Still Alive

It’s been awhile since I last updated this thing and since then I’ve seen and done a lot of cool things around Shanghai and other parts of China.  I did take tons of pictures this past month (roughly 1200 pictures) but the internet has been so slow here that it normally takes 8 hours to upload 10 pictures and normally the internet crashes out by then.  Even posting writing takes a few hours anymore.  Therefore I’m sad to say I won’t be posting that many if any pictures for now on.  This way I can still try to keep you guys updated on whats going on, but I do promise that when I get back I’ll post my pictures somewhere for all to see which most likely will be on Facebook.  But for now I’ll try to tell you guys some of the main things I did this past month and hopefully fill in the missing pieces over the next few days.

To start off I am no longer at the campus in downtown Shanghai but have moved out to the main campus that is in the suburbs of Shanghai.  The new place is called Minhang and is about 20 miles from the other campus and actually feels like a campus now.  I do believe there are roughly about 35,000 undergrad and post-grad students here which is a little smaller than Purdue so I feel more back at home.  Classes here haven’t been that bad yet except that for my thermo 2 class we were told on the first day that our first exam was in one week (No wonder they’re so damn smart).  As for my class schedule I only have class Monday Tuesday and Thursday and am done on Monday and Tuesday by 10am, so really can’t be that schedule.  The food here is a lot better than the previous campus except there is no place around campus to get western food.  This might be a good thing though to help me keep losing weight.  Which as of yesterday I weighed myself at 97kg which is equivalent to about 214 pounds.  Which seeing that I came to China at 235 is a drastic weight lost in 2 months.  Now for the rest of my month.

This past month I started to travel to other places around China which included Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Xi’an.  The first two cities were pretty cool but the weather was really crappy and took away from the natural beauty of both areas.  The two cities are both located about 2 to 3 hours away from Shanghai, with Suzhou being West of Shanghai and Hangzhou to the southwest.  On that trip we mostly saw Buddhist temples, gardens, and some of the canals that ran through both cities.  I saw both of those cities on a school provided tour so they were very quick sights but I do plan on making a trip out to Hangzhou again since most of the Chinese people believe it to be one of the most beautiful places in China.

Another big trip I took this month was during our spring break to Xi’an which is located in Central China and is home to Huashan mountain and the Terracota warriors.  We spent a week there and had probably one of the best times of my life but at the same time some weird stuff kept happening to me and my friends and when I write about that trip sometime this coming week you guys will get  more details.  One of the coolest parts of this trip though was our adventure to the Muslim quarter of the city.  They had some of the best Chinese food I have ever had and had this one desert that was made of rice dough.  I know it sounds awful but it literally was a rice dough that tasted like a snickers candy bar.  Another fun part of this trip was to Huashan mountain where me and my friends climbed for 3 hours until we had to turn around to get back to our bus.  Sad thing was we thought we made it far up the mountain but discovered we only made it a third of the way up.

As for now this is all I am going to write about for now and will fill in the gaps this coming week.  I most apologize again for not posting more often but now that I have more free time the blog should pick up again.  I am going to try and get five photos up here now as a teaser and I must warn you that in some pictures it looks as if I grew out a Hitler mustache.  In reality I had a mustache but the problem was my inner hair grows twice as dark as the outside and some of you might ask why I grew a mustache in the first place.  Lets just say I made a drunken bet but after seeing some of these pics (which most I deleted) I decided to shave it off to hide the embarrassment.

Tiger Hill Pagoda

City Center of Xi’an

Me at the Terracotta Army

Snickers like Rice desert from Xi’an’s Muslim Quarter

Panorama view while climbing Huashan mountain

 

 

The three S’s

It’s been along time since i’ve written on here and looking at my post title most of you are probably thinking he hasn’t written in two weeks and the first thing he is going to write about is Shit, Shower, Shave.  While that normally does fit the three S’s it does not apply to this case.  For the three S’s i’m writing about are the main reasons why I haven’t written on here for so long and they are School, Sick, Smog.

The main reason I haven’t written on here is i’ve been super busy and honestly haven’t been able to find any down time to sit down and actually write about my day and I blame this mostly on the fact that school took over.  It’s actually weird to say that School took over because even back in the states school never really stopped me from doing to much, sorry mom and dad, but the past few weeks i’ve been studying my ass off for a Chinese language final.  This wouldn’t be to bad either if it weren’t for the fact that I took a semester long course in a matter of four and a half weeks.  Yet as the final approaches in less than five hours, its 3:30 am as I am writing this, I feel pretty prepared for it and that should worry me since every time I say i’m ready for an exam I normally bomb them.  Guess we will wait and see.

Now that that last paragraph explains the first S the next two are actually related since the smog actually caused me to be sick.  On top of the school work I haven’t felt very well lately and earlier last week was having trouble breathing and was having daily nose bleeds and last week after some serious discussion with my teacher she finally convinced me to go to the hospital since I wasn’t improving in health and was only getting worst.  After a quick trip and it was quick (45 minutes total, the American hospitals should take a few notes) the doctor had prescribed me about 6 different medications and diagnosed me with a Severe sinus infection and informed me that it was mostly likely due to the smog.  As for the actually inspection the doctor had no idea what pollen or hay fever was and after being informed of my nose bleeds took a look up my nose grabbed some pliers and yanked some nasty thing out both of my nostrils.  Let’s just say it hurt like F***.  The doctor gave me two heavy anti-inflammatory medicines and an anti-biotic and I will say I am finally feeling quite well.

