Winding Down

I never thought I'd get to the point where I could say, "I'm going back to America next week." But here we are.

I had an incredible weekend with Megan and Kate, as usual. The stories and inside jokes will never be forgotten. Here are some random thoughts/stories on the weekend.

I got burned by a freakin' cigarette Friday night. Seriously, people, who does that? I'm going to give that guy the benefit of the doubt and assume it was an accident. It some freaky kind of way, I actually sort of like the fact that I got a scar from my favorite place in the world. 

My ouchie :(

We took pictures while jumping in midair in the metro tunnel. I LOVE metros. WHY are there none in Beavercreek, Ohio?! Anyways, everyone stared at us like we were hella crazy, as usual. It was 47 different flavors of great.

They're weird :)

Megan wasn't so great at timing.

We're the coolest people I know.

One of my favorite things about Shanghai!

We can add Belgium, Congo, Belize, and Morocco to our list of countries that we've met people from.

Remember those guys that we met from Ohio last weekend in Shanghai? We ran into them again off of Nanjing Road on Saturday. What the heck! What are the chances of seeing anyone twice in a city that huge, let alone people from your state?

For the second time in four months, I have a serious stomach bug. I woke up very sick on Sunday morning. For someone plagued with nonstop projectile vomiting, the screeching starting and stopping on the Metro makes you want to hurt yourself, and the smell of the K train makes you want end your life altogether. I do not know how I did it. I guess I just had no other choice. I had never been more glad to arrive to my nice, warm, hard as a rock bed here at the school. The other day I thought about how in a month or so, this will be someone else's room, someone else's home. It just doesn't seem right.

Once we got off the train in Changzhou, we had to wait in a ridiculously long line for a taxi. There were these people standing by the line who tried to harass us into going with them for about double what the price of a regular taxi would cost. There was this one man in particular who would not leave us alone. We kept telling him, in Chinese, that we didn't understand him. This nice girl who was about our age and was standing in front of us, told him to leave us alone- or something along those lines- because suddenly he became irate and started yelling at her. The next thing I knew, he hit her. Hard. I was just about a hair away from flying off my rocker, folks. He looked like he was about to hit her again when I stepped in between them. Staring directly into his eyes, I was daring him to touch me. One of the security people noticed the tiff and made him leave. That is something I will not and do not understand about Chinese culture. This woman would have let this stranger beat her simply because she's a woman and he's a man and she's supposed to be submissive to him. I felt like turning into a mad woman and beating his ass into a pulp on the spot. Obviously, there is nothing that burns me up more than that kind of thing. 

I've been saying that I was done shopping for weeks now. Anddd I still bought more things in Shanghai this weekend. My list of those to be gifted is now near 50. I know way too many people. 

Every time we go to Shanghai we visit this nice lady named Kerry at the Pearl Market. She is so sweet and always gave us such good deals on things- which of course made it impossible to turn down. 

Megan, Kate and I bought China friendship bracelets. Hands down, my favorite thing that I've purchased since I've been in China.

Our BFF bracelets :)

Megan noted that by the end of Wednesday, December 19, we will have been in three different countries within a twenty-four hour window. How cool is that?

Me and Sadie outside of our hostel in Shanghai. She works at the hostel and we got to know her very well over our five stays in Shanghai :)

4 more days in Changzhou, 5 more in China, and 5 in South Korea is all that stands between me and home!