Adventures By Design

Today was our first full day in Suzhou and since the school didn’t have anything planned for us, we took it pretty easy. We woke up at about 3:30am, but in an attempt to fight jet lag refused to get out of bed until it was light out. Bored out of our minds we both jumped up as the first rays came through the window at about 5:15am.

Our school gave us some food and stuff to get us started, but not much variety, so we had toast with orange marmalade again. After eating we took some photos of our new apartment. We figure it will probably never be this clean again, so it was a good time!! As you can see in the photos our new place is HUGE! We’ve got three full bedrooms, and two bathrooms, one with a tub and one with a shower. The kitchen is in a separate room with glass doors to keep the heat out of the rest of the apartment. We’re on the ground floor so there is a big patio out back that will be perfect for Inca (once she gets out of quarantine…) And unlike Seoul, where we sweated through the summers, we’ve got four individual air-conditioning units throughout the place. We’re not really sure what we’ll do with so much space, but so far it looks like Ric’s clothes are going to get their own bedroom.

After the photo shoot (and the subsequent messing-up of the apartment) we decided that it was time to head out and find some more food. We had heard that there was a good grocery store near us, so we headed out with our taxi cards (cards with addresses in English and Chinese to show to the driver, supplied by our school, and an invaluable resource!) to find our way there. Out on the street it was roasting hot, and we were soon both sweaty and irritated by the process of finding a taxi. After almost 20 minutes we finally found one, jumped in, showed our (female, never see that in Korea) driver the relevant card, and settled in for the drive. Approximately one minute later we arrived in front of the grocery store… we totally could have walked, and it probably would have taken less time than finding the cab.

The store, which sells far, far more than just groceries, was packed, even on a Thursday afternoon. We have now been warned to never, ever go there on a weekend. We found most of the things we wanted, but were driven out before too long by the crowds and noise. We’ll have to go back before long for more food, but at least we don’t have to have toast and marmalade for our next meal.

Later in the day we went out (again with taxi cards in hand, we are so not leaving home without those!) to a German brewhouse restaurant on the lake for dinner and drinks with some folks from the elementary school. We got to meet a few more people, and enjoy the food and atmosphere, but eventually jetlag caught up to us and we went home to bed at around 8pm.