Weekend

Tuesday:

-Weather: 60F partly sunny

-Local Time: 825pm

Saturday Recap

We got a late start, not for any specific reason other than it was nice to relax a little bit.  The plan that had been formulated the day before was to make it to Yu Yuan Gardens.  There were some problems with this as we met up as a small group and talked about it.  One problem was it was overcast and low 50s.  Other people also wanted to go to the gardens and it was realized last week that it is very difficult to get a large group of engineering to agree to do anything.  The few people I was hanging out with on Saturday at noon were thinking it'd be good to keep a small group.  When people in the hotel found out that there was a group interested - we decided we'd let them go.  We decided it wasn't the best day to go to an outdoor activity like that.  The goal was to go down to Pudong (the area east of the river) and go to the indoor aquarium.

Lunch

Some of us left and we left a few people behind to finish their laundry.  A group of four of us headed into the city.  We got down to the tourist area and saw that there were plenty of awesomely tall buildings.  After a quick photo shoot we decided the Subway just down the road looked great.  An american sub shop is not as common as people might think over here.  We stopped in to see the prices and were surprised to find an excellent daily deal menu.  A 6" deal of the day was only 15 yuan.  Unfortunately, SeaSupreme wasn't what I wanted, so I just opted for a 12" ham, with two cookies and a drink for 60 yuan.  It was an american price for an american sub, i liked it.

Early Afternoon

Our small group headed towards the river.  We saw some shops and restaurants on the river walk. Nothing cheap, all very touristy - but neat to see it anyways.  We saw a few brides getting their picture taken.  The young couples here do things differently than in America.  We try and cram everything - ceremony and all into one day.  Here pictures can take place weeks after the legal paper work.  So - we saw many brides getting their pictures taken with their husbands.  We also saw The Bund from the east side of the river.  We had just tried to go up to the Cloud 9 lounge the night before so it was nice to see all these areas in the daytime.  While we walked the river, we saw the tallest building in the area - and promptly decided that it would be more fun than the aquarium.  When we got to the base of the building it was late afternoon and we saw that it was 150 yuan to go up there and go on the glass skywalk.  We thought it'd be more fun in the evening so we killed sometime at the bar, buy one get one free happy hour.  Our waitress spilled some of the drinks when she brought them to the table (party foul) so they gave us from free dessert with our drinks.

Shanghai World Financial Center

-474m tall (1500+ ft)

-100 floors

We got out of the bar just after 630pm and went up to the observatory deck.  We grabbed an elevator up to the 94th floor.  Then we took an escalator up to the 97th floor.  Then went up the last 3 floors with an elevator.  I was excited to see that it was about as awesome I was hoping.  The deck had some glass in the floors so that you could see the shear drop below.  When you look at the building in the link above - it appears to look like a very large bottle opener.  The skywalk is along the top of the bottle opener.

It was excellent, I got a few good HD videos.  Some of my friends got a few good photos.  We retired back to the hotel and played some card games before sleeping.

Sunday

Sunday started all about football.  The colts were playing in the playoffs and I was willing to do anything I could.  I spent the hrs before the game trying to find an illegitimate way to watch the game.  As the first quarter ended, I bought the NFL gamepass for 70USD.  I tried to get that to work during the 2nd quarter and then called to get my money back.  I was told I was refunded.  I found a Hooter's not too far away so I told my floormates and we grabbed a cab and headed that way.  We got to the store and found out that it wasn't going to be on, according to the manager, for 25 more minutes. We ordered and waited.  It didn't come on.  We got upset.  We sat around for a couple more hrs.  It came on in the last 5 minutes while we were in the restaurant.  Luckily I had my cards that I bought on saturday with me and we got in a couple good games of Euchre; an Indiana tradition.  As we left I got a text message telling me the colts had won, which was well enough.  Unfortunately, my good friend lost her phone in the cab on the way to Hooter's.  

Phone Hunt

I didn't grab the taxi receipt when I got out of the cab; however I did pay for the cab with the metro card.  So - When I called the taxi cab translation service and told them the situation they texted me the address of the place I was going to go.  I got in the subway with her and we started out going that way.  Basically - we go to the public transportation card company and they didn't speak english at all.  So I ended up passing my phone through the window while on the line with the translation people who were trying to help me locate the cabbie that we used earlier in the day.  After 30 minutes of waiting we heard back from the cab company and the phone was lost.  It was crushing so we got some I bought some doughnuts to console.  We returned to People Square and walked around a bit.  It was a bit concerning actually, as we walked around folks from behind us kept saying "Hello, How are you?" "Do you speak English?" "Are you American?"  It was all said from different people over the course of 5 minutes.  It sounded very under the breath of the folks who were saying it and it creeped me out so much I didn't turn around.  Apparently, the folks go to People's Square to practice their English on the foreigners.  We finished our people's square visit then went to Papa John's for dinner.  It was close to the American taste, but the cheese was different and they use more flour on the dough.

Monday and Tuesday

I've spent the last couple of days working for class and trying to get things read and be ready for everything this week.  I'm excited that tomorrow we'll be going to the Theater tomorrow for class.  We'll be going to see how the actors in the opera train for their shows.  I expect it to be painful to watch in some parts.  As part of my attempts to make the internet a bit more usable, I've shared www.mesh.com with one of my professors.  I think it'll help our class, but I really think it has the potential to help everyone. Check it out, see if you think it'd be helpful.  It saves me from emailing multiple copies of files myself.

Other than that I've just been happy to stay busy getting things done.  More to come, thanks for reading.

JBiber