a full plate: Last few weeks in Shanghai

Wow, it's been a while since I've updated. The last few weeks in Shanghai just flew right by. I think one month was a good amount of time to spend there. It was enough to get an introduction to China (but still with a safety blanket of being in what everyone says is the most Westernized city in the country) and meet some great people, but I was about ready to go by the end of it. The smog and the unrelenting heat and humidity eventually just caught up to me and made it less fun to go exploring outside and more appealing to catch a nap in my air-conditioned room.

I did get out and explore town a bit more in the last two weeks, but with my trip to Tibet looming on the horizon, a lot of my time was spent trying to get ready and get all of my paperwork in order. It took multiple trips downtown to get all of my plane tickets, train tickets, and various permits. Each trip pretty much killed an afternoon, not to mention the time trying to figure out what I was going to do with all of my bags while I travelled, buy whatever I ought to buy before I left town, figure out how I would access my money while travelling, and take care of all of the rest of loose ends.

Some of the cool things I did manage to see in the last few weeks:

*Shanghai City of Books - a huge 7 story bookstore with everything under the sun (even a decent imported books section with the newest Harry Potter and 5 other shelves of books in English). It was always bustling, and people were crouched in every available corner leafing through a book.

*An Arabian bar called Barbarossa with great drinks, plush couches with tons of cushions, and nice view from the roof, and hookah.

*The Mint - a bar with ladies' night every Wednesday. No guys between 9pm and 11pm, with free drinks, cotton candy, hot dogs, massages, and palm reading.

*The fake market, a maze of stands selling mockups of brand name clothes, purses, and anything else you can think of. North Fake jackets (shell and liner) for $12, anyone? I'd been earlier in the month, but I still managed to end up back here repeatedly.

*Azul - a great place for brunch on Sundays or just a really delicious meal any other day (with tapas, too). We went here for our last dinner together before a lot of us left town.

*A skyscraper downtown with an unfinished top floor. One of our friends led us here, and after stepping out of the elevator it was all miscellaneous rubble, planks, cement, and dust. The workers didn't mind us going to the balcony outside and getting a 360 degree look at Shanghai.

Despite some of the cool things I stumbled across (and all my stressing about Tibet), the most memorable moments came from hanging out with the people I met at Fudan, eating good food, and going out for drinks. It was a pretty diverse crowd, and by the time the end of the month our group of friends had people from Germany, England, France, Italy, Maryland, and Florida. I guess I'm set if I ever manage to go travelling in Europe!

I also found a language partner for the last couple of weeks - her name's Cindy (or xujing) and she is studying international finance at Fudan. She taught me a lot of useful phrases and took me to some good restaurants to eat; it was unfortunate we only really had a couple of weeks to get to know each other. She also did me a big favor by coming with me to get my haircut - it came out a lot shorter than I was expecting, but it actually looks OK (and doesn't require me to do anything with it besides wash it occasionally). And it was only 10 yuan ($1.25), so I can't really complain.

Anyway, I had fun in Shanghai and met a lot of cool people, but it was easy to fall into a routine and lose that sense of exploration. Not to mention that I wasn't speaking very much Chinese, which was kind of the point of me flying halfway across the world. So I'm definitely looking forward to my fall program in Ha'erbin where I'll be forced to speak Chinese all day and where I probably won't be going out every night from Wednesday - Saturday. We'll see...

[1 - A really good brunch at Azul, 2 - Clockwise: Me, Krystal (from England), Gaia (from Italy), & Tina (from Germany) at brunch. It's poor picture quality, but it's the only one I've got.]