So I ended up waking up at 1 after apparently sleeping through Bryan and Schwenk walking in and just went back to sleep until 4:30 when I woke up pretty rested but still had nothing to do so made myself lay in bed until 8. After deciding I couldn’t possibly sleep any more I got up and showered and then with no internet still had nothing to do. I read some travel books on Beijing for the upcoming trip until it was late enough to get John up so we could head into the city for the day.
We grabbed a quick lunch at the dining courts and got on the subway until we were at the cloth market with quite an agenda. We had to find a fabric to get John’s girlfriend, Meg, a dress made out of, a place to recreate a lost ZBT flag for Adam, and then some stuff for ourselves. We didn’t even know where to start so I suggested just trying to find a fabric for Meg’s dress. We stopped in a few stores until eventually I found one that I really liked and John thought it was really cool too. He handed the man at the store the dress Meg had sent him with, told him to copy it, paid a deposit and it was a done deal.
From there we decided to work on the flag. We went around to a few stores who pretty much just laughed at us when we asked them to make a flag when I spotted a store that made curtains and furniture covers. I figured that was kind of similar and was something totally different from all of the clothing shops so it was worth a try. After a long conversation about details they said they could make the flag but it was going to be pretty expensive. We took a card and figured we could always come back if we didn’t find anything better. We headed downstairs and decided to talk to this one lady just because she spoke such good English. She also said she could make the flag and for a very decent price. She was extremely helpful and talked with us for a while explaining how she could tell we were American just from our accents, which we thought was pretty cool.
After we got everything squared away with the flag we could finally go get some stuff for ourselves. We stopped by to see John’s girl, Lin Fen, and he got a pair of khaki shorts made and I got a pair of grey dress pants. After that I went to a store I had found last time I was there and got a black blouse made and then we were good to go. After a successful stop at the fabric market we decided to just continue our shopping streak and head over to the fake markets since they were only a few subway stops away. We did really well there too, as John got a brown “poopy” hat and I got some Ray Ban sunglasses. I also got my brother a pair a beats but that took longer than expected as all of them that I would listen to had awful quality and some of them didn’t even work. As soon as I found a pair that was somewhat decent I jumped on them.
After we had just finished up our shopping it was time to meet up with everyone to go downtown for the night and celebrate Jess’s birthday. John and I beat them to the subway stop we were going to meet at so we stopped in Starbucks and got some coffee. Just as we were done we met the enormous group of 16 guys outside. We made it the rest of the way to our hostel and checking in was a little bit of a nightmare with 17 people who all had to give them their passports but after about 15 minutes we were all good to go. All of the boys had rooms together but this hostel didn’t have mixed dorms so I had a room with 5 random girls, one of which was actually sleeping when I walked in. I put my stuff in my locker and then we all made our way to find something to eat.
Obviously people split up in a matter of seconds, and I was with the group that decided to head over to a Subway down the street. I must say the lack of deli sandwiches here is pretty disappointing, so Subway really hit the spot. After dinner we all just met up on The Bund and hung out for a while just enjoying the great view and of course the funny Chinese people doing the most ridiculous picture poses ever. Eventually we decided we wanted to go adventure around and decided to go walk around Nanjing Road. We stopped in a few stores looking for Shanghai Sharks jerseys and then gave up and headed back to the hostel.
Jess then told us her parents had gotten the 8 of us on the list at a club called The Geisha and that we should all meet her there. We felt bad leaving the rest of the group but just went ahead and went with 9 of us hoping it would work out. Bryan, Tyler, Adam, Nathan, John, Ron, Josh, and I got cabs there and it worked out surprisingly well since Bryan didn’t want to drink, so Josh could use his wristband and we could all get it. Turns out her parents had paid for wristbands for the 8 of us so we could have all you can drink the rest of the night, which was pretty awesome. After thanking her again and again we heading upstairs to the upper deck where she had a table. We all had a birthday toast and then let the games begin.
As the night went on the club got more and more wild as did our group. Not to go into too much detail but by the end of the night someone had thrown up on another person's lap, another in a bush, one on the walk home, and two more in toilets. Needless to say it got pretty rowdy, and we had to get some people home. I gave John my taxi card to get someone else home which then left me without a way of getting home. After not too much longer I was ready to get some sleep so I told Ron and Jess that I was leaving and got in a cab by myself and told them to take me to The Bund and then just told them a cross street I remembered and magically ended up right where John, Josh, and Adam were standing. After getting everyone into bed I was ready to do so myself but then I kept getting calls from both Ron and Jess yelling at me because I left them by themselves. Neither of them could find one another so they thought they were alone when in reality they must have been in the same room because the music in the background was the same for each of them. After enough time they eventually found each other and I was free to go back to my room of randos and snooze.
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