Now for the last and final S Smog.  As you saw above the doctor said the sinus infection was probably caused by smog and I’m guessing most of you have heard about the Smog problem in Beijing and it worries me of how bad the smog is here in Shanghai yet it is still three times worst in Beijing.  Now if you want to know how bad it is living with Smog i’ll tell you plan and simple,  It feels like your breathing pins and needles every time you breathe and sucks major ass.  We also went onto a company tour about an hour and a half away in the industrial zone of Shanghai and the smog was so bad that the government closed down the highway for 2 hours while we were on it for it to clear out.  I can’t describe it to do it justice so i’ll include some pictures and though the pictures look like heavy fog we were told by our Chinese professor that it was just smog around us.  And remember its suppose to be 3 times worst in Beijing.

That’s all I really have to write about this post and below i’ll include some things I did in between posts and will be writing about some of them later this week but if your interested to hear more about any of the things below just comment and i’ll try to write about those.

• Interviewed current students in China’s education system and compared and contrasted the difference in their system and ours
• My friends tried to get me to hook up with a fat chick lucky enough I have standards for myself
• Went to another cooking class but forgot my camera but did get recipes
• Went to a Chinese art museum and saw some really cool stuff
• Went to two different temples in the city as well as bought two shirts and a suit all tailored for less than $130 USD
• Went to the fake markets got some sick jerseys all together for under $50 USD including another Ray Lewis jersey
• Saw my Ravens win another Super Bowl

AS FOR THE FULL STORY ITS ALMOST DONE IT GOT SHOVED TO THE BACK OF THE TO DO LIST BECAUSE ONCE AGAIN SCHOOL COMES FIRST

Group photo after interviews with current students

Blue Monday

Earlier today while surfing through my twitter timeline I came across a tweet that referred to a day known as Blue Monday.  It said that in a case study that Monday was considered by most people in the world as the worst day of the week and that there is one Monday that is always the worst out of all other Mondays in the year.  The study also found that after polling a group of people that most people’s Blue Monday occurs on the third Monday of January.   Ironically that Monday happened to be today and I couldn’t agree more with that study since I spent most of my day in bed trying to get over a nasty cold I received in the past few days.

Since I haven’t done much in the past 24 hours since I’ve written I’ve decided to post a few pictures up of some photo miscues that have occurred as well as a couple that; one either show the difference in cultures; or two, show the influence western culture has over here.

The first picture below is one that I took while riding the metro to the YuYuan gardens.  If you look closely it shows the rules of the metro subway and one of them says no spitting.  For most of you it might seem like why would they have a rule such as this one, there possibly can’t be that much spitting.  I know I thought that but over here spitting is just a part of life everywhere you go there are people spitting and it’s not just in the open public spaces.  People spit here in restrooms, still on the trains, and even in restaurants and its seen as acceptable and part of everyday life.  Spitting is even acceptable at the dinner table due to the food on most occasions having bones in them.  Therefore, you will put the meat in your mouth get as much of the meat off the bones then spit the bones out back onto your plate and it is not seen as disrespectful.  In fact it would be more disrespectful for you to reach your hand into your mouth to take the bone out.

 

Sign on the Metro with the rules of no smoking, littering, begging, or spitting

The second photo I have for you was taken at Nanjing Road outside of a huge department store.  As you guys can see it is a GAP advertisement and shows to Caucasian people kissing each other.  While this might not seem unusual to us, it is very different from Chinese culture since PDA is a very big taboo here.  It is such a taboo that you will barely see couples who are dating or even married holding hands in public.  The only time you really can even tell if a couple is together is if the guy is caring the girls purse for her, and yes that is a tradition here and if you are dating and do not do this for the girl you are seen as a coward by others.  Knowing that information it just seemed weird to me that GAP was putting off this image that by wearing these clothes it was associated with love and passion in a public space, when in the Chinese culture is such a big no-no.  Kind of just makes you think what goes into those decisions and differences in Culture.

GAP advertisement outside of the huge department store

The third photo I have is one of me and my friends Elliot, Carlin, and Corbin trying to take selfies in the mirror at Yuyuan gardens and having an epic fail in our attempt.

Epic fail mirror pic at YuYuan gardens

The last photo I have was of my friends Elliot, Carlin, and Corbin again also with our friend Josh at Qibao this past weekend.  The story behind this photo was that we were on the bridge with all of us taking pictures of each other.  Finally this Chinese man came up to us and could speak English and asked us if we wanted him to take a picture of all of us, and of course we said yes and I handed him my camera.  He then took the picture and asked if it was good and after a look I realized that I was not in the picture at all.  Then when I looked up to say no he had already walked away which we were lucky enough to have another man pass by that understood enough English to take our picture.

Picture the guy took of my four friends and me barely in the picture to the far left

Also for those of you who requested the Full Story of Friday night I am currently working on typing it up on a Word document with a friend to make sure all the stuff is included and accurate.  It should be done in the next few days since we are busy with class and have a group project due Thursday.

Shit always becomes cooler at night

This past week has been so busy and up and down that the only word I can use to describe it is Rollercoaster.  I did not write last Wednesday or Thursday due to me being sick and by the time I came around to feeling like I had anything important to write it was Friday and we all were going to a concert and then it turned into the weekend and I was so busy with all the traveling and tourism stuff that I was not able to write.  Therefore long story short this is going to be a really, really, really long post and sadly my Friday night story will have to be extremely edited due to the fact that I do still need to get a job and some of you might think well you’ve put bad stuff on here before, but my personal entourage said it should probably be left out of this blog.  I personally agreed with them so I will leave out some of my stories but leave in the stories of some of my friends did.  If you are interested in hearing the full story just e-mail me, message me, tweet me, or get ahold of me in any way and I’ll be more than glad to tell you the full story.  As for the set-up of this post it will be by each day since this post has to make up for the past 5 days.  Also the quote for this weekend as seen in the Title of this post comes from my friend Carlin who for some reason while trying to justify well I’m not quite sure to know what he was justifying said the line “Shit always becomes cooler at night.”

