Water, Water Everywhere

Tuesday morning we left the resort at Lake Tai as it was raining. Suzhou is already very humid, and the rain makes it even more muggy. We got on the bus and rode for an hour to China Water Company, the largest environmental project in Suzhou--a response to today's environmental concerns. We went in and heard how they treat water and make it cleaner. The entire presentation was in Chinese so I basically understood nothing. However there was a handy powerpoint that had some English on it. All I can remember from it is that the entire process begins with sewage sauce and only 30 people work at this place. After the explanation, we went outside to look at all the basins of water in the different phases. This is basically what it looked like: tons of cement paths between cement tubs filled with dirty water. The tour got increasingly smelly until we finally passed the trucks squirting sewage out of them. I don't really know why it was necessary for us to walk around looking at sewage-filled water, but we did. One of the ways they test to see if there are any toxins in the water is by having fish swim around in the pools. If the fish die then they know it's not ready for the next phase. I don't know how water treatment plants work in the States, but this tour did not make me feel any more comfortable knowing I am showering in this "treated" water.

After that tour, we went to this great restaurant across from campus and had lunch. It was the best meal we had had so far, and it was nice to finally have some quality Chinese food. We dropped our stuff off in our dorm rooms and then went to a security briefing by a woman from the US Consulate in Shanghai. She also talked a lot about what it's like being a foreign officer, which was really interesting. I have thought about the foreign service, but I don't know if it's right for me. Regardless, her job is fascinating and it was cool to hear about it.

Her talk was a couple of hours, so we had a couple of hours left of free time before dinner. A bunch of us wanted to go to the store and get some groceries and supplies. There's a huge supermarket Auchan a short cab ride away, so we all went there and did some shopping. I am not a fan of Auchan. They have a lot of stuff, but it's crowded and there's 10 million banners hanging from the ceiling and it makes me claustrophobic. Some of the workers wear roller blades to get around, and one of them ran into me as I was shopping. We gathered our groceries and took a cab back to campus. It was still raining which was not fun carrying our stuff from the campus gate to our dorm rooms. We got back late because our group got separated, so we had to throw our stuff in our room and get back on the bus to head to dinner.

Traffic was pretty bad so it took us 45 minutes to get to the restaurant. We went to Korean BBQ which is really good. It's almost all meat, so it was quite filling. All of the flavorings on the meat were really good. We had pork, lamb, and beef. After dinner we headed to the river for an evening boat cruise. Suzhou is famous for the way it lights up old buildings on the river banks at night. It was really pretty, it's just too bad it was raining. After we went on the roof of the boat to get a better view. It was pretty windy and chilly so we didn't stay up too long. But long enough for the umbrella I bought at Auchan that day to break. And it was so windy all of the rain was blowing on to us anyway so I was pretty wet. Not my favorite feeling in the world. I kept falling asleep on the bus back to the dorm. We hadn't done anything too active that day, but the dreary weather combined with lingering jet lag made me exhausted. I showered and skyped my mom for a little while but had to get to bed to get ready for the first day of classes!