Suzhou Regalia Serviced Residences

... with a copy of my itinerary for 11/11 to fly from shanghai to new york city. this is the second time i've given it to the accountant, but i wanted to make sure that everything was ok. this time she looked at the receipt and said this is no good without the boarding pass. i said i haven't taken this flight yet so there would be no boarding pass. she said that i'll have to bring her a new one with a boarding pass.

after several more mins ...

... s, walmart or walgreens (lil had forgotten which one it was). you put your credit card in these machines and it'll tell you everything about your account: which movies you've watched, suggestions for movies, etc. and you can return the movie at any place with one of those machines!

so i know it doesn't sound that amazing- esp if you were in the states when all these changes happened. but honestly, if i mention blockbuster, it's going to date me?! how bizarre is that?!

... refreshing experience in my opinion. I mean, most years i do the routine two family dinners, both a little boring and containing not near enough booze to get me through happy and content. Also you could never play a decent game of Trevors Ass at a family dinner haha. Trev i'm hoping you'll read this because then at least one person will get my joke! But anyways, great night, great company, and great laughs =). 
Happy turkey eating!
-B

... I bought a lot there and if I had more money would have bought much more. When entering the factory you can see the process of silk manufacturing from silkworm to silk. They had live silkworms eating mulberry leaves on display YUCK! After I learned the process I was then shown how they sort the different silk cocoons by quality level. They then showed how ...

... is now. The garden is separated into three principal parts, east, central and west. The eastern section has colourful flowers but is of less interest than the other two.

We enjoyed a cruise on the one thousand year old Grand Canal then went to an embroidery workshop and had lunch at a nearby restaurant.

That night we took a taxi to a shopping area and checked out the local shops, found a KFC and had a burger for tea.

... from Shanghai and known as a garden city. The traffic is horrendous and road rules are very limited, there are push bikes, motor bikes and scooters everywhere, helmets not worn and even the babies are taken on the bikes and held by a parent. Enjoyed a walk along the street dodging the bikes parked on the footpaths and taking our lives in our hands when we crossed the road, even when it's on a crossing with the green light.

... by a bunch of canal towns from the old emperor's days. Sometimes these towns get compared to Venice but that is incredibly wishful thinking. And if you figure a nice little town in the middle of some rice fields with canals and such, wrong. Suzhou is a big city, and the way there is lined with an oil refinery, six-lane highways, suburban high-rise buildings and western-style car dealers and supermarkets. I kept asking myself ...

... at 5:20 am, saying that their sleeper train had arrived two hours earlier than expected and they were on my campus. This was great, except that my dorm is padlocked shut from 11 pm to 6 am everyday, and there is only one person with a key, and it is not me. After finally getting their chilled bodies into my room at 6 am, we slept and lounged for a few hours before setting out into an abnormally sunny and ...

... case... So the bill comes and Dragon looks worried, scared even ( remember that saving face here is a very big thing, especially in front of foreigners!) Turns out that the sweet and sour fish alone cost 368 yuan (we normally pay around 100 yuan for all of our dishes in total). Everyone was not pleased. Dragon went out to the front, took on about 7 members of staff in an argument as they didn ...

Ok so I lied...I'm actually writing this journal entry in Weifang, but I wanted the map to show that I went to shanghai. The trip was great. We left Tuesday night and had tickets for hard sleepers on the train. I was a bit nervous...expecting a wood board as a bed, but it turned out to be very nice. There were six beds in each car (three on each side). the trip was 18 hours but passed fairly quickly. We arrived in Shanghai Wednesday morning and headed over to our ...