Milan Hotel Huzhou

After a 3 day flash trip to NL to deliver a sample I came home to the nightmare of every Shanghai resident....neighbours renovating their apartment! Luckily it calmed down after a few days and it hasn't been as bad as the horror stories I've heard.

Friday I visited the country side of China to check another sample. We drove ...

... 28608;的么， 这样多有意 ;思啊。” 说完径直往 ;下走去，ೢ 2;子摇摇头ʌ 92;快步跟了 978;去。 俩人绕过一 ;个弯道，ฤ 8;到售票处İ 75;不到的地 041;，胖子 ...

Another day in Shanghai. Beautiful weather, sunshine. I decided to take the metro - which already counts nine lines if I remember it correctly - to an area known as French Concession, although you will never find this name on any map. As one can expect, the architecture there is pretty much European, and thus very different from other parts of Shanghai. Lonely Planet says, Shanghai without the French Concession would be like London without Kensington. I first ...

... her to pinch me a few times, and seemingly it wasn't all a dream!! We returned home (or should I say the dorms, home in Passage West after all!) on the Maglev (the fastest commercial train in ze world, reaching 431km/h. It took 8minutes for a ride that takes an hour in a taxi!

... is going to be a ************ce in Tongli, nothing very interesting to see, just a pair of ancient buildings and the famous canals. Boring. Another 2 hour driving towards Suzhou, with its famous gardens. It is quite late thanks to the driver sense of orientation, so we skip our lunch to see one of the gardens: Lingering garden. Really nice and peaceful, but we cannot enjoy it very ...

... And it helped us sit out the first round of the evening's terrific downpours. As a testament to the kindness of your average Chinese person, we were apparently a bit aimless in our search for an evening bus and walking through some of the not-so-well lit areas of Hangzhou when we were stopped by a cheerful couple eager to get some pictures with us. They quickly directed us correctly to our location and we easily caught a bus back towards the ...

I am never going to do something purely for the money again! Having decided to stay in China for another year to learn Mandarin, I have to somehow pay my fees. A month-long summer school in north-west Zhejiang with a high salary seemed to be the way forward. Four weeks, a very sore throat and sunstroke later, I now know ...

... and after meeting up with the others who had gotten lost, we continued on to Sword pond. It's a very beautiful area, and completely natural because there's really no one else there except the locals who have small drink stands amongst the trees. We walked for a while, and finally stumbled upon a rather unimpressive Sword Pond with a small waterfall and an even smaller pond. We continued further down the trail and found much more impressive waterfalls and generally more ...

... at a small minority performance to help display the marriage rituals....a spectacle to say the least. During the school weeks when we could not retreat into the mountains, we found ourselves consistently graced by the company of Qiqi and her boyfriend (shhhh!!! It's a secret) Qiu Cheng. Laurie introduced the art of rice-cooker cake making with a pound cake and a peach coffee cake being executed flawlessly. In return were many hours of ...

... My students here really are lovely kids, most of them anyway. Considering how priviledged they are (all have mobile phones, electronic dictionaries and some have their own motorbike/scooter things which cost more than the average salary), they are fantastically well-behaved and willing to get involved in my lessons which often involve singing, humming, acting etc - very different from the usual textbook ...