I've been a little under the weather for the last few days, and I haven’t really felt the muse on my shoulder to write another one of these posts until now. Needless to say la douzi is no laughing matter.

The academic side of this trip has started to kick into gear. One of our three classes we are going to be taking is a Chinese culture class. So far it is really interesting. This week and the last

week it will be taught by professor Xie, but for the rest of the other weeks in between, we will have several different teachers. The first class focused on the basic facts of China, and any questions we had about it. Over 90% of 1.3 billion people live in the coastal cities in high-rises like the ones pictured here. These buildings are everywhere and go on for miles and miles in every direction. It’s insane.

Before I left, quite a few people were trying to make lists of DVD's they wanted me to bring back for them. Apparently the Chinese government has been cracking down on these bootleg sales, and they are much harder to find. Xie laoshi did however point us to one store that still sold them by the truck load. (Yes they are sold in real stores). I picked up 10 for about 7 US dollars (68 Yuan) so far Pirates of the Caribbean was the only one that worked well. A lot of them look and sound perfect, except you can't hear the voices. It’s pretty strange.

The next day for lunch, we found this place that had some American food, and dying to get away from the Chinese standard, we went and had burgers and pizza. The burgers were ok but the pizza wasn't really pizza. The chicken in it had bones, there were several vegetables that didn't belong there, and the crust was this super buttery pie crust, it was pretty strange.

The dining room (which is a lot like a star bucks) is connected to the kitchen by a window. When the cook was done with a meal, he would ring a bell. At that moment every server employed would drop anything at all that they were doing and make a bum rush for that

window, sometimes elbowing their fellow servers out of the way. We coined it the rat race. Also we ordered some flavored beers, but instead of being brewed with flavor, they took coffee syrup and put it in the beer. Mint and hazelnut were gross. Jeff jerked so badly after tasting the mint, he poured it all over himself.

We had our placement exam for the Chinese class that same day, and it went as expected. My character recognition has gone down significantly, but I can respond decently when asked simple questions.

Yesterday afternoon we went on our first field trip of sorts. We went to the downtown area of Shanghai. Shanghai is split by a river known as the Huangpu River. On one side is the older section Fuxie, and on the other side is the newer section, Pudong, that has completely been put together in the last 15 years. Before that it was all farm land, which is ridiculous considering you can't find grass anywhere now.

The majority of the afternoon we spent in Pudong. My haggling skills were honed considerably

in this area. I managed to by a Rolex watch originally priced at 45 dollars US to about 12. It was a lot of fun pretending to walk away, while they scream at you to come back, and then ask you to name your price. I was offered countless dresses and women's items, but I’ll pick those up on a later date when we come back, as I’m sure all the ladies in my life will want a lot of really expensive (wink wink) shit. John modeled in some clothes for us; I almost wet my pants laughing at the whole situation. He had a bottle of water and was just barely not snarfing it while we were taking pictures and the women selling the clothing thought we were very serious about buying these ridiculous luxury robes or strange expandable hats. Besides my Rolex, I did manage to pick up a mini Buddha and a pair of these heely type skates.

We stopped for a few dumplings to give our legs a rest at a tea house. I had a glass of tea that looked like they had poured hot water in a glass and then just dumped flowers in it; it was strange but pretty cool. Our table was actually a gold fish pond with a thick sheet of glass over it.

After that our day was still not nearly finished. We set out to climb (take the elevator) the TV tower. The views from the top were pretty insane, it also really showed how much smog there really is in shanghai. It is never sunny here. Ever.

The sun poked through for about 20 minutes like this but that was the most we've seen












from there we went to a mall that makes any and all malls in the US seem like mice. It was 7 floors and instead of having just stores lining the hallways, they had store communities. You would go inside and all stores of a common theme would have things to offer.

Finally we took a ferry over to another boat that would give us some intense views of Shanghai from the water. This is the TV tower again from the boat. I’m still having a tough time grasping the idea that Im on the opposite side of the earth from everyone who is reading this blog.

After we finished the boat ride, we went off to get dinner, and I ripped my jeans wide open right at the crotch. The zipper was still intact, but there’s nothing holding it together right next to it. I had to walk a very long way, have dinner and take a taxi home with everyone who passed me able to see my smiley face boxers.

Clutch.

We found another American restaurant, the crazy tomato. I hope it’s good, I want more HAMBUGAH(if you say it with a loose enough mouth it sounds like you are speaking Chinese)



Haha you are all trying right now aren’t you?