Wednesday

Wednesday was one of the most boring days since we’ve been here and it is mostly due to that the entire week is pretty boring since we are in class for 7 seven hours a day.  A typical week day includes waking up at 7am going to class from 8:30am to 11:45am then getting a break til classes start up again at 1pm and end at 4:30pm.  Then normally most of us go back to our hotel and do some homework til around 5:30pm and go eat, then do more homework til about 8 or 9 when I normally am in bed, and rarely go out.  This night though we decided to go to the DVD shop where we can literally get any movie we want and if the guy doesn’t have it he tells you to come back the next day.  Each movie costs about 10 kuai which is equivalent to about $1.50 USD and the for the most part the quality is pretty good, I think out of all of the DVDs we’ve purchased maybe one has been bad quality which the guy replaced the next day.  So if you guys are interested in getting movies or are looking for a rare one I can probably get it or look for it and you guys can pay me later.  Just let me know if you are interested, once again my contact information is on my contact page.  Also forgot to mention that night we got noodles from the cafeteria and I also got a piece of chicken with mine and I have done this multiple times since I have been here, but on the last bite of chicken I discovered that some of it was still raw.  This I think will be the reason for what happened to me on Thursday.

 Me eating the Chicken and Noodles the night I got sick

Thursday

Early Thursday morning about 2am turned into a living hell as I woke up and was very sick to what I believe to be food poisoning from the chicken I ate the previous night.  I finally got back to bed around 4am and when waking up for class wasn’t feeling any better so I decided not to go to my morning class and slept til about noon and was feeling somewhat better except that I still had to go to the restroom quite often.  I honestly probably could have gone to class in the afternoon but since I was still going to the bathroom quite often and not to go into much detail but I had some serious diarrhea and like I have told you before the public toilets’ are squatters here and since I had not used one before I was not going to have my first experience while suffering diarrhea.  So I ended up staying at the hotel and was going the bathroom and ended up running out of toilet paper and like I have told you guys before toilet paper is very limited and the hotel only gives each room one roll a day.  When I eventually ended up with no toilet paper is of course when the worst of my sickness occurs I then went out to ask the maid for another roll which she started yelling at me yi something something which I knew that yi meant one and the rest I took as per day.  I then worried I was going to shit myself decided to break this communication barrier by playing some charades.  I then put my finger in my mouth for sick and then did an explosive sign behind my butt and her mouth dropped so quick in shock and then all of a sudden she shoved me back into my room and tossed me two rolls of toilet paper thank god and later actually brought me hot tea later as I was lying in bed.  Eventually after another nap I felt perfectly fine again and later went out with some friends to a local bar called Perry’s that a German foreign exchange student had told me about on Tuesday and that place was one of the coolest bars I’ve ever seen.  The bar itself is filthy cheap on prices and was created for the foreign exchange students, in the menu there was a page for each country and dishes that were unique to each country.  Also on the walls is writing everywhere and on the tables and the menus themselves and the writing was in every language with peoples’ names and advice for other travelers passing through.  When I go back I’ll make sure to take pictures and post them on here.

Limited Addition OKC Thunder Beer can

Friday

I will say that Friday night was one of the funniest nights I’ve had in a long time and sadly I cannot put the full story on here due to the old saying some things are best left unsaid.  I personally would share them in person but with everything being permanent on the internet, I cannot go in full details, so if you are in any way interested in my night contact me and let me know and I can send you the full night story from all of our point of views.  As for Friday night we all were going to a club in downtown Shanghai to see Steve Aoki preform and were told by a source that he would be coming on stage around 11 pm.  For those of you who don’t know who Steve Aoki is here is a youtube link of on of his performances.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b1FbKegOy8  So as dumb college kids the drinking started fairly early roughly 5pm and we all got pretty drunk before heading to the club since we knew drinks were going to be really expensive.  We then all get to the club ranging from 8pm to 11:30 pm; I arrived around 11pm since I definitely did not want to spend any cash at the club.  Which sad to say I broke that rule almost immediately and continued to drink more with my buddy Tyler, we then decided that since Steve Aoki was coming on stage fairly soon we should head into the pit.  Now going into the pit was my friends Tyler and Josh and myself.  Now I am the smallest one of the three of us and the other two are 6’5 and 6’4 respectively and all of us head into the pit where the average size of the crowd was about 5’9 so as we made our way through to the front we started to have people shove us back which didn’t do a damn thing since we would just shove our big asses through and even with are dominating stature it still took us an hour to get to the front which at this point we though Aoki would have been on stage but no he wasn’t.  While pushing through for an hour it started to get more and more violent as we got closer and closer and was a lot more fun since we were just physically bigger than all of them, yet I’m pretty sure I still received a bruised rib on my right side.  While pushing it was also awesome because girls were little just dancing like sluts with whoever was around them and every time there was a huge push we would stay in the same area and the girls would go flying away, but at the same time a whole new batch of girls would appear in front of us.  This continued for an hour and had some funny things occur such as this little Asian dude was yelling stop you’re hurting me in a funny Asian accent when my friend Josh fell on top of him.  Also at one point we bumped into this group of five guys who three of them were British and the others German and as soon as we touched them the one Brit turned around and was like you guys French pussies and it was said a little bit dirtier than that and once we said hell no, once again it was dirtier than that, they just laughed and joined our little gang of shovers in the endless fight.  Which the next hour of this story which is the really funny part is where I must skip but where we pick up is with some random ass American guy taking us up to “his” table to find out that it wasn’t his and getting told by these Dutch girls which one was Asian and Dutch made no sense that we couldn’t come around their table, and my friend taken a mint from a random dude who literally asked if he wanted a mint from an Altoids can only to find later it was acid, which don’t know how big of a dumbass you have to be to take a mint from a sketchy dude at the club and not expect it to be drugs.  The night then ended up with my drunken ass tipping our taxi driver an extra 16 kuai for a 30 kuai trip.  This story is honestly way funnier than told here and the hour long part that is missing really is what makes the story, and though it did scare the shit out of my mom I was being safe and nothing came bad came of it.  Yet this story was only a small version and part of my Friday night.

