2005-02-01 - 11:41 p.m.

I am the worst girlfriend ever. It’s official. Mike sprained his ankle running at the gym. He’s been limping for over 2 weeks, and how do I help him? I buy him a ticket for a day trip to a water town, which involves lots of walking!!! I did not plan to keep him in pain all day, I promise. I honestly thought we would get to sit in a boat all day. I didn’t realize how utterly cold it was either. It stayed in the teens and maybe 20’s all day. I am so sweet. Mike hardly smiled the whole trip (except for when he tried to push me in the water)
We got off the bus and this is the scenery that greeted us.

Rows of empty buildings and stores. We kept walking, and wound up in a neighborhood, which looked identical to the neighborhoods in Shanghai. Making the best of the situation, I made Mike pose for a picture in front of this “…really ANCIENT wall! How cool, Mike!”

He didn’t buy it. I was getting worried. We took a 2 hour bus ride for this? Mike was muttering things like, “This is great.” and “My ankle hurts.” At last, ZhouZhuang appeared.

It’s such a cool little place. The town has waterways going all through it,
and narrow little alleys filled with people who make arts and crafts while you watch.

We took a boat ride. The ladies who steer the boats sing old songs and it was beautiful. I thought I recorded a song on our camera and I got so excited. But, of course, I never pushed ‘record’.

We went to a museum and saw lots of relics from the Ming and Qing dynasties. They had this old, early chess set that I pretended to try to move. The guard lady looked mean and was eyeing me, so I didn’t move it. I wanted to real bad though. I am a bad tourist.

Mr.youcantcatchmesmiling

Mike took lots of pictures of statues all over the city.

Here was our cue to leave- a busload of tourists with matching hats, so they don’t get lost. Guaranteed chaos.

The trip was quite an experience. It was beautiful scenery. It was quite cruel to sell me tickets in freezing weather. Somebody should have warned me, and they should have said, No, Julie, you don’t get to sit in a boat all day either. (Okay, I should have thought things all the way through before I bought the tickets, but that’s just no fun, now is it?) Mike is brave to let me be in charge of an outing. We had fun. I think.

?lt;/P>

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