Leaving Shanghai

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past couple weeks, but I just haven't had very much that I felt the need to write down. Not that I haven't been doing anything, because I've been doing plenty. I think it's just a sign that I've gotten used to life here... just in time to leave.

I'll try to recap the highlights of the past couple weeks:

First, Qipu Lu. Lu mean's road. Qipu Road. It's another pedestrian street market, except all clothes. A really big one, where it seems everybody in Shanghai goes to get their clothes. I don't think we even saw half of it. It seemed to be on more than just the one street, as well. On all sides there were malls and shops selling more clothes. We went into one of the buildings and found 4 stories of clothes shops and vendors. In the basement of another building, were more shoes than I have ever seen in my life. An area about the size of a football field, crammed with individual vendors' shops, each about the size of a carnival booth, all stacked floor to ceiling with shoes. Nora saved me the agony of shoe shopping and brought Tara and her family back later. My crowning achievement of that little outing was finding a t-shirt with ridiculous English written on it. It's a women's t-shirt, so it will have to go to Caitlin, but written on it in sparkly writing, next to a picture of a pair of jeans, is "Noun Adverb Verb Adjective".

Next, the Textile market (pictured). Like the place with the shoes, except textiles now. You can have anything you want, tailor-made. Just pick out a fabric you like, get measured up, and come back a week later. Easy as that. Or is it? The answer, for us, was no. It's not. Nora and I both got measured for suits, and gave the guy 300kuai a piece for the deposit. A week later, as planned, we show up with our receipts, to find that the guy forgot. He forgot our suits. This was yesterday, by the way, that we went to pick them up. We're leaving Shanghai tomorrow, which left us with essentially no time to fool around with this guy forgetting to make us our suits. After 2o minutes of arguing for our money back, or any kind of deal that doesn't leave us suitless and moneyless, we finally give up and agree to meet him outside our dorm at 10pm that night, where he will deliver our suits. So now he has 6 hours to make and deliver two suits. We were giving it about a 40% chance that he was going to show up at all, much less with what we asked for. At 10 last night, we go down there and wait for him. For an hour. Now we're really skeptical that we're ever going to get out of this without being ripped off. Eventually I went back up to my room to call him, and found Tara in her's and Nora's room struggling on the phone with him. I talk to him on the phone, and he says he's there and he's been waiting. Now, my Chinese is still not perfect, and it's even worse over the phone, but from that conversation, I could tell there was no way that he was at a different gate. Eventually, after a few more trips between the gate and Nora's room, one of the gate guards asks me if I'm looking for the guy with the clothes. He's been waiting for an hour and he's mad. So have we, and so are we, I tell him. Anyway, we got the suits, and they are good. I also got two button-down shirts made (by different people) and Nora had some shirts tailored as well, but that all went perfectly, and that just makes for a boring story.

We went to the Tennis tournament. It's actually the first time I've been to a professional tennis match, so it was pretty cool. We saw Gaston Gaudio vs. Nikolai Davydenko. We missed Federer, who played the next day, but I decided it was just as well, because we got to see a good, competitive match. Federer generally beats the pants off of whoever he plays, and it's not much of a match for watching. The highlight of the tennis outing was the conversation we had with the ticket scalpers, which was probably one of the best Chinese conversations I've had with Chinese people outside of class. I am nearly fluent in two situations: bargaining prices, and telling people about my background. This conversation was both.

I can't really think of much else worth mentioning, besides a few more trips to the fake market, and a ton of DVD shopping. The CD/DVD store down the road is always playing Jack Johnson, which I appreciate.

The academic term is essentially over. Exams are done and the papers are in. Tomorrow morning at 6am, we leave for a ten-day trip through Sichuan (spicy food) and Xi'an (terracotta army) with Professor Ferry. This time, we'll have our own private tour, instead of the big tour bus we had last time. There's a lot of mountains on the itinerary, which I'm very excited about. I've been dying to go for a hike since I got here. And maybe, just maybe, we'll find a corner of China that's not noisy. Somehow I doubt it though.

After that, Nora and I have 12 days to kill until our flight leaves. We're both itching to get home, but last Spring it seemed like a good idea to schedule some travel time after the term ends. We have explored every possibility, dreamt up all sorts of crazy adventures, and finally decided to just chill out with those 12 days. We were going to go to Beijing and see the sights up there, but decided it's not going to be worth the trouble or the money. So the plan, for now, is to go to Hong Kong, and stay on the big island (where the city isn't). Hopefully we'll find a beach or something to hang out on, maybe go hiking or something. But most importantly, chill out and spend as little money as possible. I wouldn't mind finding a place that I could rent a surfboard, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.

So now it's time to say goodbye to Shanghai. I certainly won't miss the car horns.