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It's Tuesday and Dragon Boat Festival is on Thursday! See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_boat_festival). And as a part of the SSP program we get the amazing opportunity to share the festival with a local family and absorb some culture! But we do need to buy a gift for the host family to show our appreciation and the most suggested item was a bottle of wine or chocolates. So my group - Sam and Sae Young - decided to go with both a bottle of wine and a cake. Ethan and few other students had come across an extensive wine store in the French Concession of Shanghai (3 stops up Line 1) the other day where we could buy a good wine even if we didn't know what to look for because the shop attendant knew just about EVERYTHING there is to know about wine production, brands, types, flavors, and tasting techniques, ha!
At the store we found a very large selection - at least the largest I've ever seen before! The most expensive bottle there dated back to 1937 I believe. He suggested a few wines to us first, but after considering our price range, was able to narrow it down. He believed
So many different types
Took a while to decide decipher the best wine to give as a gift for under 300 yuan for Dragon Boat Festival. we should get a red wine and a type with a bit more body, so he gave Sam and I a Merlow for our host family, same as Ethan's group got. I forgot what the other two groups bought, but it was very intriguing to hear the owner talk about the different tastes at each point in time of your drinking process of specific wines. He let us try some "Bad Boi" that turned out to be slightly lighter than I expected. It had a bitter start, fruity middle, and then a grainy and semi-sweet after-taste.
Right after the wine escapade I departed from the others and left to check out the dance studio that I had heard about on the online bboy.org forum from Bboy IceyxSoul. I got off at Hongkou Football Stadium station on the metro and then walked in the wrong direction for about 5 minutes, asked somebody a general location, and then still passed the place once before noticing it. I mean, it was on the third floor of some random/small inlet shopping area! I walked inside and passed the front desk without any problem, they didn't even look at me once...much better than the
Checkout
...we got to try a little wine - called "Bad Boi" and he gave us a short lesson on the appropriate way to drink/taste it, ha stairs I had usually been getting every now and then from being a foreigner, ha. I probably could have started using the studio area, but I decided to ask about membership fees and actually do things the proper way.
After one girl, Kelly "Keillee", translated for me I had to do some paperwork and pay for a full year, but it was still cheap. Plus she said the Battle of the Year qualifier for China (BOTY - an international and very famous bboy competition) is going to be held near here with all the BOTY bboys for China practicing in this space! Tight! I may actually get to chill with them and learn some interesting moves and share some culture. Basically, place turned out to be a comfortable getaway for me that's slightly familiar. I tried out the smaller dance floor and met two poppers - Cory and someone else (both could speak a little English) - who liked my breakin' then headed back to SJTU
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