Woke up at around 7:30 AM today for the 9:30 total solar eclipse. Unfortunately, it was raining hard and very cloudy. Irene had a problem, so we got to meet the neighbors to help her out with it. They had a cute daughter who spoke English well and helped Irene. She acted like Li in getting really embarrassed at many small things. We headed out from the apartment to the local lake in the rain, with Li and I sharing an umbrella. Taking an umbrella was one good idea that I did not have before leaving the US. On a bridge over the lake, we watched the sky turn black with a reddish glow. All the while, the rain came down ever harder. And then the sun came back up and it was like nothing had happened. After that, we went to Dong-something Cafe where I had my first encounter with congee (and pork and preserved egg) and squat toilets. The toilet paper isn’t supposed to go down the drain…oops, sorry! I also noticed that some Chinese men keep one fingernail quite long to use for various things, while keeping the rest of them trimmed, which I found quite odd. At this point, Nancy and Irene left to get on the train back to Shanghai as they had teaching to do that day. It was actually kind of sad to have to break up our little quartet. After that we needed some supplies so we went to Auchan, a French version of Costco/Walmart with roller-blading associates. Got an umbrella, a hat, my journal, and some “paper”. Having to bring toilet paper everywhere really gets old! From the outside you could have never told that the place was a supermarket - it looks like the industrial warehouses in Brea. From there we went to inner Suzhou through Suzhou university (our driver, Li’s dad’s former PhD student is faculty there) where we ate some more dumplings. Yum! Eventually we got to explore the main Suzhou Gardens (Garden of the Humble Administrator), which costs 70 RMB. They have an amazing bansai garden. They also have a really cute and friendly cat (Chairman Meow) who proved that even Chinese cats say “meow”. Again, as was the case elsewhere, kids come up to me and practice their English (“Hello? How are you? I am fine.”). From there we went next door to the I.M. Pei-designed museum which disallows colored drinks, explosives, and flammable items. It is however filled with early Chinese art in ivory, ceramic, jade, and so forth. We then went to dinner at a luxury hotel with many attendants along with some locally-important people whose relationship to Li I found confusing. I was getting really tired of banquet food at this point! One of the people there was a student named Mao Yungi, who is studying CS jointly between NYIT in Long Island and Nanjing Telecommunications University. I had to eat duck which made me think of Daffy Duck which made me sad :(. We then went to Jia Ming’s house to plan our trip to Changsha, which went on late into the night. Eventually we went home and went to sleep.