Day three was quite an eventful
day. After a brief skype session with my family to try to figure out the whole
phone ordeal, we headed to one of the phone stores in the mall to try to get my
phone unlocked. After finally explaining what I needed, they tried to charge me
$30 just to unlock my phone and then I would have paid for the SIM card and
minutes on top of that. After deciding to wait and see if my mom could get the
phone unlocked for free, we decided to return to Kung Fu for breakfast. Unfortunately, they had changed to the lunch menu, which according to my friends
was not nearly as good. Nothing was looking too appetizing to me after the
goose foot and night at the bar so I just stuck with a Pepsi.
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| Our favorite subway line |
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| People's Park |
I thought I just agreed to go out
to breakfast, but apparently I committed to an entire day of exploring, including our first experience on the Subway. I am not going to lie, I was very
nervous considering I was the only one without a cell phone if I got lost (I
declined the offer to get a leash similar to the one used on Lily in modern
Family), but we somehow managed to buy tickets to People’s Square which is an
area closer to downtown Shanghai with shops, restaurants, and hotels as well as
People’s Park. After walking around the park we actually found a little
amusement park in the middle and we decided to hop on one of the swing rides, which
I must say was not my best idea on an empty stomach after a night of drinking.
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| Swing ride with Catriona, Joe, and Bryan |
After barely surviving the ride we
walked out of the park and found something we found very intriguing. There were
hundreds of people lined up with umbrellas that had pieces of paper with
Chinese writing on it. We assumed they were selling something but didn’t
actually see any items so we were confused. We ended up finding someone who
spoke a little English and asked what was going on. After some
misinterpretation of the term “speed-dating” we figured out that it was
actually match- making for arranged marriages. The mothers and fathers of young
women would write descriptions about their children including height and weight
and sometimes pictures and others would walk around and try to find good
matches.
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Match-making in People's Park
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After processing what was going on
we decided to move on and walk by the Shanghai Theater. In the process I got
approached by a man who wanted to shine my shoes and would not leave me alone
until I walked fast enough across a busy streets to lost him. After passing the
theater we saw the Shanghai Museum and decided to go inside. The Museum was
surprisingly free and had over 15 exhibits that were all pretty interesting
including a Chinese Currency Gallery and a Chinese Minority Nationalities’ Art
Gallery which were specifically intriguing. We made our first Chinese friend,
known as Mr. P, who came up to us in one of the galleries and we got to talking.
He explained that he teaches English for a number of universities and language
centers and then asked if we wanted to go for some tea and practice some
Chinese but we explained we had just gotten to the museum and wanted to check
it out. He gave us his number and told us to call him if we ever needed help
translating or wanted a job teaching English someday.
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| Shanghai Theater |
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| Shanghai Museum |
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| Chinese Minority Nationalities' Art Gallery in Shanghai Museum |
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| Calligraphy Gallery in Shanghai Museum |
After finishing up at the museum we
were all ready for something to eat so we found a nice little place called Café
85. It sold a lot of pastry looking things that turned out to be pretty good
although were a little off in that a pastry with meat would also have icing on
top. There was no place to sit so we decided to walk over to McDonalds to buy a
drink and sit. Not even 5 minutes into eating, my friend Bryan gave in and
ordered a Big Mac, which he said was delicious. As we were sitting in the
window of McDonalds doing some quality people watching, a man kept walking buy
and trying to sell us a watch and a clutch. We kept telling him no but he kept
coming back and lowering the price and eventually walked into the McDonalds to
pester us some more. Luckily, a worker kicked him out but he still walked by a
couple more times before getting the hint.
We were then approached by a group
of students from Shanghai University asking about our impressions of Shanghai.
We explained we had only been here for a couple of days but they were still
very eager to hear our answers and were very appreciative of us just telling
them how big we thought it was and why we were here and where from. After a
long day of exploring we were finally ready to call it a day. We caught the
subway home and got back to our hotel to find everyone who went to the bar the
night before still lounging around in their pajamas. We already felt like we
had pretty successful day but in comparison to everyone else who had just
gotten out of bed the hour before we felt even better.
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| Getting interviewed by local students |
For dinner we didn’t really feel
like going too far so we decided to just go to one of the street vendors right
outside of the campus gates. This was probably one of our favorite meals yet
and it was basically just noodles with some sprouts and other vegetables mixed
in. The best part was just watching the guy make it in a giant skillet with
huge flames coming out from the sides. We brought out food back to our rooms
and ate it while watching American Psycho, which was pretty entertaining. We
barely made it through the movie and then instantly passed out before 10 pm
after such an eventful day.
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| Street vendor food |
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