"We're not in Milwaukee Anymore"

Currently, Elliott and I are being those guys at a café on our laptops, blogging the Sunday away, but I think we may have found what I think the only bagel place in Shanghai. Of course, owned and operated by a dude from Jersey. I don’t think ex-pats from the tri-state area can get over a hangover without a bagel with schmear or a sausage egg and cheese on an everything, even in China. I’m getting crazy and going for the surf and turf for the morning splitting a lox and cream cheese and a chorizo scramble with my friend Henrik. A gamble that I think might pay off.

This week was kind of weird one, but fun nonetheless. We had a day off on Wednesday for the Mid-Autumn festival, a time in China to eat moon cakes, but I think that’s it. Kevin has since become a VIP at the Belgian beer bar Kaiba, only costing him about $50 USD for the semester, so we went to their 2 ^nd birthday party on Tuesday night. Our waitress from the last time Mia, being the true angel that she is, got us all in as VIPs and really just hooked it up for us all night. It was an all you can drink Veddette Extra White and Duvell courtyard party, a Labor Day BBQ at its finest. The rest of the night is kind of a haze, but we ended up back at the Jazz and Blues bar and danced the night away to Mike Null and the Soulcasters…and I’ll leave it at that.

The rest of the week until Friday kind of sucked, as my roommate ended up getting me sick. Actually, at least 10 kids in the group have been sick this week so, I can’t totally blame him. You gotta love living in dorm style rooms again. I stayed in on Thursday and Friday, which was real lame, but we’re going to Tibet on Wednesday so I was not trying to be unhealthy for that trip.

Saturday morning I felt a lot better and we took a daytrip to Suzhou, a city of about 6 million people that’s an hour and a half away from Shanghai. Our program advertised it to us as “the Venice of China”, so group morale was pretty high going into the city. Little did we know that it was more like the Milwaukee of China. Not that I have anything against the great city of Milwaukee, I really dig it’s vibes, but Suzhou was a huge disappointment. It was Shanghai’s ugly step-sister, kind of like what Milwaukee is to beautiful Chicago. Sorry I’m not sorry. The trip took us to 3 places in the city: a silk factory, a boat cruise, and a garden.

The factory was a huge waste of time, just an uninteresting tourist trap. Elliott and I were able to get a few pairs of silk boxers/shorts (not really sure if I know what they are yet) on clearance, which we then wore for the rest of the day. Same went for the boat cruise, as they packed us onto a tiny boat and road around for an hour or two not really seeing all that much. Not even close to as much fun as the booze cruise we went on in Milwaukee last spring (Milwaukee still has it’s redeeming qualities). The park was really beautiful, tucked away as a sleepy getaway in a bustling city. It was just a shame that it was packed in with hundreds of tourists, including our fifty-person group. Had I been the only person there I think I would have really gotten a chance to truly appreciate it, but it was just kind of hard with so many people around.

The disappointment of this day trip resulted in a mass desire to have a crazy night, and it really didn’t disappoint. It started off at an all you can eat AND DRINK sushi spot. I kid you not, if we were in the states, the group of seven of us went thru about $2000 worth of sushi, sake, plum wine and beer. That’s not even counting the 15 other guys who were on the floor above us doing the exact same thing. This tiny sushi spot had no idea what had hit em. Two and a half hours of non-stop eating and sake for college students is never a good thing for a restaurant.

Guys from the upstairs were going to the bathroom so frequently that we had to turn it into a drinking game. In order to catch up to them, as they were there a half hour before us, we had a draft of the guys from upstairs for who would go to the bathroom the most. When your guy makes it past the table, you have to drink a craft of sake. Confusing, I know, but at the time it made a lot of sense and since I franchise so much in Madden and NBA 2k10, I can never turn down a draft. This easily caught us up and put us on track for a great night.

When we left the restaurant, at about 11ish, it was like a bomb went of across the street from the sake place. Everyone had their big arse bottles of beer, that the restaurant let us take out, probably a mistake on their part. Right when we got across the street, in about a span of 15 seconds Flans threw up, someone dropped their beer, which exploded on the ground and then our friend Colin threw up. Some people just can’t handle all you can eat sushi. The night continued at a club in the nice part of town Xaintiandi, called G+, where we owned the dance floor. Shenanigans ensued, but Elliott covers the night in more detail at his blog www.gyratingeastward.blogspot.com , so ya’ll should check it out I think he'll have it up soon. It was a real solid night out after our crappy day in China’s Milwaukee.

