Today was pretty fun. We went on a tour of the Summer Palace. All of the buildings were beautiful. They all have the same color scheme, I’ve never seen anything like it in America. We decided as a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing to go paddle boating on Kunming Lake. It was at that point that the two hour war began. There were four paddleboats from our group, and three were actively engaged in battle. It mainly consisted of tossing dirty lake water at each other, trash talking, and avoiding the dragon ferry that kept crossing into our DMZ. Although the business student boat claims a lofty victory, us engineers smile and let them boast as they will, because we all know that we’re the true winners.
After paddle boating, we went to Suzhou Street, which was along a river. It was cool, even though it was going through construction. I even got to play a Chinese flute-like instrument, and the entire street could hear it! I thought that it was awesome and definitely a once in a lifetime experience.
For dinner, we went to the Hot Pot, a fondue restaurant. I ignorantly thought that since it looked kind of American from the outside that the food would be safe inside too. It wasn’t. I ordered shrimp, and EVERYTHING was still attached: shell, legs, antennas, eyes, face… everything! I thought it was really gross, especially the eyes and the red ooze that came out when the head was detached, but I got used to it. For a place that looked so nice, it didn’t even have a bathroom! It tasted good though. Afterwards we had the rest of the night to ourselves to chill out. It was sweet.