It took all night but let's see if this worked
https://picasaweb.google.com/101587501730790399727/May312015#6155185917602256386
Sunday, 31 May 2015
May 30th and 31st in pictures
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| Mail Delivery |
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| Rental bikes |
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| Heidi and her grad student carrying a printer and other items to the apartment |
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| This is how mail is "delivered" to the students |
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| Canal in neighbouring gated community |
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| Heidi giving her student a ride |
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| buying supper |
May 30th and 31st
Been doing lots of sleeping over the last couple of days. The last few days in Japan, we thought Heidi was stuffed up because of allergies and tired because of the antihistamine. Turns out it wasn’t allergies and I caught whatever she has. I think I slept 15 hours last night. It’s good that we are settled in the apartment and can just take it easy.
Heidi is prepping for her course which starts on Monday, fighting with the uncooperative internet, checking out the classroom and projector, finding the printer left by another prof etc.
We’re enjoying exploring the different stores and neighbourhoods around the apartment. Yesterday we went for a walk, originally to find a restaurant recommended by someone but we ended up in an intriguing neighbourhood. There were expensive cars on the streets and obvious luxury apartments mixed in but for the most it did not feel wealthy at all. There was laundry hanging on the power lines, little restaurants out of people’s houses, a canal, people just sitting on chairs along the street chatting, people playing cards…I was too shy to take many photos but I got a couple. It was also funny, people would stare at us so we would say Ni Hao, and they would all of a sudden smile and answer back. We didn’t feel adventurous enough to try any of the restaurants that we passed and ended up at Teresa’s which is geared towards international travellers and then called it a night.
I was feeling a little better this morning but let Heidi run her errands with her grad student while I read in the apartment. For lunch, we went by bike to a place another prof knew from previous visits. Ah yes, biking through Hangzhou! If I have the patience, I will try to upload some videos that I took. We only had 4 bikes and 5 people so Heidi’s grad student hitched a ride on the back of her bike. He got quite a kick out of the idea that his Professor was doubling him!
The restaurant was great, it was a chaotic Chinese restaurant, crazy cheap and good food. Afterwards, Heidi and I managed coffee but then it was back to the apartment where I rested some more and Heidi did more work for class.
Saturday, 30 May 2015
Friday, 29 May 2015
May 28th and 29th in words
Not much to write about yet it feels like we’ve done a lot.
We took it easy on the 28th, check out wasn’t until noon so we took full advantage of it and then hung out in the hotel lobby for another couple of hours before finally deciding that it was time to head to the airport.
The students were asked to wear their red Wisconsin t-shirts and we had no trouble spotting them. All but 3 or 4 had arrived. Only one person’s luggage didn’t make it but it was coming in on the same flight as the last group of students. We finally had everyone gathered and ready to go around 5. It was a 3 hour bus ride to Hangzhou during which I slept for most of it so sorry, not many photos. (Not that I have figured out how to upload photos yet – still working on that).
For the first night we all were housed in the international building and they had supper waiting for us. It was great to see the students eager to try the food and enjoy it for the most part. Then it was off to bed.
On the 29th everyone met in the lobby, we applied for access to the wireless network on campus and meal cards, SIM cards, phones for those who wanted phones... just imagine a group of 30 students at every stop and you get a feel for the chaos. Heidi and I checked out of our room in the international building and moved across the road to the apt. It’s through the same gate as last time but this time we are in the first building. It looks like it is setup for 3 students with two students sharing 1 room. The first thing we did was go buy some cleaning supplies and scrubbed everything down. We managed to order the equivalent of a culligan jug of water, got our wifi passwords, bought some minimum supplies for the apt and bought bikes. We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves. Although today we heard that students managed to get a great deal on new bikes and we had to go back to the store where Heidi bought her SIM card because it wasn’t working and the grad student had to call China Mobile to sort my card out. But now that is sorted it just means we feel like we accomplished something today as well!
I still haven’t sorted out VPN so can’t access blogger directly and I get an error message when I try to send more than one photo using the email route but I’ll keep trying. We’re not out of options yet. So far it’s been mostly running around so not really any good photos to post yet anyway.
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