Suzhou Sorrow

Sorry if my post earlier is published AFTER this one! For some reason the email with the post wouldn't send even with the wi-fi.

So basically I'm at Suzhou right now for one night (two days). I was so excited on the morning before we left to Suzhou because it seemed like we were going to do a lot of fun things. I also heard that Suzhou is a beautiful city and really nice to explore, so I was ECSTATIC for this trip. (plus on our schedule it says we will be shopping at Guanqian Jie in the evening).  I'm not upset with how the city looks (it's beautiful), but how are schedule has been changed. Our original plan was to go to the Lion Forest Garden and then shop at Guanqian Jie on the first day, but our resident director told us that the schedule has been changed, and we will be going to Lingering Garden and KTV instead. Lingering Garden was nice, but I was looking forward to the shopping on Guan qian Jie. My friend has a brother that is in Suzhou for the NSLI-Y program, and he said that there are lots of things to buy on that road that is pretty cheap. I really disliked the idea of going to KTV because we can do that in Hangzhou (and we actually already did). I wanted to explore what Suzhou has to offer and see the difference of Suzhou and Hangzhou. It says on our schedule that we will be going to the Hanshan Temple, Sweet Gum Bridge Old Town, and Liu Garden on the second day. I'm pretty sure that will change as well.

First Day~~~

We left Zhedafuzhong at about 2 PM, and it was a 2 1/2 hour drive to Suzhou. The first on our list was Lingering Temple, and it was very nice. It had a tranquil feeling and included a lot of history embedded into the structures. We went to dinner after that, and it was pretty good compared to school lunches. Like I said earlier, we spent the rest of our day KTV-(ing), and it was a bit awkward. Many of us left the KTV room after about half an hour because we just wanted to explore on our own. I went with a few friends as well to walk around and see what's near where we are staying. One problem. We are staying in the middle of nowhere. I can see the nice towers far from my hotel, but there really is nothing near where we live. Just a few convenient stores and a square area of where the KTV is located. 

Second Day~~

Yet again, our schedule changed. We only went to a temple and shopped at an area outside of the city. The original schedule would have taken us to the city, but our tour guide completely changed our plans, and we actually never entered the actual city life of Suzhou. The shopping was pretty nice, but we had a very limited time, so I ended up only buying this wooden keychain. We only stayed on the outskirts/rural-ish parts. The scenery was mostly garbage and construction. Not as exciting as I was hoping for, and I'll definitely come back to Suzhou for a REAL exploration.