Tuesday-Thursday

Lesson to bloggers/travelers: write about your experiences frequently and soon after the event. You may think no one cares about the stupid stuff you do, but you will care and want to remember those things down the road, because honestly you will forget things. This is only two weeks later and I'm trying to remember what I did midweek that week.

Tuesday I woke up and took Myongfa to the airport bus. She was very appreciative of my help and called me from Japan to say thanks. She was cool to hang out with. We talked about what its like being ethnic Korean and living in Japan. We talked about the differences in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese culture/lifestyles and we talked about ultimate. She helped out with Dream Cup in Japan so she got to see Sockeye and Fury visit their. Ultimate is huge in Japan.

After that it was raining so I kind of just kicked it in a web bar for a while. I watched some music videos, facebooked, added friends that I met at the tournament etc. I bummed around at Jim's and decided to go meet Joe for Thai food near his house. The food was good, but a mistake. I went to pickup that night, and after a few points of 4v4 make it take it on a small turf field, my stomach was burning and I was in some pain. Oh well. We went to a joint across the street for food/beer. Most of us including me were just on the beer side of that deal which caused Sandy to leave when she found out most of us weren't eating. Weird. Jim ordered a monstrous plate of stir fry, you could hear it sizzling from the other room. 

Wednesday I forget what I did during the day but that night I travelled out to WuDaoKou and met Lincoln, Camilla, and some of Lincoln's classmates for hotpot. I'm not a big fan of hotpot. Numerous reasons: you have to order a ton of food because it kind of shrinks when you cook it and it takes forever to eat and fill up at all, Lincoln's friends ordered a bunch of weird foods, like tongues, necks, stomachs, etc., and one time I was eating hotpot and I splashed a bunch of the oil on my shorts and it left a stain forever. But it tastes good. At this place it was really expensive, about 90 RMB or $12 a person. The beer was too expensive (20 kuai!) so we didn't order any. So we rallied back at the patio out front of the BLCU dorm, Lincoln and I loaded his backpack up with 12 beers for 30 kuai from the local produce store, and proceeded to sit with his classmates and drink a bunch. We drank a lot in fact, it was mostly Lincold and I, but I think the classmate that went to "uni" in London put down his fair share. Two female classmates showed up, one was Mary Ann, a Hong Kong Chinese girl from UMichigan. She will never read this blog so I will say that she was quite cute. 

On Thursday I woke up late and decided to go for a swim. There is a pool across the street from Jim's apartment. I paid my money and was about to get in the pool when the lifeguard yelled at me and said I needed a swimming cap. So I had to buy a swimming cap right there for 10 RMB. I swam for a while. On my way out of the pool I met up with Meg. I changed clothes and we went shopping. 

I told Meg that I wanted to buy a pair of khaki shorts. So she claims she knows the exact place to go. She takes me to this shopping plaza full of stores full of real funky punk rockerish fashionable clothes, like a lot of teens and young adult Chinese are wearing these days. Not my thing. I told Meg that I wanted to look like a 40 year old playing golf. So she takes me to this mall across the street. Its a real upscale but lacking any customers place, full of stores full of of quite pricey clothes. Italian kind of stuff that I've never heard of. Not my thing. I told Meg that I wanted to go to a place that a poor person would go to, or someplace that a working person would go to to get a straight up pair of shorts. Alas no luck.

So we ventured off for dinner to this street full of restaurants. Outside of one place this waiter was vocally advertising his restaurant to people passing by. He saw me and said "We have English menu". I decided that after countless Chinese people had complimented me on my quite poor Chinese abilities, I would finally return the favor. I told him that "your English is very good!". He flashed an embarrassed smile and we continued on. We ended up at this place that Meg claimed she had been to, called 串吧, Chuan Ba, which translates to Kebob Bar. Lots of things on sticks. We ate a lot lamb, some chicken, a few oysters, and a pot full of crayfish. It was good. 

It was late so we took a cab to my part of town where we said goodbye. Meg was leaving for her hometown on Friday for the Dragon Boat holiday, so I wouldn't see her again.