Jan 19

So last night when I said "goodnight," I didn't really go to sleep but instead hungout with Adriel, Scott, Jon, Fii and Christina. Since we were on the 9th floor, Scott taught us how to make some amazingly advanced paper airplanes, and we amused ourself for hours by watching them float and soar through the sky as we threw them out the window. Immature, I know. But fun, I know this too.

Anyways, our plane is delayed on the way to Shanghai, which is sad. Checking in, however, was hilarious.
First, Adriel decided not to shave this morning, which was apparently a bad decision on the "try not to look suspicious" front. Security checked his entire bag by emptying it out. Unfortunately for him (fortunately for any observers), he had so much random stuff in his bag, it was hilarious. Some of the highlights of the contents of his bag: in addition to the normal laptop with lots of various wires and plugs, Adriel also had a huge furry panda hat and a musical flute gourd that he had gotten from the Banpo village.

Second, Professor Chen misunderstood security's instructions to remove his hat and instead thought they said "remove your pants." Luckily, the misunderstanding was corrected before any serious problems occurred.

Third, Dr. Pong decided to break into a small dance - as they were security checking him.

Now, we find out the plane is actually delayed on account of pilot sickness so they have to fly a new pilot in, so we're delayed by about 3 or 4 hours. For some reason, we are taken to a hotel for an hour or so, and we're each given rooms. The rooms are smelly and small, and the bathrooms sell weird things like instant coffee and vibrating condoms. Then we go downstairs for a complimentary lunch, but it's nothing special.

Finally, we get on the plane. The awesome thing about it, is that it basically consists of only our group. Thus, I slept a lot because I could take up a whole row of three seats to sleep on! It was glorious.

We had a really long bus ride from the airport to the hotel, but I got to meet Dr. Pong's wife, who came to join us in Shanghai, so all was well.
Also, our hotel room is sooo nice! It has a sitting room area with a minibar and a beautiful bathroom with lots of mirrors and a full bathtub!

Then, we all took a bus to the Bund, which is the scenic area where you can really see all the beautiful monuments and skyline of Shanghai.
Afterwards, we had some time to ourselves, so we ate some famous Shanghai soup dumplings. They are these small dumplings filled with soup, so they hang kind of heavy. The trick to eating them, is to hold a spoon under it, take a small bite, and let the soup drip into the spoon so you can drink it and then eat the dumpling. Yum yum. Then, I had some bubble tea milk tea, which is my new favorite drink.
At night, we went to a club called Muse, which played some really fun mixes. Since so many of us went out together, it was soo much fun. I really love our group here.