New friends and old universities

Wednesday was a long day, but a fairly good one. I have pictures from Hangzhou and from today that I'll post next, probably without captions because it's late, but you can probably tell which ones are of a pretty lake and which ones are of cute children and/or a university.

Got up an hour earlier than usual to make sure I was at the hotel before the bus and kids left, and had time for a short nap in the lobby. The kids were excited to see me back again, which is awesome. We spent the morning, lunch, and beginning of the afternoon at Jiaotong University, which I've heard named the top university in Shanghai, although I think Fudan is pretty renowned as well. (Jiaotong is where Iris went.) We took a tour from and played games with Paul and Daisy, with whom I've had almost 2 months of email contact, and some of their fellow students. Talked to them for quite a while over the lunch hour, and learned something interesting from Paul, who is an English and Economics major: his Economics courses are split between Western and Marxist theory, which are often contradictory, and while his professors tell him the Marxist theory is correct, they are to answer exams using Western theory. Ohhh China. Daisy was great too; I wish they were on facebook!

Simon called me while at JiaoDa (short for Jiaotong Daxue- Daxue means University) and asked me to come back to the office, so while the kids rested, did some art, and ate dinner I called people, read emails, and made spreadsheets (and sort of ate dinner). I finally got out of the office around 7:30 and went back to do some more art with the kids and my artist friends.