We go to Tibet and Mount Everest this upcoming Wednesday for an 11 day train adventure. We still haven’t paid in full, gotten tickets or really have a set itinerary from our travel agent yet, but we’re just going with the flow. Flans came up with an idea to start a Grournal (Group Journal) to document our daily feelings and sights in Tibet, so I’ll try to get that posted on the blog when I can. It should be one hell of a trip at 18,000 feet above sea level so ill take as many pictures as I can while we’re there. Hopefully altitude sickness doesn’t incapacitate me either, but that’s still to be seen. Great Badgers win against Austin Peay, I hope the first gameday at the house was a blast, and I praying Jay Cutler continues his solid play against the Pack on Tuesday morning (Monday night in the US).

Peace from Shanghai,

Drew

Who Poops in a Gazebo????

This week has gone by in a flash. School was actually pretty intense with the tutoring and all the language homework. We had a fieldtrip for my globalization class to the birthplace of communism in China, which was pretty tight, but the weekend couldn’t have come soon enough.

The Boat with Me and Flans holding down the fort on the runway

Friday night was easily one of the classiest nights out I have ever had. Yes, even beating out winter pea-coat nights to the Capitol bars in Madison. CIEE took our whole study abroad group to a Huangpu river cruise. This river separates the Bund from the Pudong district and easily has the most amazing views of the city on either side. It really is about time that I bought a camera because I don’t really think I will ever be able to experience those views again…I was kinda kicking myself for not having one. The pictures other people took of us are both stunning and really hilarious, so ill put those up here when they circulate facebook. Obviously, we wanted to do this night up in style, so we all wore our classiest outfits and turned the riverboat cruise into a tasteful booze cruise (is there such a thing?). Everyone had the most amazing time on the boat, who doesn’t like mingling with random people with the views we had. After that the most of the big group separated to get dinner and go clubbing, but a small few of us decided that since we were looking sooooo good that we might as well ball out a little bit.

James and the Spellman Crew

Me Flans and Sarah with the Bund

We walked down the Bund to the Armani building in Bund #3 (there’s 29 in all) and went to the rooftop bar called New Heights. From there we got real classy and some bought a bottle of scotch and the rest sipped on martinis and smoked Cubans. It was expensive, but really not absolutely ridiculous with the view that we had from this rooftop. It was still only 12:30 by the time we were wrapping up, so we ended up rolling to the House of Jazz and Blues a couple of blocks away and saw Mike Null & The Soulcasters, a blues band from Boston. We hung out with the band after their set too, which was real chill.

When we came back to the dorms, we all still had some energy left so we took a bottle of wine and went to the riverside gardens behind our dorm. We tried to hang out and relax in the real cool gazebo in the park, but after 2 min the whole place started to really smell. Little did we know our friend Morgan (who everyday dresses like the Fonz, but is one of the most interesting persons I’ve ever met) had been sitting in a big pile of human shit the entire time. Which is totally nasty, but at the same time ridiculously funny (especially after seeing him wash said poopy pants in stagnant Chinese river water). Begging the question of the night, who would ever poop in a gazebo???

Saturday was just as chill, with a small group of a few guys and girls going to a Belgian beer bar for almost all afternoon. We had to have tried at least 30 different beers from all over the world while eating mounds of real good gouda cheese. You can take the kid outta Wisconsin, but you can’t take Wisconsin outta the kid. The night eventually took us to a few more pubs, ultimately ending in watching the sun come up on the banks of the river as we drank bottles of the finest cheap wine that China has to offer. All in all, a much needed weekend after the demanding work week.

Literally as I am finishing up this post in the warm late afternoon on Sunday on the edge of the river, and I am seriously not even kidding, some very large homeless woman just got completely naked and squatted in the bushes under a set of palm trees on the other side of the river and dropped a deuce. I think my prior of question of who would poop in a gazebo just got answered. Only in China.

First Week of Shenanigans

School finally started on Monday. My 4 week extended summer in Madison and Shanghai is finally over. It was wild while it lasted, but I actually needed some sense of structure in my life. Going out every night for almost four weeks was burning me out a little bit. I know I’m going to regret saying that in about 2 weeks.
The past week has gone by soooooo fast. People FINALLY started going out at night and we have been having a crazy fun time (Everyone, but my roommate who hasn’t gone out at night once. I don’t have a problem with it, but it can get awkward when I roll into the room at 5, only to have him wake up at 630. But whatever). The bar scene/ club life is nuts here, but all seems to be concentrated in one section of town the French Concession. Apparently it’s the only place to get a semi-cheap drink in town. The real action is the bars in the Concession that have all you can drink specials for like $10-14 USD. We’ve done that a few times and it gets real loose (Ya Clare I just used a Montclair term. Sue me).
It seems like all we do is go out at night, but during the day we have actually been real productive in getting our super touristy things out of the way.
We’ve knocked off the Bund (Shanghai’s ode to money) with it’s amazing views of the Pudong financial district, seen a ridiculous acrobat show, and have even been to 3 art galleries downtown. ( I think I’m making it my goal to come away from this trip as an intellectual, but it remains to be seen. I’m even going to take a Friday morning art class with Flans every week.)
On Friday we spent the entire afternoon at the World Expo. (The biggest world’s fair since the late 1800’s that cost more than the Beijing Olympics). It was absolutely ridiculous, kind of like Epcot on the steroids that Barry Bonds was taking. We ended up only going to a few pavilions: Lithuania, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Philippines, Belgium and China. We turned the entire experience into an international pub crawl; we had drinks in every pavilion we hit, making the day into a really fun event. Poland and Lithuania were definitely my favorites with there huge beers and amazing Eastern European food (I’m a total sucker for pierogies and piroshki)

