6-9-11: Thursday

Today was quite a day. We saw the most famous silk factory in all of Suzhou. It is incredible how much work goes into making just one spool of thread for silk. Extremely time consuming, but well worth it! The drive to Hangzhou wasn't all that bad. This city is beautiful! It kind of reminds me of Minneapolis in a way. When we went to the shopping streets, a few girls stopped Paul and I and had us take a survey, which seemed to just be checking whether or not their translation from Chinese to English made any sense. Some of the translations were very strange. One of them asked me what a flax file was, and I had absolutely no idea. They were very nice though, and I gave one of them, Emily, my email when she asked if she could contact me for help. The rain today was pretty refreshing. It was about 95 degrees outside, but it cooled off substantially after the heavy showers. The city show was pretty neat, also. It was strange at the end though when everyone in the audience simply got up and left, instead of applauding. I wonder if that is the norm here, or maybe if it was simply to beat the traffic out of the park. I am very excited to see what more this city has to offer, especially since we are going to the lake where a part of the city show took place tomorrow! Until then!