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.