Other than that, no more news on the Eastern front. School is kind of intense with all of the language classes we’re taking. They're and hour and 50 min long and the core classes are 3 hrs long. We even have to have a tutor twice a week. It can be kind of ridiculous. Flans and I are planning a trip to the base camp of Mt.Everest in Tibet right now. We got the inside scoop from a beautiful Tibetan woman named Kathy at the Expo. Hopefully we get that rolling before our week long break on the 1st. I’ll let ya’ll know tho.

First Few Days

So, as of now we’re three days in to our China trip. Currently I can’t make any blog posts as the website is blocked by the Chinese government. They really take their Internet seriously over here. I’m going to try and split a VPN with Elliott to get around the restrictions that they have.

So far the stay has been great. The city is a lot like NYC in most spots and the campus is completely gated and feels like a whole other area by itself. I’ll try to post pictures of it when I buy a camera, but our dorm is on a beautiful river full of lily pads and old-school Chinese mediation areas. The only thing that has put a damper on the whole trip is the obscene amount of humidity. It’s about 90 degrees with 90% humidity. It makes walking around pretty damn tough. You go through at least two shirts a day and I’m running super low on baby powder.

There is a pretty good crew of people from all over the US in our program. It’s been a little weird cause not everyone has been wanting to go out at night, which seems completely ridiculous to me. Since I really never felt any jetlag from the flight, I was rearing to go out with a huge crew both nights, and it just hasn’t been the case. The small group of five we went out with on Sunday was really fun. We randomly took a cab to the French Concession and just walked around until we saw a bunch gussied up Chinese chicks stumble down a flight of stairs and figured that that would be the place for us. It ended up being one of the best night clubs I’ve ever been to and a spot we will for sure make it back to. We got bottle service for $20 a person and rocked out loving the lady gaga they were blasting all night.

Last night was just as fun and random, as we ended up looking through the Shanghai Frommers to find a place to eat and go out to. We found that the French Concession is really the place to go for foreign kids on somewhat of a budget. It was a lot like Greenwhich Village with all of the trendy boutiques. We got a $5 Shanghainese feast at a spot called Grape that was inside a Russian Orthodox Church. Even though we were all pretty tired, we toughed it out and went to a alternative/punk rock kind of bar that was really cool. It was the epitome of a dive bar, poorly lit with graffiti all over the walls and Chinese guys chain smoking on couches, but with a DJ playing really good old school hip hop. As the night went on and the pijiu (beer) and bai jiu (chinese rice whisky) kept flowing, the group of like 12 people slowly began to realize that it might have been a gay bar. I think it was after a Chinese guy kissed Elliotts hand and then went on to kiss our friend Emeka’s ear, when we realized that the bar might have just been very gay friendly on Mondays. It seemed like it just might be the place to be on a Saturday or something when we would bring more than just 4 chicks with us.

Tonight we’re going out for a birthday party with some girls from Spellman College in ATL who are absolute characters, so we can’t wait to see what tonight brings us. School doesn’t start until Monday, so until then I’ll try to update this pretty frequently.

Last Days in Madison

In only a few more days I'm going to be in a whole new world.....Yikes.

Having been in Madison, WI for almost 3 weeks now, I hope I have gotten all that I could out of UW in a short time frame. From the all you could eat and drink Duck Blind at the Madison Mallards game, to the absolutely crazy Steve Aoki concert on Monday, I hope that I have run the gamut on Madison's pre-school shenanigans. With a good deal of people leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow for the Badgers-UNLV game for an epic long weekend, it'll be my last night going out here. No chance I'm going to risk missing my flight early saturday morning by going out a little too hard on Friday night.

Elliott and Flans, my two Chicago friends who I'm going on this trip with have already headed out from San Francisco today and should be on the East China Normal campus pretty soon. Hopefully they can get acclimated there quickly so they can show me the ropes when I get there on Sunday...and find an American sports bar so I can watch the Badgers first football game.

Until then I'll be brushing up on my Mandarin.

再见,

Drew