Day Four. Exploring Ningbo Unaccompanied. July 3rd.

Today we woke up and met together with the intention of exploring our surroundings and to get a taste of the area we will call home for the next two weeks. We thought hat better way to do this than head into Ningbo city and have a shop and look around. Now I had some idea in my head that the shopping centers in the city would be a little like Westfield’s or Centro Bankstown. I mean Ningbo was a small city in China in comparison to say Beijing or Shanghai despite it having a population of over 5 million people.

 Probably the hottest day we had on the trip we ventured away from our hotel and caught a crazy taxi to Ningbo town. The funny thing about how they drive in China is there is pretty much no rules or regulations. They do not use indicators; they rather go heavy on the horn to let you know they are coming up behind you. They do not wear seatbelts and even on a pedestrian crossing cars always have the right of way and they will actually hit you. This terrified me as crossing the roads was a torturous task, however observing the locals and how even when a truck or bus is violently honking at them alerting them they are coming up behind them, nothing phases them.

In the taxi we passed Chanel, Louis Vuitton and other high end designers and I had hopes for a Marc Jacobs store but no such luck!

Starving, having not had breakfast, we went to a restaurant where a lovely man translated for us as the door person was a little taken back by our lack of Mandarin. The thing about Ningbo is they do not speak English at all. We all had glorious food and drinks, drinks which actually cost more than the 30 minute taxi ride in, and the man downstairs even sent us up some freebies. Another example of Chinese hospitality.

It was incredibly hard to get a taxi home and while flagging down every car that drove past we heard a massive explosion, not knowing what it was we looked around one of the girls even asked a stranger through sign language whether it was gunfire and panic or horror did not register on her or anyone else’s face. I guess we will never know what it was.

After a nap we went to dinner with the group and we ordered by drawing images of the animals. Something, which proved quite successful as all the dishes I tasted, were fantastic.

Feeling quite defeated and exhausted and not bothered to endure the heat and being lost in translation I was beginning to think it would be easier to go to sulk in my room but a number of the group decided to go to the hotel bar called the ‘Joy bar’ for a few beverages to lull us off to sleep. It was a small bar on the third floor of the hotel, with a lot of neon decorations, flags from various Countries, a pool table, foosball table and a boxing dummy. They had all the common western beers and even Bacardi Breezers. The bar was supposed to close at 12pm so we thought we were safe to have a few and head back to retire with enough time and stamina to face the following day.

After a number of drinks, I lost count after about 10 we all got louder and louder, started to sing and dance. At one stage we were screaming Whitney Houston’s ‘I will always love you’ while leaping across the room in an interpretive dance off. Let me tell you teachers/soon to be teachers, know how to wind down and have fun after a tough day!

It soon came to midnight and we were not in the mood to stop the party so instead of winding down and heading back to our dorms we thought we would wait until they told us to get out. But no, they didn't say a thing. I think we left just before 4 am after we all had many the shot of vodka and green tea, supplied by our new international student friends from the university who also lived at the hotel.

After many conversations about life, music, god and other topics we were now very well acquainted with one another and have realized that we in fact have a lovely group and are bound to have a lot of fun over the next few weeks.