Spring Break Begins

So Mike just left about an hour ago for the airport :( It was so great of him to come to Shanghai for his spring break, and even though I was still in school...during midterms...we had an amazing time. Thanks to him I finally got to see what Shanghai is all about. On St. Patty's day, a whole lot of us went to Bulldog, some pub in the French Concession. Got to use the billiard skills Mike taught me to win a round of pool :)

We went out that week to see the Shanghai museum, walked the whole day and definitely got shin splints the next day. Showed Mike the Bund, and PuDong at night. Beautiful. Will upload photos. And of course, as weird as we are...we named some buildings. So Shanghai now has a Megatron building and an Optimus Prime building. Yeah..thats what we do when we sit on the subway and rickshaws down to the center city.

Other than sightseeing People's Square, the Bund, and of course my favoritie place...(the fake market). We only had 2 more little adventures to Shanghai's Old Town, where ChengHuang Miao (temple) is. The first time we went was on a whim. We jumped on the first bus towards that direction and hoped to get off on the right stop. Of course it starts to rain that day...and we don't find what we are looking for. Two days later (this recent Wed) we hop on the same bus from People's Square and we find what we are looking for..You may ask...what in the world were we looking for...

THIS. is what we were looking for:







This one is mine. Mike's is black with a red trim. OF course I paid too much, which is unlike my bargaining skills, but this old couple is the ONLY one in the entirety of tourism that can cut personalized paper. It sounds so weird...I know. But looooook, its us! Haha. We look like aliens...and it doesn't realllllly look like us, but it definitely looks a lot better than the normal ones that they sell on the side of the road...where all of them look asian and chubby.

I see Shanghai in a totally new light now. I guess I was a little depressed that Shanghai was not like Beijing, but realized that I enjoyed Beijing so much because Mike always wanted to see what the city was about. Now that I have seen a lot more of Shanghai, I definitely enjoy it's own characteristics. It's still a very different city, and now that Mike's gone I probably won't see it as much, but at least I know where all the districts are now.

Took my Chinese midterm yesterday, not to sure how I did on it, but I studied the entire week last week, and have over 200 vocab phrases memorized through recognition and can write them all...It's actually quite scary if I say so myself. I am definitely learning a lot more Chinese here than I did last semester. I don't know if it's because of my sticky notes though...I will have to upload a photo for you all to see.

Almost down to the floor with words!

Well...time to clean my room. Happy spring break to me :(