Ahh holidays (Marcus)

Day 1 of 4 days off, and what a beautiful sunny day it was(initially). After lazing around for the morning, we set out to take next week's lesson to the printing room to have 880 copies printed for Senior 1 next week. En route, we were going to take some photographs of the campus as it's really quite pretty now that Spring has sprung.

You can see our apartment across the lake, it's the small squat building in the front to the right. It's separate from the main blocks of flats because we are foreigners and carry massive amounts of prestige with that birth-right - right?

The bamboo behind the apartment - we have a lovely view of this from the bathroom - pity we don't spend more time in there.

We were however, accosted by two women, a man and three absolutely cute as hell babies. It turns out two of them were little twin boys, the third being, I don't know what. We wanted to take their photos but kept going - until distracted I stopped to photograph the local gaggle of geese who were nearby in the lake. Well the party caught up to us and soon they were thrusting babies into our hands to photograph US with the babies! As one was being thrust into Courtney's arms, she handed the camera over to me, and it got caught between us then fell hard to the ground. It was alright, but the damned door that holds the battery and memory card broke, meaning it now has to be permantly taped up or it flashes the 'door is open!!' alert and we can't do anything. Annoying.

Anyhow after initially being phased by that, as I to date had taken such good care of the camera, it was quickly forgotten by the major cute factor that was those kiddies. And again, another situation where being able to speak Chinese would have been wonderful. The memory that will remain with me however is the decidedly wet patch beneath the kid that I held for the photo...erk.

How cute is this baby? Seriously, it's making me clucky. There were three of them like this, to which I would happily steal them and bring them home and raise them as my minions.

Seeing the day was so nice, and we are spending the next 3 in the tourist haven of Suzhou, we decided to catch the bus into the city again. Today we trekked down to the Grand Canal. I was really wanting to see it from day 1, but was never actually sure where it was. I saw it one day briefly as we drove past it en route to lake Taihu with Mr Pan and have wanted to go back there ever since. Well today we went down there - about a solid 15 minute walk from the centre of WuXi in I guess a northerly style direction. Actually I have no idea what direction it is in, but like that really matters anyway.

The Grand Canal if you do not know is one of those 'big important cool things' that's part of China's history. I find China's history and cultural tidbits absolutely fascinating. The Canal itself is huge and is actually the largest of its kind in the world. The oldest parts of the canal actually date right the way back to the 5th century BC - yeah, it's old alright. It begins in the tourist city of Hangzhou (where Marco Polo was reputed to have governed once upon a time(IF Marco Polo actually existed - that's apparently still up for debate)) - goes through Suzhou, WuXi, a whole bunch of other cities and eventually ends up in Beijing. It does not go through either Nanjing or Shanghai, which are the other two very large cities in our province, Jiangsu.

The canal is still a massive source of travel today, with an almost constant stream of barges in either direction. They are laden with goods of every description and are either so full they're almost taking on water, or empty, returning home for another load. We plan on packing a picnic and heading down here to watch them for a stint one day - it's quite relaxing, and thoroughly interesting. At the place we found the canal, there's a nice little Pagoda setup which is just crying out to be chilled in. Across the canal was a mountain with another large Pagoda on it. This looks like it's one huge park network, complete with chair-lifts. We plan to hit it in a day trip in the near future.

Leaving the Canal behind us, we headed back into the city where I basically impulse bought a new camera. An Olympus FE-340 which is effectively the most recent model of what I was already using. This camera will address my biggest issues with the previous camera, and is already working a treat. The other camera's flash litterally blasted faces to hell and back - whereas this camera is much newer technology and is much much better. It also allows you to adjust the white balance and ISO, and is 8 megapixel opposed to 6. It was 2100 rmb initially, they offered a deal of 1900 and a 1 gig memory card. We ended up bargaining with them and getting it for 1900 with a 2 gig card instead which in my opinion was good value. I was going to try and get it down to 1700/1800 with the 1 gig card, but I am happy with the 2gig. 1900 rmb is approximately 300 Australian dollars which really is cheap. The camera is also much smaller, has a larger LCD and can detect faces and all these other funky things, so yeah, happy days. We'll let it loose in Suzhou, then punish you with a massive epic blog entry.

Nothing to see here, just your typical street-smart WuXi local etc etc though this one is particularly windswept and handsome.

One of the larger canals that passes right alongside the city centre. There are numerous bridges of this style dotted along their length. Now that the tree's have their green coats on, it makes for a really beautiful view when the sun comes out.

The Great Courtney before the Grand Canal - or the Great Channel if you're Mr Pan, to which I keep correcting him and he continues to call it Great Channel. Whatever. This bridge we were on was quite large and was a shocker. There was a constant stream of busses and trucks across it, and each time they went over a joint in the road - where the surface joins onto another big flat chunk, the hold damned thing rocked!! Now I distinctly remember reading several articles about bridges in China collapsing - one where a large boat clipped the bottom of it, knocking several cars into the water below, and another which was still being constructed somewhere out whoop whoop, but a lot of workers were killed. I was thinking about both of these every time this thing MOVED. It's probably safe as hell, but still, it unnerved me, and I was very glad to be leaving it.

Barges of every description pass by - it's very relaxing to watch. Most of them sport the brilliant red Chinese flag on the rear of the vessel. One had an almost black Chinese flag as it was sitting right above an exhaust pipe. The barges are like floating homes - most have washing hung all over them, one even had a motorcycle on the back.

This old woman was dropping a bucket down into the water, hauling it up then washing her clothes in it. If you could see the water in better detail - or smell it, you would be able to appreciate just how ..interesting that is. Imagine washing your clothes in the Yarra in the middle of Melbourne - or better, Kannanook Creek in Frankston. See if you can spot the cat in this photo; cat's make us happy.

See you after Suzhou!