After being away from home for more than three years, I decided to go back to China to visit my family and friends. In addition, after being together with Dave for more than a year, I thought it was time for him to meet my parents, maybe relatives, and some of my friends with whom I grew up.
It took me about a month to put everything together in my suitcases, two big bags and a small one. I was very excited about the flight. Not only would I see my parents in 16 hours but I finally got to travel with my sweetheart on the SAME flight (on the west coast trip, I was still living in NJ, so we took separate flights).
It was quite a "challenge" to show Dave how my hometown looked like in two day (since Dave only had two days in Hangzhou). The West Lake, willows and peach trees, etc are symbols of Hangzhou. On our first day, I decided to take Dave to the lake. We took a boat to the center of the lake, watched a lot of fish in a pond, took a walk on the famous Su Causeway and finished our first day trip at a local restaurant. Dave also took a lot of night pictures of the West Lake. The next day, we went hiking in a small mountain in the center of the city. Dave met all my relatives on my mum's side. They were impressed with his Chinese. That afternoon, we went the local zoo. I was impressed how many animals the zoo had. This was the first time Dave ever saw a real panda bear.
Our next stop was Shanghai. It is a very modern city. As Dave mentioned, staying in Shanghai would not make him feel he was in a foreign country because there are a lot of non-Chinese there.
