Where Has All the Time Gone?

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Hello everyone!! Sorry it's been so long! I've been quite busy since I got back from vacation a week and a half ago. Last week, our first week back from vacation, was fairly quiet but the looming threat of finals and papers has had everyone hear (and myself) scrambling to get things done. It's really crazy that I only have a week and a half of classes left. Where has the time gone? Yesterday my time spent in China hit the 3 month mark! I anticipated that time would pass by quickly here, but not this quickly!

Last Friday, CIEE hosted its annual BBQ. We drove an hour to a very nice (huge) park somewhere in Shanghai's suburbs. The grilling area of the park has tons of grills, one for each picnic table, the sits roughly 8. Unfortunately it was the first HOT day we've had here, so everyone was wilting in the sun. Therefore, cooking our own food over a hot grill was not our idea of fun. And, for the last month, CIEE has been promising us hamburgers (in weekly promotional emails) but there were none! The other food was good enough, but we all wanted the hamburgers!

After eating, we had a dragon boat race! It was a lot of fun and we got soaked! It was also really hard work. Our boat just couldn't seem to move in a straight line, we zig zagged the entire course. If we could've paddled straight, we definitely would have won. As it was, we came in 5th, out of 7 or 8. So...could've done better, but could've done worse!

On Saturday I went to Renmin park, in central Shanghai. In China, it is common for the parents of single children (in their 20's-40's) to try and find a match for their children. So parents gather in public places and have, well, advertisements containing their childrens biography and facts. One such place is Renmin park. It was really fun to see all the hundreds of parents out there with their advertisements.

So, this is kind of a short entry, but time for weekly activities is hard to find now. I'm hoping to make another trip to Qi pu road this weekend for more cheap clothes!

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Photos

Grilling
Don't be fooled by this picture, my friend here didn't one bit of cooking!

Paddling
Making our zig-zaggy way out

Comments

[DAD]

Hi Meg, I was curious about the dragon boats.Are they inflateables,they look like it in the pictures.If they are that would definitely explain the zigs and zags.See you soon

[Nutmeg]

Dragon Boats
They are very real Dad! Made of wood! And a good thing too, because we crashed into other boats (and they crashed into us) several times!!