I’m to the left of the girl in the second row in the pic more of to show how crowded it was

A pic from the side to show how packed it was in that small area

Saturday

After a long night Friday and getting home at 4am I decided to sleep in on Saturday and to go do tourist things in the afternoon.  After a good recovery sleep me and a few of my friends went to the old canal town of Qibao which did not have as many canals as it used to but was still roughly 500 years old.  Qibao now-a-days is mostly a markets place with a food market, fake market, and a real market.  Included are pictures since I can’t really describe this place to justify how neat the area was.  Yet while there we went to the wet market section of the food market where we finally saw a dead dog being sold, which was pretty messed up no matter how you think of it.  Also in the food section there is a long row of street food vendors and for some reason everywhere was selling what is called stinky tofu which is their version of blue cheese but the smell is way worst and is comparable to the nastiest of dog poop.  We also saw some guy with pet monkeys on the street and yes I definitely got pictures of this since he was making the monkeys fake hump each other at least I think that is what he was trying to make them do.  For lunch that day we decided to eat at Pizza Hut and see how fancy it really was compared to other peoples experience and the Pizza Huts here are definitely way fancier here then back home.  They had people opening doors there, a huge round staircase leading upstairs, and sold all types of fancier food such as steak, salmon, fancy deserts, and even the pizza itself was fancier.  One of the pizzas we got had ham, steak, chicken, pineapple, onions, green pepper, and mushroom on it and then for the crust there was two knots with one being a jumbo shrimp wrapped in dough and a knot full of mozzarella cheese and yes I did take a picture of this.

Shrimp Knot pizza I referred to in the section above

The man and his monkeys

Gate to the Old part of Qibao

Stone structure at the entrance to Qibao

Looking Westward on the main bridge in Qibao

Eastward View of the main bridge

Looking at the main bridge of Qibao from the Eastern Bridge

Me and my friends Back row is Me, Corbin, and Carlin then front row is Josh and Elliot

Eastern bridge at night

Western Bridge at Night

Food row where all the Stinky tofu was

Qibao Gate at night

Heading into the fake markets of Qibao

New Part of Qibao getting reading for Chinese New Year

Sunday

This past Sunday none of us did too much since we had a prior obligation for our Chinese culture class that afternoon.  The reason for having the class on Sunday was that our teacher had set up for some actors of the Peking Opera, which is a form of Chinese Opera other than that I don’t know much about it, come in and show us some moves that they preform and had some of us reenact the scenes and the two winners would get their face painted like those that preform in the actual theatre.  I was not one of the lucky ones that got their face painted but I will include pictures of the two who did.  The main guy that was presenting the class also brought in one of his students to show a demonstration and it was interesting to hear that the main guy was only 25 years old but started his training at the age of 9 and told us that there is a minimum of 11 years of training before an actor can appear on stage.  Then after the demonstration of the student, the master/main guy painted the two winners faces and while he did that he drew the pattern on the board and we had to paint a picture of the same face painting onto a face we had drawn on the piece of paper.  I will put a picture of my picture which I personally thinks is shitty but my mom says its pretty good which I think she is just being a mom and trying to make me feel better.  Overall the experience was quite interesting to learn about the culture and tradition of the Chinese opera, but I don’t think I would enjoy actually attending a show.

The master of the course/ main guy I talked about

My friend Carlin trying to reenact the master

The boots the Master guy has to wear during live performances

The student that came along to do a demonstration of the Monkey King

My friend Josh before he got his face painted

My friend Josh afterward painted as the god of Justice

My face looks a tad bit deformed

My Final picture of the Monkey King Face paint if you noticed it is an original and only copy signed and dated by me personally so if your interested in purchasing let me know.

Comparing my skills to the masters skills i’d call it so-so work by me.

Monday

As for today since we really didn’t do anything again since we had class once again all day but this afternoon our Chinese teacher had to cancel class midway through since she got really sick as well and I was following the Raven’s game on my IPhone during my morning class and am glad to see that my Ravens one and can’t wait for the Super bowl since we got zero classes that day.   Our teacher getting sick this afternoon was kind of a blessing since I was exhausted and hadn’t eaten any lunch and me and my friend decided that we wanted to get some American food since our stomach needed a break from the Chinese food.  We decided to go to Carl’s Jr. and it was pretty much the same as the Carl Jr.s/ Hardees in America except that my chicken sandwich was made up of chicken strips and not a chicken patty.  I have pictures of the sandwich below.

