went to suzhou on unexpected trip with lauren (who is leaving shanghai shortly, nooooooo!), viviana & jerry, and kevin. we rented a"jin-bei" (translation: gold cup) minivan and drove about an hour outside the city to see the famed gardens and try their some of their local foods, which include sweet & sour fish and date desserts. it was fun, harked back to the special kind of road trip i hadn't enjoyed since vassar.
i huffed and puffed it to all the other gardens which included miniature trees, small paths that wound around into ornate shaded respites and animal-shaped rock formations. i couldn't make it all the way up tiger hill, but the girls were nice enough to ride what jerry called "the donkey cart" with me, which didn't actually ride up the hill, but just took you cloppity clopping sloooowwly about 20 feet down a path at the end of the hill. oh. anywas, you can see the guy talking on his cell when he dropped us off probaby saying i just made 30 kuai off of these 3 suckas.
while i waited down at the bottom for them, i stumbled upon some taxidermied stuffed animals of varying degrees of creepiness. sat on the bridge overlooking the water, pondering what a strange thought process was from "year of the dog" to what was assaulting my eyes before me. i snapped a picture. 
and on our way to the silk market, we spotted a hotel & spa to do some bissnes.
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