My First Time Teaching in China: Tally Ho to Suzhou!

The title of this post rhymes, so that's how you know to pronounce the name of our next stop on our long journey across China. We met these really interesting and wild Irish girls while in Shanghai. It was actually our last night in that city (for the time being, anyway) when we met them. We had actually seen them around the hostel already but we never said hi. It wasn't until I introduced myself to a friendly looking man who seemed to be having trouble with his computer when we eventually all met. Ilya was playing pool and I had said to the man "technology, eh!?", noticing his disgruntled look, sitting across from me and struggling on his laptop with some program or another. Turned out he was from Quebec, a French-Canadian school-teacher who did not want to settle down upon hitting retirement age. He had already traveled to every other place on the planet, except China, so he decided to try his hand at teaching in Shanghai. He said he enjoyed it, and gave us some tips about where to go and what to do while in China. While we were talking, the two girls were drinking nearby and one of them snorted (indicating she was tired in a hyperbolic way, I guess, to her sister), and we just locked eyes when I turned around to look at her. We all burst out laughing. It was just a momentary bout of absolutely stomach clenching laughter.

After, we drank together and the five of us talked about our travels. The Irish girls were traveling across the world and this was the first part of their trip. Upon learning about our plans to travel to Suzhou the next morning, their eyes lit up and asked us if they could join us. They loved Shanghai, but they expressed real frustration over the difficulty of finding bars that are open past 10PM. We were just as shocked as they were that bars were hard to find in such a large and international city as Shanghai. We decided to go pub-searching and found a strip on the other side of the city that had some really seedy places. We had drinks at one of them before heading to this one, pictured below. T'was a great night. I was very hungover the next morning and did not enjoy smelling the bacon and sausages and eggs they were all enjoying that morning, getting on the 40 minute subway ride to the trainstation, and then the ride there. Luckily I didn't get sick or anything but boy did I feel it!

Suzhou is known as the "Venice of the East" due to its vast network of canals and waterways. It is home to the largest inner-city lake in China, and is also among China's largest. Suzhou is a truly beautiful place, and a trip to China would not be complete without seeing it.

Here's one of them, Anya (her name is spelled wrong here, it's actually spelled the traditional way in Gaelic but it's close enough.)

The hostel in Suzhou.

The four of us!

This was taken in Souzhou.

The canals at night were beautifully lit.

More Suzhou.

The canal.

Cute.

This is all in the old part of the city, and our hostel was located just a block or two from here. We got really lucky with the hostel bookings. This part of the city is recognized as a heritage site by the Chinese government and has been protected and preserved and rebuilt according to tradition.

Walking around our area at night.

All of us went to a tea house that night. The tea was amazing there and I also got Haagen Daz's Ice cream.

Some mice for sale on the street and they were really cute. This one bit my finger and I had to go to the hospital and get a tetanus shot.

Kidding.

A bar we found in Souzhou. Really awesome place. We met a guy there who was from Richmond and he was really nice. He taught us a little Chinese and we met his girlfriend, a Japanese girl who was really nice.