What better way to end a stressful week with a field trip to a highly industrial and technologically advanced industrial park? A mediocre field trip to a highly industrial and technologically advanced industrial park. To be honest, I was really looking forward to this trip, since the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) sounded very intriguing.
We had to take a one and a half hour bus ride to SIP, which I luckily slept through. When we got there, we sat through a brief presentation about the area, which I found to be the best part of the SIP tour. As for the area itself, it is impressive. The planning is meticulous, as should be expected for a place with Singaporean influence. We were given a bus tour of the park (which is enormous), but it wasn’t very interesting. Even though the place is clean, it’s too sterile for my liking. The streets are pretty much empty (probably because almost EVERYONE who lives there is working). I would hate to work there.
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With my sleep schedule in complete disarray, I felt absolutely terrible when I woke up. I was tired, but luckily I only had Chinese. Not so luckily, I had a test today! Like the first test, the listening was my least favorite part. I really can’t differentiate tones, initials, and finals that well.
After class, Wei wanted to visit the Long Hua Temple, so I went with him and Pulton. I finally got to take the 3 line on the Metro, which is on elevated tracks. Sure there are elevated tracks everywhere in the outer boroughs in NYC, but this didn’t feel quite the same. Maybe it was the cleaner tracks or the smoother train.
The temple was located in this really dusty area. There was a lot of construction going on nearby so the dust and the already-not-so-great-air didn’t make it very pleasant to walk around. The temple itself was very pretty and tranquil. It didn’t seem like a big tourist attraction and it was Monday afternoon, so there weren’t many people. That made for a very pleasant walk.We got sticks of incense, but I didn’t burn them since I didn’t pray. They did break in my bag later on. Is that bad luck?
Weekends have become my sleeping days. Just like old times. It’s funny how during the end of last semester, I was waking up before my alarm or waking up early even though I was exhausted. And now, I’m barely waking up to my alarm.
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