Watertown

After a few days spent in Suzhou (苏州) wandering about without a plan, Shawna and I caught a bus to Xitang (西塘), one of a few Venice-like water towns in this area of Zhejiang Province. We had to transfer in Jiashan to a small rickety bus to take us the rest of the distance. Jiashan was a rundown more rural city, if that makes sense. In Xitang we were randomly dropped off in the non-water area and had to make our way through traffic messes to the old town.
Once here we have found a nice inn to spend the first night, positioned right beside a waterway. At night the noises of passersby below our window can be heard and the narrow alleys are all lit with red lanterns. It's a very pretty place. On the bus I heard the tune to a song from the movie "Love Story" play over and over again as we careened past goose farms, etc. Just now I heard the same song being played on a flute outside my window.
What I will remember most of Suzhou was a cheap, but epic late night hotpot (火锅) experience as well as breakfast this morning consisting of mind-blowingly good dumplings (小笼包), soymilk (豆浆) and youtiao (油条). Both of those meals left me reeling in Cloud 9.
As for how I feel after being in China about a month now... living here is frustrating at times and others a real joy. Sometimes I'll be embraced for my mixed heritage and sometimes I am a complete outsider. The most I am capable of now is some small talk, conversational kind of things, but I still have an overwhelming amount to learn, and that gets me down periodically. I still need to work on stringing longer, more complex sentences together. Some things come quite quickly as though I've programmed it already, but then it can take a while to express myself in other moments. I still have 3 months to focus entirely on Chinese, so my goal is to do just that, and not get caught by the feeling of being overwhelmed too much.