Beautiful Suzhou
Since Reeds left, there has been a significant drop in my mood. I’m depressed, angry, stressed and just generally ‘over it’. This could be compounded by the fact the weather has been shocking, work is just crazy and I found out one of our parishioners passed away quite suddenly. Makes you super aware of how far away from home you are.
So when the opportunity came up to leave Shanghai to go visit some schools I jumped at the chance! My beautiful friend Amy and I were selected to go for one day (Monday 20th). We thought, what the hell, let’s go a day early and see the sights!
Amy found this great deal for a 5 star hotel…why not splurge every once in awhile? The school organised our train tickets for us. I was a little scared…travelling on a train with hundreds of Chinese people, all staring at me because I’m the only westerner? But it wasn’t too bad. Our strategy now is to stare back and say ‘hello, would you like to take a photo? It might last longer.’
We arrived in Suzhou…rain rain rain. All day…rain! But we weren’t going to be beaten! Managed to find a taxi to take us to our AMAZING hotel. Brand new, enormous, gorgeous room overlooking a beautiful lake (see FBook for pics). But we didn’t want to hang around the hotel all day…we needed to explore!
So we set off in a taxi to a place called Tiger Hill. This is the final resting place for He Lu, the founding father of Suzhou. It is a completely man made hill, complete with gorgeous gardens and Cloud Rock Pagoda. The pagoda has started to sink. I read in the Lonely Planet guide that the highest point is now 2m off its original position!
An hour or so into our little trip, the rain started to absolutely pelt down…now I’m sure most of you know, finding a cab in China when it starts to rain is like the search for the Holy Grail.
Hours went by…no cab. Okay, maybe not hours but long enough for my pants to be soaking wet despite the umbrella I was clutching. Finally a motorised rickshaw pulled up. Our saviour!!! “Take us to Humble Administrators Garden please!”…oh hang on, no English….zhege difang (this place) Amy then passed him a card with the name in Chinese. So off we went…driving through Suzhou in an old rickshaw that sounded like a lawn mower, still getting soaked from the rain that was actually coming down sideways! Our saviour turns out to be a man hell bent on ripping us off…he demanded 40RMB! That’s more than a normal cab! Ah well, it does happen from time to time.
Finally made it to Humble Administrators Garden but in absolutely no mood to see anything or be outside one second longer. “Let’s just find coffee”. Great idea! Ah…maybe not, no coffee to be found. After another hour of wandering I was thinking, perhaps we should have just stayed in the lobby? You know it’s not a good sign when your underwear is actually soaked!
Just at the point where we lost our sense of humour a cab pulled up. Thank you God! Who says he doesn’t answer prayers? “Take us to the hotel!!!!” Oh crap, no English….”zhege difang”
Back at the hotel we relaxed, had a glass of wine, ate dinner downstairs in the lobby and met the band. Two girls from the Philippines who had a 9 month contract to sing in the lobby. They lived IN the hotel. What a life that would be?!
The best part though was breakfast…I wish I had taken photos, you have never seen anything like it in your life. The most amazing breakfast buffet I have ever experienced. Anything you could possibly think of to eat was there and so beautifully presented. I certainly did not want to head off to visit schools, I just wanted to sit around all morning and eat the breakfast buffet!
That said, it was great to see other International Schools. Our concerns and issues are largely similar. It really is quite a different system. I took lots of photos and have some great ideas to take back to work.
I am feeling better, my mood is lighter, the weather is getting warmer and I don’t feel so stressed…Maybe I should visit Suzhou and get soaked in the rain more often?
