Suzhou and Zhou Jian
I had a great time this past weekend at Suzhou with six other teachers - kind of a last long weekend with the group. Mark, Barbara, Janet, Fitz & Liz and I were from Changzhou and we met up with Celia from Wuxi on Friday. The whole weekend started off with a bang when Mark (another teacher from the States) and I got almost to the train station and realized that we both had left our passports at home. That is definitely a NO-NO since you can't get into your hotel without it. So we had to tell the others to go on and we went in and bought new tickets on the D train for an hour later. I think the poor little taxi driver was in a state when we finally got across to him that we only had one hour to get to Mark's place, get his passport (he lives on the fifth floor and can't walk very fast due to an accident), go to my apt., me go to the 4th floor, snatch my passport, then speed back to the train station. Now the new D-trains do not wait until everyone is on before they take off. If you aren't on board when the automatic doors close, tough luck...and the train is only stopped at the dock for 3 minutes!