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For a colorful introduction to this entry, I had to pay 150 yuan today for new bedding for the hotel! I fell asleep with my highlighter and it made a nice pink spot. They tried to charge me right away after their failure of handwashing it out (handwashing! what the hell is that gonna do to a stain...). So I told the maid to "chill" and I took it to the laundry mat, washed it for 20 yuan and only the outline of the stain was left. However, they still wouldn't accept it, so I unhappily paid and that was that. I should have just kept the extra bedding, I bet they just threw it out! So wasteful...anyways
Thursday, we had a scheduled trip to the SJTU Minhang Campus, the official campus. We currently live on the old (historic) campus. We left around 3pm on a bus with Dr.Chen (Program Director) and some SJTU volunteers including Ivy and Jane. We took group photos at the main entrance, along the entrance road, and at a historic arch. They gave us a brief overview of the campus. The college was created during the Qing Dynasty and the campus construction has been an
Two SJTU Volunteers
gotta throw up the typical peace sighs, haha ongoing process even since then. It is probably the size of UGA and the whole city is pretty much just the college, but please minimize that reference to UGA. The campus has two lakes (one just named "New Lake") both beautiful and several dorms and academic buildings. Students over here spend much more time in classes (and maybe studying) than at most U.S. universities, hence most students not having outside jobs, college is full time, ha. We stopped before lunch to chill at one of the lakes where I relaxed away from the group. Ethan took some snapshots of me and Derryl sketched the scenery. For lunch we ate at "HalloCafe" basically Hello Cafe, ha. The food was much better than that back at the Xuhui campus! I chatted with Dr.Chen, Ethan, and Ivy about college life, politics, and morals. Found out more students commit suicide due to low graduating/college determining tests in Chinese high schools than in Chinese Colleges supposedly (comparing to GT's suicide rate).
After the meal, Ethan and I joined Derryl and Brandon for a tour from two SJTU female students they met at lunch. We walked around, almost going bowling and then almost playing ping-pong,
while they practiced their English on us. Derryl mentioned the conservative nature of Chinese vs. American (Northern/West Coast) girls and we enjoyed some other small talk, feeling out what jokes wouldn't translate well, haha. One complained about how her friend always hung out with her boyfriend instead of her, another boring but international anecdote. We finally reached the building where the party was being held 30 minutes late and I had to rush to get the powerpoint and other performances lined up. I was organizer for our performance stuff at the party - Yu Wang said they would show us up otherwise, but I think we did good. Performances included a backstreet boys song, a Chinese song, an Aladdin song, and my breakdancing. The SJTU students had a decent band (no drummer though), two magicians, and several party games including "Blow Ping-pong" and a cultural fashion show. My bboyin was actually pretty funny with all the flour that was on stage...it was like trying to dance on ice, ha, very slippery. After the skits were done, they tried to get people on stage to just dance, but everyone was lame and it took me begging to get Jung up who
did some interesting type of House/Electronica style dancing...no one else got on stage, I even tried carrying Ethan. Well one other Bgirl got on stage for a second and but the conversation was short.
I enjoyed the free food and got the bass player's from the SJTU band's phone number. He's supposed to call me sometime next week so I can jam and play drums with them!
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