Ningbo City and Making Friends
Ningbo, Zhejiang Province
Ningbo is a modern chinese city important for its exports. Not a lot of history here or big fancy buildings, but it seems clean and convenient. My first weekend in Ningbo, I went to the bookstore and bought a map with the bus routes on it. I couldn't find one in English so I bought a chinese map.
It is good practice for me to try to read the signs in chinese and find out where I am on the map. I took a bus to the city center and walked around for a few hours. It was a nice adventure.
Surprisingly, even though the population and wealth of Ningbo are much greater than Liuzhou. It's not as brightly lit up at night. Liuzhou and many other chinese cities decorate every tall building with neon lights (actually LEDs I think) that flash and change colors until late at night. It's like a competition to see which building can be the brightest and most colorful.
Ningbo doesn't have this. I don't know why. Ningbo's also a very quiet city at night. Everybody says that Ningbo people just like to go home and count their money. Liuzhou had a much more lively nightlife.I live in Yinzhou which is a new industrial area. There are many many new apartment buildings being built here and many many companies and factories. The picture below was taken from my first apartment which the company rented for me. I didn't like the apartment, so after 3 days there I asked the company to find me a new one and my place is nearby but much nicer. It is next door to my bosses apartment so I can ride to work with her and her husband who also works at our company.
In this picture you can see peasant vegetable gardens in the foreground which is about all that is left of the farm land that this new city used to be. You can also see many new apartments in the background which are not yet finished. The low building on the far left is a new very western style shopping mall called Wan Da Square - which is kind of a chain shopping center. They always have a big WalMart and cinema and many restaurants and other mall stores.New Friends
First I met Tracy who has been very welcoming and a great tour guide. She showed me around Tian Yi GuangChang (the city center square) and introduced me to some local snacks. We also went to a park where I met Donna who is another one of Ray's college class mates and Tracy's roommate. We met some of Tracy's middle school friends and sat at a coffee house for a while then we all went to a movie - my first in a Chinese cinema. Luckily it had english subtitles. I really enjoyed it.
The next weekend I walked to the city center (about 1 hour) and went with Tracy and some of her friends to an international food expo. The next day we went to an ancient temple called Tian Tong Si which is about 1700 years old. Amazing! It took us a couple of hours to get there by 3 public buses. We had to stand most of the way because it was so crowded. When we got there, we met two more of Ray's classmates Norman and Tommy. I had heard a lot about Norman from Ray. They are good friends and are alot alike.
After visiting the temple, we climbed a mountain next to it. It was a nice autumn day and the view from the top was really nice.
We all took the bus back to Tracy's house and bought fish in the market and Donna cooked for us all. She is a very good cook and likes to cook seafood. We were all exhausted and took the last bus home.
This weekend we had dinner at a Chongqing hot pot restaurant and I met yet another of their classmates, Jack, and his wife. 
After dinner I invited them to my apartment which was nearby. I had told Norman that I would teach him how to bake Chocolate Chip Cookies. 
He did a good job and we all enjoyed his cookies. I sent all the leftovers home with them. 
Chinese people do not bake food. Their food is always steamed, fried or boiled. So they are not familiar with ovens. I have a small toaster oven which I inherited from my former boss when he moved back to America. It is a treasure to have so that I can bake cookies and brownies. The ingredients are difficult to find as well, but I did manage to find brownie and cookie mixes on my recent trip to Guangzhou, Hong Kong and the Philipines.
Local Snacks
One of my favorite things about China is trying all the different foods. And Ningbo has lots of local foods, like all chinese cities. The street above is near the city center (Tian Yi Square) to the right is an interesting old building with lots of little shops, and to the left is a snack street with lots of local food.
Very colorful drinks.
Because Ningbo is near the sea, there is lots of really yummy sea food to eat here. Our company cafeteria has seafood just about every day. :)
I miss spicy food and Luosifen in particular, but I will have it every time I go back to Liuzhou. And I am sure I will eventually find some good spicy restaurants near where I live. So I will survive.
posted by adventuregirl at 9:44 PM
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The first weekend I was at the company they had a team building event for the technical department. It was a lot of fun and a good way to get to know the team members. It was amazingly similar to some of the team building I have done in America. Fall back into the arms of your colleagues, spider web or electric fence exercise, climb a pole and jump out to grab a trapeze bar with your colleagues holding a safety rope, human elevator lift the whole team one by one up a 12 foot wall. It was a lot of fun and taught us all a lot of teamwork skills.
