Wednesday Jan 21st…
We went to class and sat through presentations…not such an exciting morning. After class we set out on a journey to find the Museum…little did I know it wasn’t the art museum we were looking for, but that is where we ended up.
The Shanghai Art Museum was very small but in an awesome colonial old building. There wasn’t a lot to see, but for a student discount of 5 Kuai to enter it was worth seeing.
After a visit to the art museum Caitlin, Josh and I just wandered around the city for about an hour. It was a cold day so we didn’t stay out very long.
We found a new deal at a bar called Bulldogs. It is only on Wednesday nights…they call it men’s night but naturally they still let the women get the same deal J so we paid 50 Kuai for a 2-hour free flow. We played a lot of cards that night. It is a fun old bar with a very tavern-ness feel. I liked it a lot.
Thursday Jan 22nd…
Another morning filled with class. A professor in the engineering came to class and we just had an open forum with her. We were able to find out topics we could/couldn’t ask Chinese about. And she answered some questions based on her experiences. It was interesting to get another perspective on the culture.
After class a group of 5 of us went to the Shanghai Botanical Gardens. It was easy to get there, we took the red line to the south train station and then a 20 minute walk from there. This walk really gave us a different perspective on everyday life in Shanghai. We ended up walking through an underprivileged area in Shanghai. We are very fortunate to have everything we have. Despite the lack of a lot of things in this area the people seemed happy and seemed to be going on with their daily lives just fine. I decided not to take any pictures of this area out of respect to the people that lived there, but pictures can’t even show how old, rundown, dirty, and unsanitary this area was. I honestly don’t know how a whole family lived in some of these places.
We finally made it to the gardens. The gardens were really peaceful. It was nice to get away from the noise of the city for a while and just walk around and relax. Even though the gardens were nice I know they will be beautiful in late spring when everything is in full bloom. While at the gardens we watched a group of older people play with something that is best described as a Chinese yo-yo. One of the men actually let us try, all of us were horrible, but everyone got some good laughs in the mean time. (I have some pictures of Kevin trying this…make sure to take a look at those J).
Thursday night I went out with 3 of the guys to meet up with Simon, who we met at the bars. He also brought some of his friends. We all went out to eat and then we went back to his place to hang out and drink. Simon, took us to a great street with a ton of fresh seafood. It was delicious!!! We had wonderful crawfish and something that none of us knew what It was, but really good. Both of these we had to take off the heads, and peel all of the excess away. We also got oysters, scallops, 2 different types of fish on a stick, meat and chicken on a stick. In Addition, we had some vegetables and some squid on a stick. It was all so fresh and amazing. It was a feast!
Simon’s apartment was in a high-rise with an awesome view! The inside was really nice. Not at all what I expected. We just played cards and hung out. It was an early night but it was so much fun to experience something that we wouldn’t have found on our own. That seafood was the best.
No comments:
Post a Comment