Lack of blogging explained.

I am so exhausted.

On Thursday, the group of gappers was set loose on the town on a wild scavenger hunt.  Boys vs. girls.  Naturally, it got very competitive.  We went to all the must sees of Shanghai in a period of hours, saw the Shanghai that most people take days to visit.  It was beyond human.  After completeing everything, my team and I could hardly walk.  In fact, when we got back to the office, we didn't leave the lobby for over and hour because it felt so good to sit.

It was however, a day well spent.  We took a gazillion photos and are now quite well accaquainted with the city.  I now feel like a pro on the metro, and am decent with the buses.  And I saw a bus so full that the doors didn't have room to open (though the doors did try to open on me, not comfortable).  Plus there are a lot of places that I need to visit again, and a lot of places that I could take people to (like if my people visited).

Must sees-

Yu Garden-taste the tea and stinky tofu

Renmin square and people's park

Nanjing Road-shopping!  (great store with really bright stuff the fred would love)

Portman complex, amazing hotel and neat building across the street

Walking the Bund-the colonial side of Shanghai, a Big Ben knock off, too

Jing An Temple-way cool, I went back today with my host mom and she told me about all of the gods

plus more

Friday-the official worst class of my life.  Somehow I managed to get placed into second year Chinese.  HAHA! During the placement test I think the proctor thought I was reading characters, but I was actually just reading the pinyin that she had partially covered up.  Problems ensued.  The class was fine for the first five minutes, when the teacher explained how the syllabus and that we would focus on not just speaking, but writing and reading too because it helps exponentially when learning the language.  Then she taught the first character, slowly writing it and prounouncing it.  Then, since we all did that fairly well, she covered the entire blackboard (as far as her small frame could reach) in no fewer than 10,000,000,000,000 characters and started yammering away.  Of course, I was the first student she asked a question to in rapid Chinese.  And since I had no idea what she was saying, she clarified by squeezing more characters that I could read onto the board.  I am never sitting in the front row again.  For three hours she always asked me questions first, and for three hours I gave her my best deer caught in the headlights.  It was torture.  

I am moving down a level.