Shanghai on Life

So this is it! Today is my last day in Shanghai. Everything is packed, about to go get some dinner with Danny Boy and I’ll be on a flight to Bangkok early tomorrow morning. The last few weeks have been pretty busy and well, pretty blog-less as well I suppose.

I had a great visit with Steph, Mom and Auntie Rabina. I guess my favourite moment had to be at Qipu Lu…a very busy shopping district in Shanghai. After having numerous taxis stolen right from under us (the Shanghainese are ruthless when it comes to queue jumping and you-were-there-first general courtesies), I told the ladies to sharpen their elbows. Before you could blink Auntie Rabina was booking it down the street shoulder-to-shoulder with a small pack of Chinese girls running for an approaching cab. She peeled them off those door handles, waved to us and jumped in – I couldn’t have been prouder! Once in the cab, the driver looked at me with a huge grin on his face, laughing and saying “foreigners! foreigners!” giving the thumbs up and even taking his hands off the wheel for a quick impression of us all running for his cab. We had an excellent visit, filled with lots of shopping, eating, site seeing, massages and maybe a few too many cocktails in the hotel room ;) .

On the 25th I said goodbye to the ladies and took the night train up to Beijing along with Sandra and her friend Melanie to meet up with Jen and Cody. We took the night train (14 hours) and that was pretty fun. We were stared at a lot, got to hear a lot of snoring and have a few wind-tunnel-esque bathroom experiences, but for the price it was a steal of a journey! In all seriousness though it really wasn’t so bad. As dutiful tourists in Beijing we hit the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, plus the old AND new summer palace – in three days! Phew! We were happy to return to the warmer Shanghai weather and I have since shown them the what I consider the highlights (again, mostly eating, shopping and massages, with a couple of cultural things thrown in for good measure).

Peppered between visitors have been some tearful goodbyes with Simon, Sandra and Christian, not to mention loads of goodbyes to other friends who have slowly trickled out of Shanghai. Even though this is exchange round 2, I still find myself surprised at the intensity friendships can build in these short-term situations. I am missing my three Germans quite a lot and have been subjecting poor Jen and Cody to countless numbers of nostalgic had-to-be-there stories about our adventures in China. I am already obsessing over when I can make it to Germany next…tentative plans: German Karneval post graduation :D.

So tomorrow is Bangkok where Cody, Jen and I will set out on a two month adventure around South East Asia. Tentatively on the list is Thailand (not so tentative :D), Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but we might not make it to all, or maybe even make it further depending on where the wind blows us. I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen with this little blog as I don’t know what kind of Internet access we’ll have along the way or what my laziness levels are going to be, but I would have the desire to keep posting so we’ll see what happens.

For those of you who are particularly dedicated  (or particularly worried in the case of my mama), feel free to check out Cody’s blog at codyinasia.ca…he’s a bit of a better and more regular blogger than me (at least so far!).

Hope you’re all well at home, until next time!!

Many thanks to all those who sent birthday greeting by email, skype, facebook (btw, I get the notification in my email but I can’t log into the site to respond in case anyone was wondering), mail and however else!

My birthday in China was really one for the books – a truly memorable 22nd!

Most of the celebrations took place on the 7th, as Saturday is a much more appropriate day for birthday celebrations. In the morning Sandra and I dragged Christian and his visiting brother to the grocery store to stock up for the big night. The chips we could carry ourselves but beer was the main goal. You can buy an obscene amount of beer for 300 Yuan (~$50 CAD) in China, so that’ s exactly what we did!

That night I had dinner with Sandra, Danny Boy, Danny’s friend Ryan, Simon and Joy at the Japanese restaurant around the corner from our place. The party started at 9, but was kicked off a little earlier by a group of Daniel’s most fabulous (in every sense of the word) friends. I guess in the end we were some 20+ people, consisting entirely of Chinese people and Germans..and me, of course. Simon, who spent a year in Canada, helped introduce the classic drinking game of “King’s Cup” to give the party more of a Canadian feel, and despite a bit of confusion over how exactly one “busts a rhyme,” people caught on quickly enough. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the evening was “JJ,” a flamboyant and overly confident friend of Daniel’s who decided to try his luck with every foreign guy in the room even after being told none of them were gay. Christian’s poor little 17-year-old brother looked like a deer in the headlights when JJ made a pass at him.

There was a lot of anticipation for midnight, I think this might be some sort of German thing, but everyone said I couldn’t be wished happy birthday or open presents until midnight or it would be bad luck. So at midnight there was champagne, a countdown and even a small toast made by Sandra; it was like New Years eve, except all about meeee! :P Following that there was presents which included a framed photo collage from our recent travels and adventures, a couple of gag gifts, and a money pot which my closer friends contributed to on the condition that I use the money to fly somewhere (Hong Kong here I come!).

After presents the police showed up and told us to turn off the music and move the party along. We sent everyone out with a can of beer as a parting gift and headed out to the bar for a few hours of dancing. At around 3 or 4 we were enjoying some noodles and considering heading home when we were persuaded to karaoke instead, so we hit the KTV and ended up back home at around 6 :D Good times!

The next day (being my actual birthday) was mostly spent sleeping.  Woke up at 2, cleaned up the apartment, talked to Cody, and then went to basketball practice at 6.

Today life is getting back to “normal.” Had a class presentation this morning and now I’m updating the blog instead of studying for my midterm coming up at the end of the week. Daniel is taking me and Sandra out for dinner as his birthday gift to me and the post office informs me that there’s a package from Canada waiting to be picked up, so apparently I get to stretch my birthday on into the week as well :D

Anyway, thanks again for all the birthday greetings, it’s very nice to be remembered even when I’m so far away!