Yesterday, Sunday, we went to Shanghai Old Street. It was so cool looking, it had really old Chinese style architecture.



It was funny though because the marketplace itself is apparently like really old but they had Starbucks and stuff. Afterwards we had traditional Shanghaiese food which was absolutely amazing, a lot of dumplings and stuff. Me and Anna went to your typical flea market type place and bargained our way to some sweet knockoff purses. Then we went to Dong Jia Du Material Market which is apparently pretty famous like outside of China & I can see why. You can basically bring them a picture of ANY dress, coat, jacket and they will seriously be able to make you the same exact thing, probably to fit your measurements properly and for under 100 bucks most likely. Includes REALLY NICE quality men’s suits. These tailors are absolute geniuses!! I have to find a dress or something I really want made (some sort of Chloe/Marc Jacobs knockoff perhaps??) and have it made. By the time we came home we were all pretty beat so I borrowed some of my friend’s bootlegged movies and just called it a night.

Monday was my first day of class, which is always exciting. My teacher is this adorable Chinese women (dirr) who really doesn’t speak English and speaks a LOT of Chinese in class so we don’t really understand what she’s saying half the time. Nonetheless, I really think I’m going to be able to learn a lot. While the other people had a Chinese economy class I kept myself busy by exploring, buying my own bootlegged movies (which I swear the guy was trying to rip me off), a little bit of retail therapy and trying some peach cream fizz soda stuff from McDonalds. They should really have those in America. Anyways, at night we just kept it low key and went bowling/played pool. It sucks that I have class so early (8:40 IS EARLY!) because it makes you not want to stay out too late, like clubbing or something because when YOU GO CLUBBING IN SHANGHAI, YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU’RE COMING BACK (as witnessed by the 7am and subsequent 12 pm arrivals of a few fellas in our program). Anyways, class again tomorrow! Eee I hope my Chinese gets a whole lot better!

Tuesday class was good. I really feel that by the end of this trip I’m going to get so good at Chinese! Yayyy! I've realized my daily contact with maids, fuwuyuan (waiters/sales people) and taxi drivers is relying less on gesticulations and more on actual speech. hurrah! We discovered Sarah’s which is a restaurant really close to campus that has American food (club sandwiches and penne!) so it’s a good place to go when we get a little sick of eating mysterious Chinese chicken-tasting items. While everyone was in class I went online and saw Little Miss Sunshine (good movie no matter how many times you see it) and then at night we went KAREOKE-ing (when in Rome…) which turned out to be SO FUN. It was at some fancy shmancy hotel and we sang the night away (no really, like four hours). After we exhausted our voices (and our brain cells) we returned home and I probably got the best night’s sleep since I’ve been here. Can’t say my 8:40 class this morning was as much fun though. Anyways in a bit we’re going on a city sight seeing digg and going to Nanjing Lu later.



ps. i think my pictures are all off. i'm sorry I really can't control this blogspot, it doesnt listen to what i want and i dont have the patience to do otherwise. nor make pithy comments underneath each pic. sorry folks. the ones on top are obvs kareoke and the ones after are from Shanghai Old Street. I'll try and step up the picture taking...