Right after I got back from Chicago, I decided it would be fun to meet Jonathan, Chandler, Seth and Ben in Nanjing for the weekend. I also had Easter candy and some other things I had bought in America for all of them. However, Jonathan had some things scheduled in Suzhou for Sunday, so we ended up deciding to go to Suzhou instead. So I bought a sleeper car ticket for Friday and a bullet train back on Sunday, and everything seemed perfect, until...
...I remembered that I had completely spaced a meeting with Doug Hughes (the Nanjing Flagship internship coordinator) and Linda Larsen (flying in from America to discuss our internships) in Beijing on Sunday! So lame. So, although everyone else thought I should just ditch the meeting, I switched my bullet train ticket to Saturday evening.
I took the night train down from Beijing. That was remarkably good - I got several hours of sleep until we got to Nanjing, since I was on a soft seat that was actually a sleeper and there were only two of us sitting on it, so I could lie down. I got to Suzhou sometime before 8 in the morning and headed to Jonathan's apartment. There I met Chandler and Jonathan, and we headed out to a football activity with the Suzhou branch. I only had a pair of jeans and a polo with me, so Chandler and I decided to walk around the lake instead of playing football, and we had a good conversation. Chandler got into Harvard's philosophy Ph.D. program, by the way, and he's great to talk with. Very funny, too.
Then Seth and Ben showed up, and we went back out by the lake and flew kites for a bit. We also got lunch at an Italian place. Suzhou is a really nice city. It's nearly all newly built, and it has beautiful waterways and gardens and parks and very efficient transit. After lunch, we went over to old Suzhou, where we took a gondola ride and saw traditional old houses. Ben was doing some poses on the front of the boat with a rope tied to the front, and he fell in the canal! It was about the hardest I've laughed for a year. He jumped back on the boat right away, but he was completely soaked, and the water was pretty filthy too. Jonathan got the whole thing on his phone in a series of pictures that tell the story way better than I can...after that, we headed for TGI Friday's. Ben stopped at a clothing store to try on a shirt, but the lady tried to rip him off so he tore it off and stomped outside shirtless. His phone recovered the next day, but he also got pretty sick for a day or so and threw up several times.
And then my crazy trip came to an abrupt end. Everyone else went to TGI Friday's, and I had to get a cab to the train station to leave, after only 8 or 9 hours in Suzhou. They tried to call Doug and persuade him to let me call in to the meeting instead, and Seth threatened to tie me up, but all to no avail, so I went and got on my train and headed back to Beijing.
I was glad I got to go and see my friends after a few months of being apart, but it would have been nice to spend more time in Suzhou than I did on my two trains! :P
...I remembered that I had completely spaced a meeting with Doug Hughes (the Nanjing Flagship internship coordinator) and Linda Larsen (flying in from America to discuss our internships) in Beijing on Sunday! So lame. So, although everyone else thought I should just ditch the meeting, I switched my bullet train ticket to Saturday evening.
I took the night train down from Beijing. That was remarkably good - I got several hours of sleep until we got to Nanjing, since I was on a soft seat that was actually a sleeper and there were only two of us sitting on it, so I could lie down. I got to Suzhou sometime before 8 in the morning and headed to Jonathan's apartment. There I met Chandler and Jonathan, and we headed out to a football activity with the Suzhou branch. I only had a pair of jeans and a polo with me, so Chandler and I decided to walk around the lake instead of playing football, and we had a good conversation. Chandler got into Harvard's philosophy Ph.D. program, by the way, and he's great to talk with. Very funny, too.
Then Seth and Ben showed up, and we went back out by the lake and flew kites for a bit. We also got lunch at an Italian place. Suzhou is a really nice city. It's nearly all newly built, and it has beautiful waterways and gardens and parks and very efficient transit. After lunch, we went over to old Suzhou, where we took a gondola ride and saw traditional old houses. Ben was doing some poses on the front of the boat with a rope tied to the front, and he fell in the canal! It was about the hardest I've laughed for a year. He jumped back on the boat right away, but he was completely soaked, and the water was pretty filthy too. Jonathan got the whole thing on his phone in a series of pictures that tell the story way better than I can...after that, we headed for TGI Friday's. Ben stopped at a clothing store to try on a shirt, but the lady tried to rip him off so he tore it off and stomped outside shirtless. His phone recovered the next day, but he also got pretty sick for a day or so and threw up several times.
And then my crazy trip came to an abrupt end. Everyone else went to TGI Friday's, and I had to get a cab to the train station to leave, after only 8 or 9 hours in Suzhou. They tried to call Doug and persuade him to let me call in to the meeting instead, and Seth threatened to tie me up, but all to no avail, so I went and got on my train and headed back to Beijing.
I was glad I got to go and see my friends after a few months of being apart, but it would have been nice to spend more time in Suzhou than I did on my two trains! :P
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