Back in a routine

Feb. 23^rd – Feb 26^th

This week all runs together. Because there wasn’t a lot that happened. It rained all week and it was cold (in the 40’s). We went to classes, did homework, watched the episodes or Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice from last week since we missed them while we were in Harbin. Did I mention that it rained all week. I hate the rain. It makes me want to do nothing productive.

On Tuesday we thought we needed to celebrate Mardi Gras a little bit so we bought a couple of cases and drank and played card games in the guys room.

On Wednesday, after class and homework, I went into the city for an Ash Wednesday mass. I went to an English service because those were the only mass times I could find online. It took about an hour to get into the city taking the subway. I took a taxi to the subway station and got on line 5. Line 5 is slow and aboveground. Then I switched to line 1 and took that to the church. The church was very large, not a pretty church but it looked old. The service was pleasant; a lot of people were there.

On Thursday a few of us ate dinner with one of the Chinese students in our materials class. He is such a sweetheart. It was fun to talk to him.  After dinner and wasting some time on the computer we went over to a building on campus, which is similar to a rec-center. We were going to try and go bowling but the wait was too long so we went upstairs to look at the KTV on campus and they said that they did not have English songs.  At this point we ran into some French exchange students. I had met one of them previously but we all started talking and we found out that it was one of their birthdays. So we had to celebrate some how. We again went and bought some cases and started by drinking in the conference room that is on the first floor of our dorm. This didn’t last long. The woman that was working in the dorm told us that room was for studying so we moved the party up to the 5^th floor (the guys floor) and we all gathered in the floor kitchen. It was wonderful to meet more exchange students. They were from all over France but they all go to school together at the same college. They too are engineers. Something that they kept doing that was just cracking me up was that they would talk in English with a really strong French accent. It was absolutely hilarious because they were doing it on purpose and they were slightly mocking themselves. They also taught us a French song that they sing on birthdays…among a group of friends. We butchered it but everyone had fun with that.  Everyone was so happy to meet other people. It was a great night.

On Friday Caitlin and I went to a forum that the SJTU students were having. The girl that I had met in the canteen asked us to go. It was SJTU students talking about their experiences studying abroad. When I got there Liu Yancheng asked me to say something about my experience. It was very informal but it lasted forever, people kept talking and talking. After we left there all of us went into the city for a night at a club. We went to a place on the Bund called de la coast. It was really crowded but a lot of fun. One of our Chinese classmates came with us. We all danced and had a great time. It was a great to be back in the city, there was just one slight problem. The subways close at 11PM and don’t open again until 6AM so we had to stay in the city all night. We did not want to pay for a taxi back to Minhang because it would have been close to 150RMB. The club closed around 3AM so we still had a lot of time to kill. We knew of a great American Diner in downtown that we had no been to yet so we decided to head over there for some breakfast. It is called City Diner on Tongren Lu, and it was fantastic!!! The portions were bigger than a traditional American big breakfast portion, and it was comparable to American prices. After breakfast we just went into a couple of different bars that were still open on Tongren lu. One of which had a foosball table so we played that for a while and then realized that the subway was going to open soon so some of us left and started our hour-long journey back to Minhang. At first the subway was completely empty and then we got to People’s square to make our first line change and it was already packed it was only about 6:30AM on a Saturday and there were people everywhere! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t really start to feel tired until we got onto the subway…and then it hit me, so I napped a little on the way back to Minhang. We made it back to campus around 7:30AM and I immediately crawled into bed.