My First Chinese Haircut!

Yeah, I finally got all those dead ends cut off. We communicated pretty smoothly. I was concerned at first because he washed my hair and then dried it. Well, my hair drys straight, but he got out a straightener and started straightening my straight hair! It took awhile, but when he was done he finally began cutting my hair, guess he wanted it really straight before starting. I indicated I wanted only a little off, and he nodded. At any rate, I have decent layers now, there is like a 4 inch difference between the shortest layer and the bottom of my hair. It looks good, I was just shocked at first to see so much hair cut off, I thought it was Spain all over again! I have noticed that those girls here with longer hair do have a lot of layers in it and usually bangs (I stopped him before he gave me bangs, it was a close one). The best part about the hair cut was, it was a little shop down an alley next to a huge fruit market. I only knew about it because my friend lives in the area. It was great, because it was a smaller shop and out of the way it was extremely in-expensive and the guy put a lot of effort and thought into the layers and wanted everything to be just the perfect length. He did a great job.

Other than hair adventures, nothing much has happened here. Oh, we did have a loss. Our bunny died! :( I woke up one morning and looked at the cage and the bunny was laying on its side all sprawled out. My roommate and I have decided to forgo getting another pet. My bike chain fell off today and I couldn't figure out ho to put it back on. In the city within a 100 yards there are usually at least 3-6 bicycle repair men. They are everywhere and really good. I had the fella fix the chain, which he did in a second so I felt kind of special, then I pointed to my brakes and he tightened them all up for me. The repairs are very cheap, only 1 kuai! I wasn't sure, but his partner didn't look happy that he only charged me 1 kuai, I don't know what that was about. To show you where my priorities lie, I spent 4 kuai on lunch (which was like a big tortilla rap thing and 5 pieces of bread stuff) and the 12 kuai on a smallish bag of Hershey Kisses! There are some things I just won't live with out, dark chocolate is definitely one of them. :)

I successfully bought a train ticket today. I am headed for Suzhou this weekend with my friend Alex. She has already booked the hostel and everything, I just have to show up. Suzhou has been called the Venice of China (I think Ive mentioned that before), anyway, I'll tell you all about it when I get back. And who knows, I might even post a picture or two (but don't get your hopes up!)

Heres a picture from Qixia Mountain. I went hiking there two weeks ago to see the red leaves of autumn. The temple is the main thing we took pictures of. This is where the Thousand Buddhas are. Here is one with me in front of the temple.