My Carl Jr’s Chicken Sandwich and fries was about 4 USD about 2 dollars cheaper than the American Prices

Chinese Cooking Class

Yesterday as part of our cultural class we took a trip to a Chinese cooking workshop and with me liking to cook it was one of the coolest things i’ve done so far.  The guy that owned the place used to work at the Ritz-Carlton as the head chef and said he is one of the few workshops like this in Shanghai and showed us pictures of the Prince of Saudi Arabia who was there the previous week, needless to say the play was pretty high class.  What proved this to us the most was the Ferrari parked outside next to the Bentley, and Lambo lol.  So to the cooking workshop the first part of our trip was going to a wet market where all the animals are still alive and if the meat is already prepared just implies the animal has been killed within the hour.  Lets just say the Chinese like their food as fresh as possible.  So our group which also happen to be the four biggest guys on the trip was making Kongbao Chicken and Weever fish with sweet and sour sauce.  So first step in the workshop is to get your meat for your dinner, so we had to go to the wet market and pick out two Weever fish, which are fresh water fish, to cook for dinner.  We didn’t pick out the chicken since it would have taken to long to skin and take out all the bones.  From there we went back to the workshop and prepared the food my job was the chicken since i’m not a huge fan of fish, and I would explain how I cooked it but I had never seen or used any of these ingredients beside the chicken and peanuts.  As for the Weever fish it was fried and then cooked with stuff that I again had never used besides the corn and peas, and shrimp.  Funny story about the Weever fish, our Chinese professor couldn’t say Weever correctly in English and it sounded more like Beaver and at one point asked how many of us liked to eat Weever which you could imagine our reaction when she asked us that and of course one of my smart ass friends said he loved to eat Beaver.  Which even funnier was he had  to explain to her why the rest of us were laughing when he said this.  Lets just say it was a priceless moment to see him explaining it.  Also while cooking we all had already made and ate our first course and was eating the second course of fish when our professor got back from taking the other group on a tour and went into the chef and asked when we were making the second course.  Which he then explained that was our second course and had never seen people eat so much so fast and told her not only was that our second course but he had given us extra noodles, and two vegetables and they were already gone.  She then somehow convinced him to make us some sweet and sour pork which we devoured pretty quickly.  She then asked each one of us what we weighed since her husband was kind of chubby and he couldn’t eat that much and the lineup that we had was my friend josh who is 6’4 250lbs, Tyler 6’5 240lbs, Jeremy 6’0 210, Elliot 5’10 225 lbs, and Me 6’1 230 lbs.  Her face dropped when we said this and asked if that was our first meal which was funny because we had actually just came from lunch and were still pretty hungry.  She then asked what people in America call big people and we convinced her that we call each other Beefcakes which she then said we were the biggest beefcakes she had ever seen lol.  She also is taking us to some eating challenge this weekend and is paying for all of us and is bringing her husband since he saw a picture of us last night afterwards and talking to her in class today said that he called us NFL players lol.  That made me laugh because if they think we are big and saw how big those guys were they probably would shit a brick.  I’ll now put the pictures up of the class as well as a picture of some random dude that came up to take a picture with me this weekend.

Part of the Wet Market the things to the right are baby eels

Squid Anybody

Fresh Seafood for the day

The cucumber looking things are actually not cucumbers but Winter Melon

Kungbao Chicken – Pretty much Spicy Chicken and peanuts

Cooking the Weever fish

Weever fish after being stir fried

My friend Josh cooking the sweet and sour sauce for the fish

Weever Fish with Sweet and Sour sauce I even ate this and it was amazing

What can I say i’m sort of a big deal over here

Also for Cousin Johnny I found some schoolgirl models for a fashion show we saw at the mall this pictures is for you

I haven’t been this sober while hungover in along time???

To first start off this blog I first must apologize for both my English skills as well as the language I use on this site.  After talking to my parents this past weekend I found out there are way more people following my blog than I though would and most of you seem to be influential people in my life mostly my high school teachers.  Which made me feel bad for a small time for not using everything you guys taught me, but then I realized its my blog and I’m going to tell my stories as if I was in person and if your easily offended there is now a disclaimer on my about page of this blog along with some funny pictures I took while abroad.  If I seriously offend or have offended you I am once again deeply sorry but it is what it is.  Anyways let me get my first full weekend in Shanghai and if this is any indication how the weekends are going to be this trip is only getting started lol.

Also before I begin every weekend there is a quote of the weekend which the winning quote will be the title for each Monday post after that weekend.  This week’s winner comes from a friend of mine who after a long weekend still couldn’t eat at dinner.  While at dinner he wasn’t eating much and when asking why his response was, “Man, my stomach hurts my main problem is that I haven’t been this sober while hungover in along time.”  What this exactly means, I have no clue so if you figure it out please let me know.

Now to my stories of the weekend and all the pictures will be at the end of the post hope you guys enjoy.

