Saturday, May 06, 2006

Thursday May ... 2006






this is the first time i've been able to get onto a computer. and it's kind of hard to navitage 'cause everything's in chinese.. let me just try to do a quick update on what i've done so far.

- the plane ride wasn't so bad. slept most of it. when we got to shanghai, we took the bullet train, and it was CRAZY fast - 431 km/hour !! i attached a picture of it. first thing i noticed was that they're doing some serious construction everywhere (literally). where we would build one apartment, they build 10 replicas side by side.. it's crazy. here in hangzhou, on the university campus, they're building like 20 new residences (that look identical) right beside each other.. ya, so, we're here to see how china's rapidly development affects the environment.. and.. you can already see that.

- yesterday was pretty fun. they bought us these new bikes to ride around on campus. the campus is massive... probably as big as the York Campus.. but sooo much nicer. everything is so clean... there's always ppl sweepign the streets... -in the afternoon, each one of us went with our partners to downtown hangzhou by ourselves... 'cause they didn't want us to stay sheltered on campus. so it was cool 'cause there's all these stories that go with every building in china... and they know all of them. went to a botanical garden and had tea in the park... and then for dinner, we went to a restaurant called Lo Wei Lo for our welcome banquet. apparently, it's the most famous restaurant in the city

- today, we went to a wetland marsh and did some field work.. took samples from different sites..
anyways, bottom line is, it's really cool being here. can't believe i'm in china. i have way more to say, but i don't have much time 'caues this lab closes in 20 minutes! i want to upload my pics somewhere, but again, i can't really navigate in internet explorer 'cause eveyrthing's in chinese. so i just gotta get my partner here with me to show me what to do.

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