The weekend before last we headed up to Beijing for a few days, our main intention was to see David Guetta performing at the Great Wall Music Festival, but we actually did more than just get wasted, and was a pretty incredible weekend...
We started off the weekend with drinks in the SWFC, Shanghai's tallest builder, aka 'The Bottle Opener', it was a Wednesday which meant free flow champagne for ladies for no cost, so couldn't really go wrong. We continued the night by heading to M1NT and luckily both Sarah and Luca got free flow wristbands, and we were on a promotors table, alcohol alcohol alcohol.
Thursday, after a number of chicken mcnuggets for breakfast we got on our 5 hour high speed train journey to Beijing and slept off the hangovers we had from the previous evening. Once we arrived and checked into the really weird hotel, with numerous stickers and a see-through shower wall door (luckily I could trust Charlee to not watch me shower) we went to grab some food with Sarah and Emma's Beijing friends. We also met up with a few girls from our uni who are studying there too, and basically began drinking, and stayed there until were the last out before heading to a club.
On Friday, we succeeded with a relatively early start for a day of being tourists. Luckily, I wasn't the only one who hadn't been to Beijing before, as both Steph and Titch, who are Sarah's friends from home hadn't been either, which meant we did a looong day of seeing sights. We went from the Temple of Heaven to Tiananmen Square, to a viewpoint over Beihei Lake where we could overlook the Forbidden City. It was all pretty pictoresque but very tiring walking around gardens and temples all morning, so we stopped for lunch, which pretty much took us all into a food coma, even though we only managed to eat 1/4 of the dumplings we ordered. That's when we attempted our good deed for the day; mission find a tramp. Unfortunately the only guy we found had no arms, and we thought it highly innapropriate to give him a bowl of dumplings and chopsticks to eat them, so we settled on leaving them next to a bin, in case the usual tramps go looking for leftovers in the trash. We climbed to the top of a viewpoint over Beihei and could see a view overlooking the forbidden city, which was pretty spectacular. However it was slightly ruined for me by the mammoth bees flying around. I'm not a fan of small bees, let alone ones this big, some of my photos even make them look like birds, so its not a surprise I was running round screaming whilst getting funny looks from the Chinese tourists.. On saturday evening we had dinner at a Korean Restaurant, and I headed home after because I felt sleep rather than alcohol would be more benefical to me before festival day!
FESTIVAL DAY! The morning started by grabbing food, buying alcohol and meeting Sarah's friends at their flat. There was literally swarms of people trying to get on the bus, it was crazy, the closer you got to the front the more squashed you became, but I got on first out of our group and managed to get 5 others with me so wasn't soo bad! We took a load of photos in the car park when we eventually arrived, bought chinese hats and finished our drinks which we werent allowed to take in. We got in and went to the toilet and it was the most vile experience of my life, I have NEVER smelt anything so bad than that big, open pit from hundreds of people before me. We all kept getting split up and I kept bumping into random people who had also travelled from Shanghai. We queued forever for hotdogs and pad £5 for them, yet when we got there there was no sausages so we just got buns and ketchup instead, not a happy moment, so instead our dinner was a pot of mini donuts. Oh so healthy. I managed to smash my chinese phone at the festival thanks to it slipping out of my hand whilst on someones shoulders, but YOLO, it was a rubbish phone anyway and I can still use it. Could have been worse, could have been my iPhone. Phewww.
Guettas performace was prettttty damn good, I got split from the others for a while because I was like an excited little child wanting to get near the front. By the end, we were all absolutely exhausted so it emptied and everyone went back on the coaches which were a mission to find and get on, this resulted with me crouching on the floor in seats of the coach with a bag on my back and hat on my head to try smuggle people on the last bus. Worked though, so can't really complain. The night ended very healthily with a McDonalds, except my stomach was not a fan of the overdose of mini donuts, chicken nuggets and alcohol, so when I got back to the hotel let's just say I wasn't feeling too special.
We got up sunday and headed to a cafe to say bye to everyone we'd met at the weekend, we then got taxis to the train station for our train trip home. This also meant more chicken nuggets. I have chicken nugget problems, and its something I learnt during this trip. The train back wasn't so bad, I studied, slept, and the usual things you do to pass time on a long distance journey. By the time we all got back we were shattered. Managed to head to Helen's for one drink with Steph, but then came straight home and slept a goood 10 hours in preparation to begin another week of boring class.
The weekend was insane and I am soo pleased we went earlier for a day of sightseeing to say I'd done it. The only thing I would do differently is to actually climb and touch the great wall, just to say I've done it, but despite this, I have no complaints. This weekend is on par with one of the best ever.
Happy days.
