Tea Museum and more Mexican Restaurant!

For my Hangzhou research class this week, one of my assignments was to go to a tea museum and interview visitors and the staff. Unfortunately getting to the museum required about 100 minutes of public transportation and 2 bus switches, but my roommate came with, so things couldn't go too wrong.  Luckily people seem more willing to be interviewed in Hangzhou, so I got some good answers (if all pretty much what I expected to hear) to some questions about their tea drinking habits and the number of people who visit the museum. Some visit highlights:

In case we don't know how to drink tea.. 

So gorgeous! Hopefully next weekend/soon I'll come back to this area and bring a book. 

I'm at the museum!

Oh! By the way my roommate is not featured in my pics because she had a bad haircutting experience, so now her bangs are not level. I mean, I think it looks fine, but she is waiting for them to grow out more before being featured in any photos. 

Friday morning, before my weekly 10am test, I decided to run to the east lake. The weather was spectacular. The area I ran to had more wild life than previously. But I had to run along some main roads for awhile, during which I encountered signs such as this! (at least there are some nice looking flowers too :) And a traffic cop standing on a pedestal in the middle of the intersection! But my picture of that wasn't too good, so it isn't featured here)

So beautiful!!

More 

I can't help it

not many tourists yet!

On the search for my favorite oatmeal

We went to Mexican restaurant!! It turned out to be rather good- I got a burrito, though a little pricey, ~6 american dollars compared to the 1 I usually spend on a meal.

We stopped by a bookstore- where I found a surprisingly large amount of books translated from English- I didn't get any, maybe next time. Also, bookstores appear to be a more casual atmosphere than most American ones- kids sleeping on the floor, people reading with snacks from outside in the bookstore, but there were books, so I loved it even more.

Older people learning to roller skate, unicycle and dance! Every weekend when I go running in this area I see them.

East lake today- calm waters

with willow

I had solo ventured to the east lake after our mexican food adventure, where I wandered around the lake while reading. When it started getting dark I decided to head back, but after waiting for buses back to campus and seeing that they were all packed, I decided to try the subway. Which was also packed, but slightly less so. Picture below- notice that the tv screen is airing footage of adorable kittens/guinea pig interaction. This is common during busy hours, and I really like this. It's hard to be annoyed about how many people there are when such adorableness is around.

Last but not least, after 2 months of loosing change from my wallets coin area hole, I finally borrowed a  sewing kit and got to work. My years sewing together leather things for my dad finally came in handy. 

Ahhh I'm sure more has happened, but I forget.. I coded a motion tracking opencv thing because I was feeling rusty. I should probably do a cs related project weekly, I plan to, but we'll see how my resolve holds up in the face of increasingly breathtaking weather.