To first start off from where I left Friday I had mentioned that we found a bar with go karts and let me tell you we definitely need these in America. Its practically a goldmine for rednecks.  For starters we first get to the bar which is located in an underground parking garage and looked like it was out of the movie Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift and decided that we need to have a few beers which wasn’t to bad since we thought the race was directly after we bought the tickets, also the tickets were purchased from the bartender, but no the race was a minimum of twenty minutes after purchase.  Which twenty minutes to us meant time to kill and another beer which wasn’t a big deal since drinking and driving these go karts seemed to be the driving force of this business.  So as we are waiting we all decided that one race was all that we were going to do, then it was our turn to race and the description of how fun it was cannot be explained except we had to do it again.  Which wasn’t a big deal besides the fact that another group of friends had bought tickets for a race while we were racing so we waited still thinking it wouldn’t be that long, but their race wasn’t for another twenty minutes so of course as college kids we had a few more to drink.  Have way through their time waiting the rest of us decided that this time we don’t want to race the normal speed carts we want the fast once, which the only difference was that the normal carts you didn’t need to break the fast carts all you did was break.  So we got our tickets and are told thirty minutes more after our friends race which means only one thing more beer, also sorry mom and dad I know it might seem as if we were hammered which we were but there really is no reason to worry about us we were perfectly safe.  So then our race comes up and I was the most sober one driving in our race of six people and I was still treating the race as if it was a Bristol night race, which after my roommate wrecked me for the second time bout caused me to throw my helmet at him on his next lap.  Also in the middle of the race it was funny to note that one of the girls driving with us, poor girl, decided to quite driving and kept saying something over and over again which later translated to devil Americans lol.  Also to note about this was that if this were to take place in America the staff would not allow anybody on the track, but here my Taiwanese friend sneaked onto the middle of the track to take live action shots.  Problem was the carts we were in were to fast to capture us and he also wasn’t a very good cameraman.  After the race we went back home in a taxi which was great since our driver acted like he couldn’t understand English when we got into the cab but as we were driving two of my friends surprisingly not me this time was using some very colorful language amongst each other and was using it to complain about the taxi’s driver which after a line containing some really colorful language by my friend that our taxi driver started bursting out laughing which then we realized he could speak English and found us to be funny asshole Americans.  So seems like we found some good adjectives for Americans in one night.

Then the next day, Saturday, we actually did do some touristy things.  To start off the day we went to one of the oldest parts of Shanghai where some of the buildings were over 500 years old.  It was awesome to see the structure of the old buildings and was amazing to see that after hundreds of years how China had turned them all into shopping stores and restaurants.  From there we went to a local Taoism temple where people there celebrated people that were actually alive many years ago and had been turned into gods or spirits of the city, wealth, and literature.  From there we continued to another part of the area called the Yuyuan Gardens which were built in the early 1500’s and was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, the pictures alone do not show the beauty of this place.  While in the garden we had kind of an awkward situation arise.  In the garden there is a pond that is surrounded by higher ground all around it and in the middle is a walking bridge.  Two of my friends and I decided that we wanted out picture out on this bridge, well while taking the picture my two friends decide to put their hands on my butt while taking the picture.  Our other friend who was taking the picture started bursting out laughing while taking the picture and we were wondering why, when he then told us to look behind us.  We turned around and found four Chinese people with their cameras zoomed in on my ass with two guys groping it.  I do have a picture of only of the people who were taking pictures of us which will be included in the end of the post.  From there we walked around the shopping center for awhile where all these little sneaky dirt bags try to sell you watches and bags off a piece of paper since their goods are in dark alleyways how I know this, well will get to that later.  But while you are walking around these people work in teams and while one of them shows you the product another tries to steal stuff from you and I caught them trying to steal stuff from me three times.  After that we walked back for about forty five minutes to a place called Nanjing Road which is the busiest shopping street in Shanghai and is comparable to their version of Time Square.  While there I came into a huge problem of having to go the bathroom, why is this a huge problem one finding a toilet is damn near impossible, and secondly there is no toilet paper so in other words your shit out of luck lol.  So after striking out there we decided to go get dinner and ended up in this dark alleyway at a mom and pop shop that literally had 5’10 ceilings and was four stories high, so for me it was a fairly tight squeeze.  To be honest that place probably served the best food since I’ve been to China and that’s hard to say, because i’ve had a lot of great food since I’ve been here.  Which from here the story gets really sketchy.  To fill you in on some background for these terrible decisions that are about to take place, the only reason we went to the place we were going was to get a watch for my roommate who should have done this in the daytime not in the middle of the night.  So immediately after coming out of this mom and pop shop  and i’m meaning five feet from this place this lady or dirt bag with one of those  paper pamphlets with the watch comes up to us, she had to of stocked us, and asks us if we want a watch and of course whats my roommate say, yes.  Now at this point this goes through my mind like isn’t this one of those things you hear about on CNN about people getting taken away and never seen again, but apparently that didn’t cross any of the minds of the other eight people with us.  So we follow this woman down these dark alleys until we come to this hole in the wall where a door opens up and a big guy shuffles all nine of us into this room.  In this room are literally hundreds of watches, purses, backpacks, sunglasses, and pretty much any other thing you could imagine being stolen from a tourist being sold.  After about five minutes me and my Taiwanese friend realized that these people are not to be messed with and need to get the hell out of there.  Which after another ten minutes and purchases by a few people they realized as well when they saw their purchases had initials of other people on them.  Let me note to on the situation that in China haggling occurs everywhere and can be done in the right situations, but with these scumbags they knew how to speak perfect English and knew the actual prices of the items in USD.  At this point I am going to fair warn you of some offensive language coming up.  Why is this bad, well to say the least they get offended easily by very low  offers especially when this dumb bitch with us admitted that we were American.  Also you might say well you can’t call her that for trying to get a good price, but I will tell you yes I can because not only did she admit that we were American but also agreed to prices on items multiple times then when paying would try to cut more.  I also noticed while in this place they had shut and locked the door and when I tried to leave and I opened the door immediately this big dude pushed me back in and said no and somebody else in the store was on the phone calling people, meaning for us to get the f*** out of there.  Which while all this is going on the girl gets pissed at me when I said to pay the damn money, which she did thank.  Also remember the original reason why we were there well he decided he didn’t want a watch, so after all the bickering and finally having a clear reason to leave we start out the door and when we got about half way down the alleyway we hear yelling and running.  We all turn around and see this guy yelling 200 for the watch which my roommate did buy, but as this is going on the big dude from before is blocking the path where we came from and the girl is trying to take us down the darkest alleyway, and I remember thinking fuck that and shoved past her to the nearest road which was about 50 yards away, where she then tried taking us into more sketchy places.  Good thing is we all made it out and some think it was a good experience but for me never again.  To say the least it was a very nerve racking experience and ended up with me calming my nerve with my friends Jack and Jim at the Koala bar and called for a very uneventful Sunday since we laid around and watched football and yes they play the NFL over here to, kind of amazing to be honest.  So as you can see the weekend was a very eventful one and there were many parts of the day cut out so you can see why Sundays are definitely lazy days and no Jeff they aren’t because i’m Hungover.  I know I wrote a lot this time but I have to cover all of the weekend but I hope you guys still enjoyed my weekend adventures because if so next weekend were going to a club for a concert so this weekend might get topped.

