Umbrella? Nah.

When in China – you go on adventures. The seven days I have been here, I have just about hit my quota for adventure time. However, I love every single second of it. Today was no exception. While in our third lecture of the semester, we learned about Chinese politics and the economy. Boring. I can hardly understand our political system so trying to follow Chinese politics went way over my head. After class, we went to lunch in the cafeteria. Talk about an experience in itself. We are the only American students here on campus. It’s weird to walk in and be the minority. The cafeteria is sorta like what you would think of at the mall – a lot of different types of restaurants in the food court. However, don’t picture the glory or cleanliness of the mall because it is definitely NOT what this cafeteria is,..haha. But all the separate places are so good to eat at. I often jump to get different food each time I eat. It’s so fun and yummy!!

After lunch, a few friends and I decided to go explore the city. We looked at a map and said, LET’S GO! to a shopping/new part of Hangzhou. We memorized the route to get there and walked down the busy street outside the campus. But of course, we found cool things along the way and re-routed our way to our destination. Even though Hangzhou is HUGE, it is still super easy to find your way around the city. Once you can pick out certain buildings, roads, etc,..you can go about anywhere and not get lost.

Throughout China, there are lots of ‘black market’ stores that you can barter and buy specialized products from. Today, we ended up in a sketchy shoe market where you could honestly buy any shoe in any size, color, brand,..you name it,..you could probably find it there. Absolutely insane.  

Sketchy Shoe Shop!

China is such an interesting place. We can go from the above picture where all you see is basically dirty, run down markets to shopping malls with floors upon floors of things to buy. Just a short distance walk can take you from one extreme to another.

One last thing before I go – it’s raining here again ): The amount of umbrellas that the Chinese use is craaaaazy! Everybody and anyone uses one. However, since I am too cheap to buy one, I just walk around with my hood up. The locals look at me and try to sell me and other passers who don’t have one. I suppose I could spend the 2RMB (which equals about $0.33) but hey, why spend it on an umbrella when I can go buy steamed buns for that price? Haha, whatever.

Stay warm at home!!