First full day at Suzhou (Soochow)-Mandarin, Finance and Markets

After a night of the constant beeping of some sort of an alarm and a lot of tossing and turning we got up to find we were still locked in the building. The girls paced the halls anxious to get out and very uncomfortable with the fact that we couldn’t.  Finally, with a click of the lock-released.

Everybody was up early this morning and out for a walk/run on the track. There are quite a few people running, biking, playing tennis all at 6am. It was great for everybody to get exercise. I think we are all in the same boat- haven’t exercised much since starting the MBA program and if we did, the “I need to get back and study” is always in your mind.

Our classes were Mandarin with Xu ChenChen and, yes, I know how to pronounce that now. J Finance with Professor Xu. Both were good but I think Xu ChenChen won our hearts immediately. She is just too fun.

 For lunch, we went on the hunt for ‘street food’-which would be the equivalent of Portland’s infamous food carts- just maybe without the ‘infamous’ part. The food looks and smells so so good we were anxious to take our chances. Unfortunately, they were not out today because the ‘anti food cart enforcers’ were out- we will try again.  We ate and went onto to some local shopping. Kind of a combination of the Portland Saturday Market, Pike Street Market and any of the famers markets in the area minus any influence by the county health department or OSHA.  Kim and I witnessed the selecting, weighing, killing and preparing of a chicken…..actually, when I figured out what was after the weighing, she witnessed and I had to turn my head and walk away. At another vendor…I won’t go into the pigeon episode but I didn’t like it.  Disturbing to this foreigner to see but just a way of life for the locals.

Our first taste of internet since we left Shanghai and how sweet it was. You would have thought we had been trapped in some third world country for a year they way we flocked to the machines and almost absorbed the glow from the monitors….ah,  the reading, the writing and the sending of email and the……….BUZZKILL………no Facebook.  It’s a wonder we survived but it’s true- we did. 

Friday night before a 3-day weekend is not the best time for a group of 14 to try to catch a cab……or 4. The harrowing experience of standing as close to the traffic as you can without getting hit by a car, bus, scooter or bike eventually led to us all arriving at the Blue Marlin restaurant for burgers, pizza and beer. It is a nice place and will help fulfill the need for some western food.

Tip of the day

I would recommend encouraging the Blue Marlin later in  the trip when you have had your fill of Chinese food. It is great food but all American.

I am definitely starting to feel like this story is way too Laura centric and there is no way I can be accurately reflecting the experiences of everybody. I think a cool thing to do would be to assign everybody a day to capture what they want including pictures. What a cool blog/story that would make.