Shanghai Shenanigans!

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So we woke up the next morning, laughing at ourselves and ready for bright new day in China. Since Piech was arriving that day, we took the subway out to where we were going to pick up really early (you have to go west to go east here) and walked around under the Pearl Tower and and watched all of the buildings light up while smoking some cigars. Very strange cigar experience...we all felt like they'd been laced with PCP or something by the end...very strange.

After that we picked Dan up from the Maglev and headed back to Tyler's appartment. Dan was very keen to go out but as Tyler, Kevin, and I were still...laughing at ourselves from the night before...we just went out to dinner with Sam and Anne and went to bed.

The next morning, Sunday, we woke up and went out for some amazing street breakfast and walked around the University the Duke kids are attending. The university is all gated off and its kind of like an island of super nice buildings and landscaping amid abject squalor that is probably worse than Guatemala. After the university tour, Sam came back from running his half-marathon with Eric, another kid in the program here, and we went to get amazing 1 hour foot massages....it felt like we were walking on clouds afterwards.

The rest of the evening was spent lounging around Tyler's apartment watching Superbad and having dinner/a few drinks. After that we went to Banana...the local Chinese dance club which was an experience in and of itself.

This club...was loud. Louder than ANY other club I've EVER been to. The music was good but the dancing was odd. There is a set of rules to dancing with Chinese girls. First, you dance about 6 feet away from them for 3 to 4 songs. If you get two full eye contacts, you can now move to within 3 feet and you are dancing 'together'. Now the girls dance changes and they start to swish their hair back and forth really fast. Maybe they'll actually dance with you, but only if you're lucky/they're pretty 'forward'. I chose to forget all this and dance by myself. Or with Anne on a box.

As we left, a Chinese man approached us who looked for all his worth like an Asian Waldo. Red/white striped sweater, jeans, glasses, the whole deal who walked up to us and shook our hands saying 'NICE TO Eh-MEET YOU!'. When we said goodbye in Chinese he saluted us and said good-bye very excitedly. It was really funny/cool and a great end to a fun night.

-raf

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