After our tour with our Chinese student tour guides, we were pretty worn out so we (Shawn and I) went to bed at around 630, woke up when our classmates got back from their visits, then went to bed for good at around 830.
Prof Ewest was talking about doing Tai Chi every morning at 6, and I just figured I'd never be awake for it, but after 9 hours of sleep, Tim and I went down to the college (about a 2 minute jog) and tried to follow along. A student named Wade (English Name) came up and spoke to us about joining them every day. Tai Chi is very slow deliberate movements, and I stretched muscles I didn't know existed. After about 20 minutes of Tai Chi, Tim and I ran 2 miles around an adjacent track. As we were running I got to looking at the soccer field, I ran on it and got to looking, it was field turf, the same that is on our football field at Wartburg.
After the run, I did laundry for the first time. Tim gave me a little pointer. You just go into the shower with all your clothes on, soap em up, rinse them off, then ring them out and hang them in your window to dry. That was an experience. After breakfast we met up with Anthony who took us to our Chinese Language class. Chinese is very dificult to understand, and now I understand why. There are so many consonant and vowel sounds and then each vowel sound has 4 variations depending on the tone mark ˆ´ etc. We ate lunch and listened to some Chinese music we had 2 hours of free time.
ShingShing, Angie, Jarrett, Shawn, and I decided to go back to the college and play basketball. When we got there the gate was locked, so we climbed the 12 foot high fence because we saw other Chinese students doing it. We played amongst ourselves and then decided we wanted to play a game of 5 on 5. We communicated, kindof, with some students and played a game to 11. They were very quick with the ball and had quick hands, but couldnt shoot very well. Jarrett amazed them with some of his skills and we won by 3 or so. We rushed back to the hotel so we could make it to our 130 massage appointment. The massage lasted for about an hour and it felt amazing. We then went to the largest bookstore in Hangzhou, which was ok, but I couldnt read any of the books, so I didnt buy anything. It was the first day it has been anything but 80 and sunny here, it cooled down and started raining. We then went to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant which was amazing. We returned to the hotel about 6 and prepared to go check out the Hangzhou nightlife. We took 2 taxis down to West Lake and went to a bar that was similar to the Fainting Goat and then we went next door to a dance club, where no one was dancing. We went to the DJ and asked for American music. He played Ms. New Booty and we started dancing and then about 30 more people got up and started dancing. We then were invited to the VIP which was really cool. Overall, it was a very busy and fun day, it is now 640 am on Sunday, I'm sure we have another busy day planned for today
Ciao
Erik
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