Saturday July 30, 2005 11:00am

I have had a really great 24 hours and I wasn't even expecting it :)

Yesterday at work I found out that the group of people that have been here for training (including my co-worker from Lunar) were going out on a little afternoon trip to see the giant Buddha and they asked me if I wanted to join them. Hmmmm - work for the afternoon or go explore? Not a hard decision!! I am glad I am carrying my little camera with me everywhere I go. But, I didn't have my good camera with me, so that was a bit disappointing. But - at least I have some pictures!

The giant Buddha was build here about 10 years ago. It is at the site of an old buddhist temple. The Buddha is 88 meeters tall! Just huge. You can see him sticking up over some of the hills as you get near to the site.

There were 5 of us in the group. Yuan is our savior and tour guide. She is a GE employee but enjoys going on tours and telling people about the different sites. We got to see some fun things at the site. Some very pretty gardens and a lot of stone structures with chinese characters on them. It was interesting.

There was one area where there were a lot of bird and you could buy some seeds and the birds would all land on you and eat out of your hand. I didn't think about that whole Asian bird flu thing until we returned home last night - but that is a different part of china and besides they didn't bite or poop on us :)

Another of the sites was a flowering lotus - with a Buddha that comes out of the top. There is a water fountain at the base and they have a show with different music and patterns of the spray from the fountain. It was interesting to see.

Of course - it was very hot again yesterday - must have been around 97 with 95 humidity. We were saying it would be nice to just in the fountain. But, then we saw that there were people gathered around some of the small fountains that surround the lotus. There were little water fountains and people were using the water to wet their faces and cool off. Some people were filling their water bottles which amazes me. It looked as though the water was just recirculated and I wouldn't ever consider drinking from it.

The giant Buddha was very impressive although when I saw the huge set of stairs needed to get to him I was not happy! The base of the Buddha's feet is a large observation deck. It is said if you touch each of his toes with both hands it brings you good luck and fortune. Well, not going to pass that opportunity up!

There was a nice view from the deck looking over the rest of the park and the large Tai Hu lake in the background (of course - it is so hazy you can't actually see to the lake you just take their word that it is there.

The observation deck had a couple of funny signs. It is funny to see some of the translations to English. It love seeing little things like that. This one was No Chisel & Draw. No Clambing. We could never figure out what the chisel and draw part meant - unless that is just another way to say no graffiti?

After the trip to the Buddha we went back to the office (it was about 5:30 pm) and picked up a lot more co-workers to go to dinner. We went to the same place we had gone Saturday night when Scott first got here. It seems to be a place they like to take guests. There were 12 of us and as always they got tons of food. We had some more of the little corn pizza that we had the other night. This time there was some powdered sugar and sprinkles on top. I think I figured out that the batter part of it would be like a funnel cake.

We had some traditional Chinese wine, some more of the Great Wall red wine we had the other night, some beer - basically a lot to drink! They were asking me about the inspection and I tried to tell them some things to calm them. They seemed pretty happy with what I was telling them and I think I helped them understand more about it.

After dinner we went to "play Bowling" and that was fun. They are not very good at it! Most of them had about a 50 for a score. :) I bowled ok by US standards - 146 & 130 but they though I was really good.

A few of the GE guys that were her this week told us about a bar called True Blue - it is owned by a guy who teaches English for GE employees. He is originally from Canada and the bar is English speaking. So, we found that place and hung out there for a while. It was fun - just me and Scott and Yuan sitting around talking for a while.

And that was the day. Very fun and it was good to relax for a while before the hectic week will begin on Monday.

Tina