Hangzhou 杭州 - September visit (part 1)

Going home!! Or at least one of my homes. I was fortunate that my flight came in the same day as Mike came home from Korea, leading to a warm welcome: 

While Mike was at work, so was I. The weather in Hangzhou was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. Not too hot, not too cold. Warm with a gentle breeze. I opened the doors to both balconies while I worked at the desk. 

I had to step outside to enjoy it pretty often. I loved going downstairs to just walk around and buy some great food that I had missed. 

Chinese McDonald's!! ^_^

I didn't realize it when I took this photo, but it was a foreshadow to the next photo: 

Check this guy out!! He totally has an Army shirt on, and he even had the pants on too. You can see that he was totally stoked to get a photo with us Americans. 

Trying my first-ever friend banana - delicious!

Mike getting another photo on his phone. 

Look at all these swords!! No photos allowed! Fortunately I don't read Chinese too well...and I could pretend to be Italian and not read the English either. 

This guy was amazing: he cuts a hole in the bottom of the eggs to drain them out, then he carves them into artistic masterpieces. Those are probably the same eggs they used to make my breakfast!

Awesome. 

Mike is the umbrella man. Here is his competition.

Or future partners? 

This game was ridiculous. It looked SO EASY. You just knock over these little wooden blocks with bean bags. You get 10 shots plus 1 practice shot. 

Mike and I tried it together. We hit one. ONE. So we got this lame "loser" prize. I was embarrassed to have it out, so I quickly hid it in my backpack. 

Check this guy out! He just seemed like such a stereotypical old-Chinese guy that I had to get a photo with him. 

This was the best. Here I am posing for my photo, and a couple Chinese girls were taking photos too. Then one started taking photos of me! : D I really love China. It's great having random people take photos of you. I'm pretty sure I would love being famous. 

I found a Pikachu!!

Mike and his Chinese family. 

Bubbles!

This was SWEET. We took a car elevator!! So cool. 

We were trying to find this restaurant, and Mike and Vivian were discussing which way we needed to go. I finally asked, so which way should we go? They literally pointed just like this. 

Italian food from a real Italian! 

We started having this little argument about how to properly ask for more water. Vivian was saying that one way was correct, but the other way still made sense. Anyway, when the waiter came by she still kept saying it in Chinese (and he's a Chinese waiter), so it was pretty funny. (i.e. "Can I have some more water?", "Could you give me more water?", "Need more water", etc)

Eventually he decided to just leave the water for us. 

I finally saw the famous water fountain show in Hangzhou!! Waaaay better than the one in Vegas. 

We also met this monk, but I guess he's a fake monk because he actually had some hair on his head. 

So I go to teach English course and need to use the toilet. I really hate using squatters, so I checked to see if they had a normal toilet. 

They did, and apparently they used it as the cleaning closet. Haha. 

Looks like squatter it is: 

(I actually decided to just hold it)

Ended the day with English course!! It was pretty fun...for the first hour. The second hour got to be a little long. I got offered a job to go teach there for a year but, 

AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!