinatown” that is a market for tourists made to look like an old chinese market. I bought some stuff. It rained while we were there. Then we went to 85C!!! The Tapioca Milk Tea is much better at the US store.
-there are a lot of tall buildings under construction or pitch black at night. it’s kind of creepy.
-got a haircut too. My hair now looks very asian. not quite what I wanted, but it still looks good. Did i mention that the haircut included hair washing; a head, arm, and shoulder massage; and ear cleaning? And also it only cost about $10 US!! SO CHEAP! Its strange how some things here are about the same price as in the US, while others are clearly a LOT cheaper…. I guess I’ll see more of this strange pricing system in the future!

I hope all is well with you all

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