sometime around midnight

shanghai day 5

The second day of presentations went by and me and Victoria decided to explore the department store area down the street (about a 15 minute walk from where we were staying). The “Grand Gateway” Plaza was huge, 5-6 floors, movie theater, restaurants, and so on. I immediately knew I was going to spending a lot of time there. Since we were hungry we went looking for food and ended up at “1001 Noodle Life.” The noodles were extremely good, by that I mean the right amount of spice and it had a lot of veggies (felt more like a salad). After dinner, we looked around the place more and encountered a bubble tea store called “Happy Lemon.” Another store I would be going often to. They had a guy dressed up in the happy lemon costume and let us take a picture with him being super Asian.

shanghai day 4

Finally got over with the presentation that I have been wanting to get over with the whole time. At dinner there was the welcome banquet on the second floor of the school’s cafeteria with both of the professors and both schools’ students. At night, head out to a bar called “Koala Bar” (apparently owned by an Australian). I would say it was more like a American or some kind of Western sports bar. It was only packed with a bunch of foreigners. I tried Jin & Tonic with Gordon’s, which was very good, hardly tasted the alcohol. They have many offers, such as lady’s night on Wednesday and happy hour. It is extremely close to Jiao Tong University.

shanghai day 3.2

After eating lunch, the last tour spot was the “Jade Buddha Temple (玉佛禅寺).” I could not take a picture of the actual jade Buddha because it was not allowed, but there were several other things to look at inside the temple other than the jade Buddha. When I walked into the temple from the entrance, there was a strong scent of incense, which is very common in Chinese temples. I sometimes like the smell of them, but not when they are too strong. The size of the temple was much bigger than I thought it would be and had other fascinating things in it, like the huge wood block and a wall full of small statues.

shanghai day3.1

Woke up in the morning for the Shanghai tour! The first place we went was the “Shanghai Museum,” usually museums are hard to concentrate in, but I tried my best. Then we went to the “Dong Fang Ming Zhu Tower (东方明珠)” - the 5th highest building in the world. A construction was going on right next to it, claimed to be the building the highest building in the world. I wish I got to now the other people better to ask them to take pictures for me, but too bad…A lot of the pictures with me in it didn’t turn out well. There was a part of the tower that the surface was built with glass, so I could see the land below (had a slight adrenaline rush). I’m glad I downloaded the panorama app on my iphones to use it for this experience.

shanghai day 2.2

At night went out to a bar and restaurant called “Cotton’s.” I found it online trying to look fro some good places to eat and it seemed to have good reviews. They were having happy hour from 4pm to 8pm, so I could order a drink and get one free. First walking in, there were a bunch of foreigners, but much more older than my age. The first drink I ordered was called cotton jin, which was delicious. The second was a mojito, also very good and refreshing. The cocktails were all 58yuan. Because I hadn’t eaten dinner I also ordered onion rings, they were not bad. I would definitely visit “Cotton’s” again and try their different cocktails and food.

shanghai day2.1

Before eating lunch with the whole group and trinity professors we were given a little tour around campus on where the classes will be held. I have a 8:30am class only on mondays, which is not going to so fun. The buildings on the campus were extremely old, something expected from a school that has such long history. The main gate and the old library were the prettiest places out of the ones I looked around on campus.

After the tour of Shanghai JiaoTong University, the group went to a restaurant called “Jesse’s” - full of Shanghai food. It took the group a while to order everything, but ended up ordering 22 dishes, 10 rices, and 40 drinks. During lunch we were provided with our cellphones, everybody got the same. So I decided to decorate mine a little bit with cellphone jewelry stickers, made a star.

shanghai day 1.

I arrived in shanghai on the 21st at night and had to wait for the rest of the group to arrive to be driven to the hostel. The hostel that I will end up staying for the whole program is “HanTing Express JiaoDa”, it is actually more like a hotel. Get a new bottle of water, cleaning room service, breakfast, new slippers, towels and so on everyday. One of the first things I did after eating breakfast was go to the “Tea Bus” right in front of the hostel and drink bubble tea. I think I will be using the “Tea Bus” very often.