Day 3

This morning we were left to fend for ourselves for breakfast so Selina and I went down the street to a convenience store and got pastries. Walking back to the apartments we stopped by a tea kind of place and got bubble tea which was really good. It has these small little balls in coffee milk which gives it a tea flavor and then you chew the tea thingies as you drink the coffee milk. It was really interesting. We then returned to the apartments and couldn't find an outside table so we sat down on the curb to eat our makeshift breakfast. We plan to go to a different place for the next few mornings to see if we find one place we like.

After breakfast we began our tour of Fudan University. It is HUGE HUGE HUGE. I mean, it puts UT to shame big time. They have very unique gardens dispersed throughout the campus although on our route we only came across one. It was very peaceful and I look forward to reading there in the future! We ate lunch in a 5 story cafeteria and the food was pretty decent. Again, the lazy susan was loaded down with many dishes. I ate this weird black thing that was very squishy and grows on trees. I was pleasantly surprised that I liked it :)

After lunch we went to take the placement exam. They informed us that in our Chinese language classes we are to only speak Chinese and will lose points if we speak in English. This is going to be a very intense semester. I can understand individual words in a sentence but tying the whole thing together is difficult because they speak so fast. My Chinese has a lot of room for improvement so I'm glad I came here! After the placement exam, which was really really hard, I walked outside to find it pouring down rain. Being the major fan of rain that I am I elected to make the 15 minute walk from the building where we have classes back to the apartments instead of calling a cab. No one else finished the exam with me so I walked by myself. I have to say, it was very cool. Walking in the rain, I had my golf rain jacket and that's it, my head was soaked but I found myself thoroughly delighted. I crossed streets where there weren't crosswalks and I said hello to a group of Chinese gentlemen in a restaurant who looked very amused to see a blonde girl walking around in the rain in Shanghai without an umbrella. They said hello in english through the glass and I smiled back and said "Ni Hao" and they laughed, the rain walk is the first independent journey I have made and I absolutely loved it! I consider this trip to be a major success because I didn't get honked at or almost run over at all :)

We went to dinner at a place really close to our apartments and I ate the best fried rice with egg that I've ever tasted for less than $1. I will definitely be going there again. After dinner we went to a acrobat show in downtown Shanghai. All I have to say about downtown is WOW. I have never seen so many residential buildings jammed into one place. The scale of this city is overwhelming. The acrobat show was good but some of the sections of the show were very bizarre. For example, a random laser light show that began to hurt my eyes that was set to a background of heavy techno. On the way back our bus nicked the side view mirror of a car on the high way but they don't have shoulders so we just stopped in the middle of a busy high way in not one, but two lanes. Traffic was piling up behind us and cars were honking like crazy. It was a very interesting way to end the evening.

Tomorrow our Chinese roommate moves in and we have a scavenger hunt in downtown Shanghai. I think we will stay down there until tomorrow night to see what kind of nightlife we can find :)