Pretty Much just the West Lake

We're on Spring Break! Which means that I went to get some tea with my tea teacher, we tried lots of different kinds of green tea and some oolong too. 

Preparing the tea to drink is complicated if you do it the traditional way- you shouldn't drink the first seeping, instead you pour it out (those little statues change color if you pour hot liquid on them). 

A statue of what appears to be a frog on a carrot, at the tea shop, but I'm pretty sure it has a different meaning than that.

At the University store, buying sticky-notes, I came across this game.. "Close all your eyes"

It rained! And everything smelt great.

Lots of apartments. 

Everything is blooming!

A Convenience shop with high hopes.

Last weekend I met up with a friend from Andover, Joel, and his friend from Beijing, where there are both studying abroad. I always forget how nice it is to talk to someone from Andover, and spend some time reminiscing, it reminds me I'm not the only one out there whose friends have heard way to much about their high school. 

We went to a Starbucks after trying to meet up and go to the Tiger Spring. Some communication confusion meant we were on different ends of the lake, and then we found out the spring closed earlier than we thought it did. Plus we couldn't find taxis, we suspect because it was changing shift time. Anyways, so this is the view from the Starbucks! It's really really nice.

More Starbucks view. This is the first one I've been to in China, and I must say the location can't be beat.

Joel noticed a terrace on the second floor, so we moved up to get even better views! That lighted up building in the distance is Lei Feng Ta, the Pagoda I went to a couple weeks back with Nikki ++ . Of course now that the weather is so nice, the mosquitos are out, but despite the small swarm hovering in the air around us, we didn't get bitten. Joel had a flight out at 22, so we tried to find a place to get a quick bite to eat, but everything looked fancy, so Joel asked one of the street vendors where he had gotten his food and we got pointed in the direction of some more reasonably priced options. And they were off! Maybe we'll meet again in the summer, I hope so at least.

So I decided to go for a sunset run to the West Lake, on the way I saw a protest! There were tons of cops and everyone was filming this, I couldn't understand what they were saying but I showed a recording to my roommate and she said they want higher wages. 

The water was super clear!

And you can't see the background, which was nice and pre-sunset clear, but you can see me.. 

Sunset!

You can see Hangzhou, the city! I'm on the North side of the lake, the city is on the east, and there are mountains on the south and west side. 

Never get tired of the lake, sorry guys, this blog is pretty much just the lake. 

People were flying kites.

And that's it! I haven't been up to much, cooking, erhu playing, running, researching who I want to write my thesis on, reading Harry Potter, sleeping.. Oh! Today we're going to try to make Pizza, we'll see how that goes, and Friday we're going to the mountains for an adventure at the least, and hiking at the best.