New Year's

The internet finally works now so hopefully I will be able to post more often. We traveled to Shanghai today from Beijing, and took it easy before beginning our New Year’s Eve festivities. We ate dinner at a very nice restaurant, though the first half hour was a little awkward because the dinner conversations were pretty serious and intense—not exactly what I was expecting as a pre-party for New Years. For dinner we had a lot of food; some of my favorites were the squirrel fish, frog soup, and fried jellyfish.

After dinner we left for Attica, one of the hottest clubs in Shanghai. The party was great—I’ll post some of the pictures when I get back to the U.S. Our group had three tables reserved and maybe 7 bottles of alcohol. What we didn’t have was mixers, and a can of coke was 40 RMB ($5) at the bar. This on top of the $150 for cover and VIP access made the night pretty expensive, but it was definitely a lot of fun. Too bad we couldn't find a 24 hour KFC early the next morning! (By the way, I definitely did not expect to see so many KFC's here in China--it is probably the most common American fast-food restaurant I have seen here).

The next morning Eric and I woke up at 9 am (I don't know how), just in time to make it to the bus for today’s visit of Shanghai. We traveled an hour outside of the city to the suburbs. We had lunch and also got a tour of the city through a canal. After lunch we went to a silk “factory”—in reality it was a tourist trap for very expensive silk items (about ten times as expensive as the silk in the Silk Market in Beijing). The building had a couple rooms where people were spinning silk, but it was very apparent they were there for the tour only. It was very similar to the trip the official group took in Beijing to a pearl house—they said it was pretty apparent that the trip was a kick back to the tourist agency.

Tonight looks to be pretty chill as most of us are extremely tired from partying the past couple of days. Tomorrow we are going to a GM factory in the morning, and in the afternoon we are meeting with our homestay families—I am really looking forward to learning more about Shanghai from someone who is from the area.