Rebecca: Shanghai Days Again

Another super full day in Shanghai! Our days are actually all free - we don't have group activities, we all just run around Shanghai doing our own thing. Luckily we have a good guide in Jen's friend! We started early today, at 8:30 to go down to the Bund (the touristy place where our first adventure took place). We went down to the river to retake a picture one of our group members had taken when he was a little kid in China, so we had to try and find the exact location. A lot has changed in Shanghai in the last ten years, it seems, though we found the place in the end! We ate brunch at a restaurant there and then went back to the hostel (this is sort of boring, I realize, but I'm too tired to do the usual big-words-and-fancy-phrasing thing). 

Jen, Steven (another of our group members) and I met up with Jen's friend Zach again and jumped on a bus for an hour (somehow you can drive for an hour and not leave Shanghai) to go to a little water town district called Zhu Jia Jiao, which is super fun to say. :) A water town is like mini-Venice: traditional buildings and with canals instead of streets. We took a boat tour, then strolled around on foot. The best adventure we had was going to a little restaurant on the waterfront, which was definitely not tourist-oriented. We asked for a menu, and quickly realized it was all Chinese. We asked for an English menu, which we got, but it was really outdated (like, half the items were no longer available) and really, really Engrishy. The best item on it was probably the "meat is embeded" :D, though we didn't order it. We managed to order a couple dishes (though at one point we were told "there is no rice". This turned out to be false, but it was still a little surprising. I mean, we're in China. How is there no rice?), and they tasted pretty good. Lotus root, Chinese eggplant and amaranth (maybe? I'm still not really sure what I ate today) were pretty good, and of course fried rice is delicious. 

See, at first when we touched down in China, I was pretty food-paranoid. I thought "okay, I'll be really safe and only eat at nicer restaurants and Western places so I don't get sick". It took about one day for that all to go out the window. Now I'm eating random street food and any number of unidentifiable things we find. If I get sick, well... I got vaccines before I left, and I've got medicine. As much as I hate the saying, you only live once! 

(Calm down, Mom. I haven't totally thrown my common sense out the window. I brush my teeth with bottled water and I carry hand sanitizer everywhere. I don't want to die.)

So basically we did way more stuff in these last two days than I thought I'd ever do in a year, and it's been super super super. I'm having the time of my life. Tomorrow we leave Shanghai to go to the university in Hangzhou, so we'll see how the trip goes from there. I'm really excited to meet the students and see the campus!

Oh, one more fun thing that happened! Steven and I were waiting for Jen and Zach in the subway, and a random dude came up to us and started speaking in Mandarin. Steven speaks Mandarin, so he tried to translate it for me later, but it was pretty confusing. The guy wanted our help with something because his parents died or something? He started off by saying something like "I'm not lying", so he was probably pretty trustworthy, right? Steven told him no, we couldn't help him, and then the guy turns to me as if I've understood the whole thing! He pretty much stared at me until I said "I don't know" (which is about the extent of my Mandarin), and then he left. It was pretty weird. Good times in the Shanghai subway!

-Rebecca