Date Weekend

December 9, 2006 Stan proposed to me. It was the first full weekend in December and it was amongst a weekend of dates. Since then we have celebrated this every first weekend in December by having a "Date Weekend". Either I will plan it for us or Stan will and we take turns. It has been fun every year, but this year has been the most interesting because we are in CHINA! So, anyway this year we decided to plan it together, because it is all very new to us, this China thing. hehe... so we decided to stay at the Crystal Orange Hotel down by West Lake. This is in our city. We didn't want to go too far away, just a vacation away from our apartment. The hotel was cheap for what the set up was like!...

This is a view from the bathroom to the bedroom! Coooool!

This was "Sodo" our pet fish for the weekend! haha If you solved 3 sides of the Rubik's cube, you could get a free coffee. haha!

On Friday night we "saw the future," as Stan says it. :) We went to the Hangzhou Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. It was so cool! This place was huge! The Symphony was okay, but we were more impressed with the structure we were standing in, and the structures surrounding it. You will have to look at Stan's blog in the future to see the videos he got of this place!

After we got settled into our hotel we walked around the area and took pictures of the Christmas lights! I was so excited because we saw some really cool ones, and being in China, I didn't expect it! You will probably not be so amazed at these, but we were!

This is one of many Christmas pictures, but this was the best!

You can find more pictures later on Facebook!

On Saturday we ate at the Eudora Cafe and it was sooooooo good. My meal was a pretty small bowl of Penne pasta, shrimp, mushrooms, asparagus, and a "cream cheese sauce". It was quite possibly the best pasta which has ever entered my mouth, no lie. That is the slowest I have ever eaten a meal in my life! It was expensive for Chinese terms, but boy was it worth it! So, we finished our meal and headed down town to look for a movie to watch. We had heard the movie "2012" was playing in the theaters here and that it was in English only with Chinese subtitles. So we decided to do that. We got off at the stop we needed to and headed to where we thought the theater was. We got on some rented bikes and began to cycle our way down the road. Well, we made a wrong turn somewhere and decided just to get a taxi. We returned the bikes and hailed a cab. On the way to the theater, we saw some pretty Christmas lights. Stan said, "Get a picture!" So I rummaged around in my bag and in my pockets to get the camera. It was no where to be found. I kept searching, but it was gone. I was soooo sad! We had taken pictures of the food we ate and the huge building we were in the night before and all those pictures were gone! We retraced our steps and the camera was gone. Stan said he thought he heard something drop when we got on the bikes, so we went back...no camera. So we actually found a pretty good deal on one when we were waiting for the movie to start. That is why I have some pictures to show you today. Luckily, the pictures from this weekend are the only ones I had on the camera!

Now on to the movie... In China, you pick your seat for a movie. So we bought our seats and waited for the movie to start. The movie was suppose to start at 9:05 PM. We walked up to the ticket taker at 8:50 PM and handed her our tickets. She said we couldn't go in. They would not let us in the theater until 9:05 PM. There were people coming out of the theater at 9:04 PM. Then we filed in. Me and Stan were last in line and when we got to our seats they turned off the lights and started the movie. No previews, nothin. Only the movie. The movie was not finished yet...there were probably 5 more minutes left. Everyone started getting their things together and getting ready to leave! We could not even hear the movie for all the noise! It was so funny, they were all in a hurry. Well, that's all there is to date weekend. I laughed, I cried (over the camera), it was fun! Thanks for reading and don't forget to think about me in China! I love you all!