Suzhou smells so sweet

Above is the sweet smelling plants that has perfumed Suzhou at the moment. It grows on a tree, but I am not sure what its name is. It has a vanillaery smell and the trees are all over town, so it must be a Suzhou speciality.It's smell is masking the rotting food and other China smells quite well. I picked this on the way home from the restaurant today.

This past week has gone so slow and so fast all at the same time. It's been busy and relaxing and I'm kicking myself that my camera has not been charged as we've done some fun things.

I have been feeling homesick lately, I think more so because Kane has started thinking about wanting to stay for an extra year in China. So I decided I wanted a pet. We went down to pet street and brought 3 fish, some plants and rocks and bought them home. Pet street is a sad street, so many different animals in cages. Kane though for a few days about getting snake, so cheap here less than $100 with cage and all. Thankfully Mum talked him out of it. So I got my new pets home and they looked all squashed in the bowl. The bowl that housed my fighting fish last year that died in the winter cold. Over night 1 fish died, one progressively died in the morning. I needed a bowl that allowed more oxygen in, so I got 1 for $10 at Auchan (like Kmart/Coles), by the time I got home, all dead! So I threw them all over the balcony for the birds! SO now I had a bowl, rocks and plants and ceramic pagoda, but no fish.

We did 2 big bike rides, 1 down town, we had a good look around and were gone for 2 and a bit hours and the other ride was around the lake. It too was a few hours. My bum was quite good in recovery, but I think Kane is frustrated I can't ride faster on my pedal pusher compared with his stallion!

We had brought tickets to go to Shanghai. The fast train in only $5 (first class) and only takes 34 minutes. After leaving Suzhou at 7.57, we spent 12.5 hours walking around and found a really cool area called TaiKangLu. It is really funky, arty and has lots of cafes, restaurants and bars there. I got some yummy oolong/ginseng tea that has a sweet after taste, I really liked it. Kane was disappointed he didn't have his camera and I am disappointed I didn't have mine charged. Next we went searching for Decathlon, a mega sports store, it was an expedition to get there! Never rely on Chinese business cards or maps, they are not to scale, 3 hours later.... we were again looking for another cool area we'd heard about. Finally found, it was way too expensive for us and so we headed back to the train station to go back to Suzhou. We got home around 9.30pm.

We went out for brekkie twice this past week. A place called Simon's. We took Mum there for Mothers Day. They have since renovated and revamped the Menu. A big brekkie and refills of coffee for under $5. Better than Macca's.

Yesterday I again ventured out, got some almonds at Bar street, walked to Walking street to check out some silk that I might use in my wedding dress and then onto Pet st again. You can see I am using the English description names and that if how most foreigners (laowei in Chinese) refer to them. I again tried to get a pet! This time I chose a particularly fat fish that I've named Sue and and a rather scrawny fighting fish called Jo. Put together, they become SuZhou (SuJo - our city). Of course they can not live together, so Sue has the big bowl, that was never used to house my 3 dead friends, and Jo is living in the small vase in the bathroom with some plants as company. There they are:

Today we also went out to the driving range. I hit a golf ball off the ground - Yay! Kane was hitting some monsters 250m or so the signs says, he has really good at it. I personally think it's because he has bigger muscles than me :) We got nearly 40-50 balls for only $4. It was great fun. Then we went to our favourite restraint Zen for dim sum with the people we'd golfed with. Again we had a great time. After we all came back to our apartment for coffee and cake. I made Mama's carrot cake and I pulled out the nescafe coffee sticks. The cake was a huge success, while Kane still thinks it's missing Mama's secret ingredient ;) I think it's pretty close.

So back to school tomorrow and we'll slog through to the 19th of December now, it sounds so far away.

Bye everyone, I hope you feel better soon Jenny,

KK