Also for cousin Johnny I talked to my Taiwanese friend about your request and he said once we get out to Western china there is a pretty good chance we could make it happen.  If your still interested.

Picture from the Bar looking at the Race Track

Us right before our first race

Us right before our race in the fast cars

One of the great pictures Sanford took of us racing

Right after our Race in the Fast Cars

Outside of the Go-Kart Bar

Old part of Shanghai with what will be the tallest building in the world in the background amongst the smog

The oldest part of Shanghai with the new skyline to the far left and Yuyuan Garden where the trees are

Top of the Tea House the buildings are over 200 years old

Statues on top of the temple suppose to protect also the roofing if look closely resembles bats which are suppose to be protective in Chinese culture

The black statue is the first reference to a Judge in Chinese culture

Inside one of the main temples

Group picture at the temple we visited

The Ass-grab picture

One of the Asians zoomed in on my butt

The Yuyuan Garden is around 500 years old

Dragon Sculpture in Yuyuan Garden

Probably one of my favorite sections of Yuyuan Garden

Selfies in the Yuyuan Garden

One of the many walking brdidges in the Yuyuan garden

Outside the Yuyuan Gardens

Traditional China Tea Ceremony

Romeo Jasmine Tea the Jasmine Flower actually sprouts fully when the tea is done

Peeing Boy looks like its peeing when hot water is poured over top of it

My friends Sanford, Brian, and Jeremy practicing their tea etiquette

Our group trying out the different teas

Two Asian mascots fighting each other the white one ended up winning

Nanjing Road alittle Blurry in this picture

Nanjing Road at Night with Sanford pointing at us

Average day in Shanghai

First let me apologize for not writing yesterday but there was not much to write about and I actually went to bed at roughly 7pm, so that will tell you how exciting my day was.  But today was a different experience, first we went to a restaurant where I tried 6 year old pickled duck egg, some of the guys also tried beef stomach, and I also tried Chinese pottage which is tough to explain but was pretty decent to my surprise.  We also got some weird looks thanks to my roommate putting his chopsticks in his mouth like a walrus, then we found out today in our culture class that that action is frowned upon in Chinese behavior.  Then to my great surprise we came across something I never thought I would ever see while in China, but the great Walmart.

Now Walmart in China at first seemed to be very similar to Walmarts in America, but then we went upstairs. I also forgot to mention that since in China there isn’t much room for huge warehouses, so instead they make them multiple floors.  So then once upstairs we came to the food section of Walmart.  At first everything seemed quite similar until we came across some of the foods that were in greater value brand,  the first one we came across was pineapple flavored beer and another food was duck tongue stew.  Then we moved to the meat section which if you guys look at my earlier post of the food market looked exactly like that.  It honestly was quite repulsive, because unlike the food market where everything was killed and sold that day some of the food at walmart looked as if it had been there for a few days.  Also, I forgot to mention but I hope Matt Grahovac sees this post because at walmart they had the biggest bottle of henessy I’ve ever seen and was being sold for 6,980 kuai or roughly $1,100 USD, pictures will be included at the end.

So that was my day yesterday, and today we got lucky enough to get out of class early so after I am done writing this I think most of us are going out on the town and eventually to this bar that also has a go-cart track and drunk driving is encouraged so that will be crazy to see.  I’ll post pictures of that tomorrow if we do end up going there and I promise mom that i’ll be safe.  Also as requested i’ve included pictures of our room and bathroom that we are living in and since I’ll be going out this weekend doing tourist things It might be a few days or midafternoon your time that my blog goes up.

My roommate Jeremy making a fool of himself

Me and my friend Sanford at Dinner

Our Dinner last night between the 6 of us

Just for you Matt hope you see this

Walking Across Campus

Are small main room with twin beds

Our sink and shower

Our shitter and bottom of the shower since I know you guys wanted to know what it looked like and most places actually have squatters where you literally squat over top the whole and do your business pictures to come soon

