through last weekend's persistent rain and chilly weather, i, along with 18 other nyu students and with the "help" of 2 trail guides (one later led us down the wrong path and into a small town afterwards), made the hike through suzhou's (sue-joe) hills. slightly nervous about the conditions, i was hoping the hike would be shortened or even cancelled... wrong. after a short but steep hike to our lunch site, we then continued for nearly three hours. fortunately, the guides led us to an old monastery atop one of the hills, so our trek felt much more rewarding; however, the trip down was another story. hanging towards the back to take pictures, a few of us ended up separated from the main pack. luckily the second guide stayed with us, but as we came to a fork in the trail he failed to double-check where each side led. after walking downhill on path "a" for a little while, he then decided, after checking his compass, to direct us back up to then hike down path "b" (aka "path wrong-way"). basically, we finished in a small town where no one knew how to get us back to our starting point.
getting lost did have its advantages though:
- we tried hotdog on a stick and now know not to try it again
- we saw the coolest car in all of china (a three wheeled van with an awesome tiger decal)
- we stood through multiple lights to only realize that red lights mean nothing in suzhou...traffic that makes even less sense than shanghai's
