As Mondays and Tuesdays are our days off, Jon and I have been up to a lot these past few days. Since we are pretty much settled in and know where to shop, we used Monday to explore more of the city. While Ningbo is not much different than other big and modern cities, it still has touches here and there that make it special (at least to me; as I have not visited other Chinese cities yet, I cannot comment on whether or not these touches are special in regards to China). 

As most cities are, Ningbo is separated into districts. Only two of the districts, Jiangbei and Haishu, are considered to be part of the city proper. The other districts are either considered to be suburban, like the district we live in, rural, or a satellite city. The city and suburban districts together make up the Ningbo metropolitan area, whereas Ningbo has jurisdiction over the rural districts and satellite cities. Yesterday, Jon and I explored the Haishu district, which borders Jiangbei.

Districts of Ningbo, courtesy of Wikipedia. District 1 is Haishi, district 2 is Jiangdong, and district 6 is Yinzhou. 

Tianyi Square was one of the main places that we explored. Tianyi Square is a commercial area filled with retail stores and restaurants. Jon and I just walked around the square for a little while before we walked to another area called Moon Lake.

Portion of Tianyi Square

Moon Lake is a park within Ningbo that has lakes, surprisingly enough, and the Tianyi Pavilion, which is the oldest surviving library in China. The library was constructed in 1561 during the Ming Dynasty and once housed 70,000 volumes. While we were unable to find Tianyi Pavilion this time around, probably because we were not searching hard enough, we did walk through the park. 

Today was less interesting, but we did have fun doing laundry for the first time and cooking udon noodles for dinner. 

Above is Jon's and mine small washing machine, which is located in our small bathroom. On the positive side though, it is the first time I have had a washing machine in my apartment since I lived in Alliance. As expected, there is no dryer to accompany the washer, but that is fine as Jon and I have the handy clothesline that his mom gave us as well as our new clothes drying rack, as seen below. We did have some issues with the washer on our first go around though as the drain was not connected to the actual drain. As a result, the bathroom floor was flooded for a little while.... now it is quite clean though, so I am not upset about it.

Finally, I made this amazing (in my opinion) dish to finish out our day. It is called Simple Udon Noodles and if anyone wants to try it, the recipe can be found here: http://emilylevenson.com/recipe-simple-udon-noodles/. Luckily, it was a dish that I could practice using chopsticks with as my skills in that area are lacking... as a result, I look somewhat comical when I eat out.

Anyways, tonight is the equivalent of Sunday for us as we start our workweek tomorrow. Hope everyone at home has a good rest of the work week!