January 1st 2009

The first day of 2009. What shall we do? Climb a Mountain! 

The local mountain called The Purple Mountain is next to where we live. 

Warren took us up with Jenny and Moon. It was very cold the very warm then very cold again, a lot of taking clothes off an on again. It was really steep and there was actual climbing that we had to do holding onto rocks and stuff. 

It was really fun and nice to get some exercise. Our photos are really cool, awesome views all the way up. I’m worried now about the mountain Thom wants to take us up in Chengdu, it’s gonna be way bigger than the Purple Mountain, we may die. The Sichuan visit is the next thing on our itinerary to look forward to.

 Since we’ve had a few days off work because of the New Year, we took the initiative to go exploring around Nanjing ourselves rather than having to rely on the Chinese guys, I’m sure they would like time off to chill too. 

We used the map that Thom gave us that is for English speaking tourists. 

There is an area around the Nanjing University and the ‘Normal Nanjing University’ (whatever that is) that has lots of “western’ food eateries. We found one that apparently sells sandwiches, a French restaurant and a Mexican restaurant which we went into for lunch but it doesn’t just do Mexican food, it has Italian, English, Spanish, American. 

CHEEEEEEESSSSEEEE!

...Cheese...

Between us we got spaghetti, carbonara, steak and chips, a breakfast burrito, French fries and garlic bread. We will be returning there. We reckon on a Saturday night it might be really full of westerners. 

A trip into town wouldn’t be the same without a visit to the DVD shop. Unfortunately, this tie we lost Nicola on the way and she got pick-pocketed! Luckily it wasn’t a mugging like you’d get in England. They managed to get into her bag, her purse, take out 300 Yuan and put her purse back all without her noticing. I guess that because we are westerners we are seen as easy targets, We must keep our eyes open at all times. Maybe we’ve been lured into a false sense of security because most people have been very kind to us and we don’t see any hostility, but now we know there is some out there and to not let our guard down.