Alright, There is no possible way for me to go into the usual detail of previous posts and catch up to the present, so I thought I would give a little brief snippets of things that have happened until now.
U of M vs JI Basketball Game:
Basketball is the most popular game on campus, and one of the most popular games in China. Someone thought it would be a good idea to have a game of the U of M students versus the JI students. The concept in itself wasn’t a poor one, but it ended up being kind of funny. Our opponents ended up being the JI basketball team. As a refresher the JI (Joint Institute) is a large program here that partners with the University of Michigan. There are around 700 students in the JI program, and they are divided into seperate classes by year. Each class has their own team, and then there is one JI team which was made up of the best individuals from each class team. We ended up playing the JI team.
There was about seven of us total that ended up playing for Michigan: Myself, Tony, Edgar, Darren, Tim, Ian, and Gerald. Anyway we ended up putting together a decent team considering we didn’t have too many people from U of M that came to China. Anyway we got beat pretty badly. We actually kept it close in the second half of the game, but it wasn’t ennough to overcome the deficit from the first half.
Some people on the U of M team were getting kind of worked up about what they thought was unfair calling, but I don’t even know ennough rules in basketball to recognize what unfair calling would be. In my completly unqualified opinion I thought things were called fair. I ended up having a lot of fun playing, and did pretty well including a couple of come from behind blocks that felt pretty good.
Grand Opening: Club Sky
My friend Jonas was searching online in the first session for possible things to do one weekend when he came across an ad for a grand opening of a club called Club Sky. It advertised that everyone who went would receive 5 free drinks, and that there was no cover. As soon as this was discovered and confirmed by calling the club we decided to try to get people to go out. I should probably apologize to Elain at this point who was planning to go to a KTV (karyoke) with lots of students that night as I ended up stealing all of her group to come with us to this new club (of course we did end up convincing Elain to come as well) We ended up getting pretty much the entire group of U of M students to go out together.
My dad always told me that if it sounds too good to be true then it is. Well… dad you were wrong in this circumstance. We arrived at the club, and it was a lot nicer than anyone expected. The whole club was very upscale looking, but was suited right for our age range. There was good music, a decent DJ, five free drinks, dancers (that worked for the club), and a couple performances though-out the evening.
We all ended up having a good time that night, and it was fun to have all of the students out together again.
Other Clubs:
We visited a couple of other clubs during the trip including G+ and Lux (they are about 20 feet away from each other with no cover so you can go back and forth during the night) Both of these clubs were also great. They were in a very nice part of town aimed more at tourists with nice western style restaurants. My favorite part of the trip to these clubs is being able to go down and take a break with a Western sandwich (my only sandwich of the trip) and some coldstone ice cream.
Many students have been to other clubs, but as the session wore on and my classes picked up my weekends consisted mainly of studying and training for soccer.
The Transition:
A couple of weeks ago the first session ended and all but me and one other student (my new roommate David) left campus. They either went to work at an internship (most of which were in downtown Shanghai) or they simply headed back to the States. With them leaving a new group of students ended up coming to campus but this time the group was much smaller… only six new students.
I also ended up having a heavier class load, along with an increased soccer training schedule. As a result I don’t end up doing much on the weekends besides trying to relax, catch up on school work, and work out, while the session 2 group (minus one) does a lot of traveling. I also managed to get into the Chinese Language and Culture class after working with the JI office to come up with a suitable schedule that would allow everyone to take the class including myself (as the previously scheduled version didn’t allow me to take the class).
Restaurant
We ended up going to a traditional Chinese restaurant to try some exotic foods as part of my culture class.
I ended up trying
- Jellyfish – Kind of weird… it looks like jelly but is actually crunchy
- Pregnant Whole Shrimp (including legs and eyes)
- Stinky Tofu (Which you could easily mistake as just $8%t on if you went on smell alone, but surprisingly didn’t taste too bad.
- Spicy Tofu
- 1000 year old egg (no it’s not 1000 years old… just looks like it and kinda tastes like it)
- Duck Jaw- including Tongue
- Cold Bitter Mellon
- Rice Wine
- Shrimp Balls – Very tasty
and much more I can’t remember the name of, or I don’t have enough an idea of what it actually was to describe it in English.