My first Chinese Haircut

Well last night for dinner we decided to go to a American 50’s classic diner style restaurant and as stated in my previous post we had learned that some barbershops also double as brothels and while walking around with my Taiwanese friend he pointed out to us the difference and let me tell you, it is very easy to see the difference between a normal barbershop and a brothelshop lol.  As we were walking around the barbershops are very easy to see since there are signs that clearly identify them, but walking around in a shadier part of Shanghai last night me and my roommate noticed one in particular that was very tiny with dim red lighting and a girl wearing very skimpy clothing for Chinese culture sitting in the small shop by herself.  We did not walk in, but saw an older Chinese man walking past then finally walk into the shop where immediately he was taken in the back, so i’m glad to say that I have find the brothels in Shanghai.  I also was informed today by my mom that my grandpa knew of these shops and that much hasn’t changed in 40 years, which makes me think of what he was doing back then lol.  As for today not much has happened, so I guess this post will be fairly short, but tonight is ladies night in Shanghai so there might be some stories for you guys tomorrow and I’ll try to include pictures of my room tomorrow.  As for the picture of the day today it came on my journey this past Sunday while we were walking around the city.  We came across this foot massage shop that had the sign A-Okay on it.  I personally thought this to be really funny and you guys might not, also include is a picture of the top of a pop can that I thought was interesting to see the difference in shape.

A-Okay massage sign

Tear Drop shaped pop can

Roll Tide

Let me first start off with that finally seeing Alabama won the National Title that makes me more than happy, due to the fact that I hate Notre Dame more than any other school than Michigan.  And even though I know there are many devoted fans to the school and I have shared their pain of seeing their team lose, I am mostly happy to watch the bandwagon fans who know nothing of the sport except that Notre Dame is suppose to be good suffer. 

That said I will now start with my actually blog and since classes started yesterday I haven’t been able to go site seeing anywhere since I am in class.  Therefore I think during the week I’m going to talk briefly about what I learned in class and mostly share pics of small things of my previous trips that I couldn’t share at that time due to limited space.  Today though was quite funny since our Chinese professor asked if she could say S*** in class to explain things, and as most of you could guess I was extremely appalled by such language lol.  She also shared with us to be careful of the barbershops where girls cut hair, because they mostly double as brothels.  Which verifies that you do leave with a Happy Ending just not at the typical service you would expect.  Us guys came up with the saying of “In America if a guy cuts your hair he probably will suck your D***, In China if a girl cuts your hair she probably will suck your D***.”  For those of you I appalled i’m very sorry for the vulgarness of this post, but you have to understand we have a lot of downtime and we have to entertain ourselves some way in class.  As for the picture of the day from my previous travels, it will be a picture of a 15th Century map from Italy that was translated in reprinted in Chinese.  The zoomed in part is of eastern Africa and a friend of mine that is on the trip is Taiwanese and can speak Chinese says that the actual translation of the country is “Black Mans’ Country,” so apparently the Chinese are just as racist as Americans.  Also I will include proof that there is Carl Jr.’s in China which is very shocking to me, along with KFC and Pizza Hut which is actually a fancy restaurant here and i’ll put pictures up of Pizza Hut once I go there.  Also will try to get pictures of my living conditions up in the next few days.

Downtown Shanghai

Well yesterday turned from being just an ordinary day into walking around the entire city (roughly 10 miles) and seeing all that has to offer.  What was suppose to be getting the last few things for the room like ethernet cords and cell phones which I only payed about $1.50 in USD for a 15 ft ethernet cord we ended up deciding to go see what Shanghai had to offer.  We actually have a kid with us who can speak Chinese so he led our adventures, and originally he was trying to take us to a historic spot but we ended up in one of the more poverty strucken areas.   It was amazing to see how happy people were though given their living conditions, and we ended up stumbling onto a traditional food market where everything was sold, I actually got some fish guts on my boots thanks to the girl who cleavered a fish head off next to it.  I’ll be sure to include some pictures in the end as usual.  From there we walked through the downtown where we came across the urban development museum of the city, which was really cool since it showed the growth of the city over the century and the future that China hopes for the city to see.  Inside the building it also had a total recreation of the city, which the recreation alone was amazing and I also will have pictures of that at the end.  From there we explored around People’s square which is a huge park in the middle of the city and has a feel kind of central park, but the buildings around make the area almost feel as if you are in Paris, besides the asian people and noodle street vendors everywhere.  From there we walked to the Bund which is the most famous part of Shanghai, since it has always been a part of the City’s origins.  From it you can see the famous skyline of the business center of Shanghai, and later at night it lights up and seems just like Vegas with all the Neon.  We originally were going to wait for it to light up but we had to wait an hour and were getting hungry, so we crossed the river to get food which was really tough since in China you have to call the waiters over to get service for everything, which we did not know until after we ate.  So for our meal after we drank our drinks we just waited for the server to come refill them, but they never did so that was definitely a thing to remember for the rest of our trip.  From there we went to the Second highest building in the world, which also happens to hold the world’s tallest bar, and that happen to be open to the public so we all went up to the 92nd floor and  there I enjoyed an nice glass of Jack Daniels on the Rocks for about $15 USD.  Which for a high scale place was pretty cheap from what I was expecting.  Overall I would say that day was a pretty great success except waking up today my legs were dead, but was well worth it.  Today, was Official our first day of class and nothing to exciting happened but learning Chinese was really cool and quite fun, and our teacher is awesome at teaching.  I’m going to put a bunch of pictures up here today and will try to put some titles under the pictures so you guys know what your looking at today.

Housing in the poor areas of Shanghai

Food Market in Shanghai

Just your everyday pig disassembled

Small Park in downtown Shanghai with a small part of the city in the background

Hard to see panorama view of the model

the far right is where I am staying and the big section in the background is where the downtown business area is

Part of Peoples’ Square

This is me at the Bund with the business sector of Shanghai in the background

The building with the Blue is the one with the highest bar

The bar and my Jack

The view from the bar, its kind of blur but just reference of how high we were