Xiao in Haining

    Sooooo, I realized I messed up the chronilogical order of my blog posts. I forgot to talk about one thing. Early in my China experience one of my good friends from my university named Xiao came to Haining to visit me and made my life like ten times more awesome for a day and a half. Even though Xiao was only in Haining for one day, it was quite the adventure. She arrived in Haining on the evening of Easter, and we spent the evening hanging out with my co workers, who were singing and being silly like they always do. We finished that night by skyping with my family.
      The real fun began in the morning. We decided to go shopping, so we headed off to intime (called 银泰in Chinese) to explore. One of the first things we did was buy the llama named Stan for my sister that I mentioned previously, and it was with Xiao that I came up with the idea of putting him on my backpack and taking pictures of him around China.

We ate

We ate lunch at a restaurant that serves ethnic food from the western part of China (aka 新疆菜）。It was delicious, and we especially enjoyed the barbequed goat.

The manager of the restaurant asked to take a picture with me (oo look a waiguoren), and he gave me a free fruit plate since I said yes. I was missing eating apples, so I was really thankful for that. We also saw a painting near our seats that kind of reminded us of one of our friends, so I took a picture of it.

 That day I bought my first piece of Chinese clothing! It was this adorable skirt that actually cost me $100. I didn't actually realize at the time that it cost that much. I was just excited to buy Chinese clothes, and most of the other clothes there were more expensive than that, but it was totally worth it. This is one of my favorite pieces of clothing I own.

 My time with Xiao was very fun. Though we did have a very small funny disaster, which I will not mention for the sake of her honor (it's not really that serious, I am being too dramatic), but even that was still fun. I love Xiao, and I hope I can hang out with her in China again!