Thursday, 23 May 2013
Monday, 6 May 2013
The final countdown
I know it sounds crazy, and 2 months still seems like such a long time, but there is now officially a countdown until home time. When you think about it it is just so surreal that after such an insane year abroad, with both ups and downs, I now have an end date to it all. I've been here for 3 months now, and have 2 to go, so looking at it like that it's not so bad, but it has flown by far too quickly.
I have just booked my final flight of the year abroad, and I shall be home on the 9th July. And to be quite honest, although I miss so much about England, my family and friends, home comforts, food, my car and my job, I just don't want to leave Shanghai just yet. Don't get me wrong, its not the kind of place I want to live forever, but 5 months just isn't quite enough to do everything I want to do here.
Confirming the flight reservation took me 10 times longer than it should have because I just kept deliberating whether I should stay or what my reasons would be for staying, but realistically I'm going to have no money and noone to travel with, so going home is my only option. I double checked with so many people asking when they were leaving to make sure I was leaving at the right time, and asked really stupid questions like is the layover in KL long enough. I mean, I have travelled before with so many connecting flights that I know it is, I was just being ridiculous. And to be honest, the last time I was in KL was a 7 hour layover and that sucked, so 2hr50m works fine this time.
I do also have window seats for both of my flights home, so every cloud has a silver lining I guess.
2 months, 2 days to go.
Gaaahhh.
I have just booked my final flight of the year abroad, and I shall be home on the 9th July. And to be quite honest, although I miss so much about England, my family and friends, home comforts, food, my car and my job, I just don't want to leave Shanghai just yet. Don't get me wrong, its not the kind of place I want to live forever, but 5 months just isn't quite enough to do everything I want to do here.
Confirming the flight reservation took me 10 times longer than it should have because I just kept deliberating whether I should stay or what my reasons would be for staying, but realistically I'm going to have no money and noone to travel with, so going home is my only option. I double checked with so many people asking when they were leaving to make sure I was leaving at the right time, and asked really stupid questions like is the layover in KL long enough. I mean, I have travelled before with so many connecting flights that I know it is, I was just being ridiculous. And to be honest, the last time I was in KL was a 7 hour layover and that sucked, so 2hr50m works fine this time.
I do also have window seats for both of my flights home, so every cloud has a silver lining I guess.
2 months, 2 days to go.
Gaaahhh.
Thursday, 2 May 2013
Hello Summer
I realised I haven't shown my face on here for a few weeks now, and madre is getting sad she can't have updates. So, instead of sitting outside on this lovely day I am here, about to write everything for you. To be honest though, it was quite a pleasure to get back to my room and get my jeans off me, so I am currently sat with my double doors open and the breeze coming in. Probably shouldn't be complaining, because in 6 months time I will do anything to be back here. The heat is great, however one thing I am so excited for is when Mumma heads over here with all the shorts, skirts and summer dresses I stupidly left at home. Silly Lily. Once that day arrives I will probably be complaining even more about the heat, can't really win. Tianqi hen hao. I think I am going to have some weird sort of pollution tan to bring back to England in July though, but still, a tan is a tan. We've been having lunches outside cafes whilst studying and overall it has been a pretty good few weeks.
If you excuse the exams that we had last week, we have still been having a great time. Managed to actually dedicate some of my time to revision too last week, was challenged to 600 characters and battle through it! We got our results back in 3 days, which is pretty crazy if you consider how long it normally takes at home. Good news is that I passed all of my exams. For once I did best in my oral exam, getting 80%, then got 74% in writing and 68% in reading, so although its not great for Chinese people I am pretty chuffed with myself, considering I should have been revising a lot more than I did...
I kind of feel that studying and learning characters here now is coming so much faster, the speed of writing characters, the ability to use sense and guess a characters meaning, and to be able to read a lot more it is ALL improving. We moved up a class level this week as we passed our exams, and it already seems like such a big step, and extra class a week and 5 textbooks instead of one. Joy. Can't wait for this semester!
So, around revision time and bumming in the sun I have been trying to figure out what we have actually been up to? We had 3 days off this week as classes were moved to the weekend because of the public holiday, so as you would assume we drunk a lot of alcohol and went out every night!
Last week, it is worthy of a mention that for the first time we headed up to the top of the JinMao tower, you have to pay for the privelege of drinking on the top floor but the view is pretty cool. It's the second tallest building in Shanghai and planning on going up to the top of the tallest one when the Mother is visiting at the end of the month. We followed the Jinmao tower with a ladies night where all drinks are free for girls, yet still managed to get some international perverts to send a bottle of Champagne to the table, and then drinks from the boys too who didn't like having their toes trodden on. So all in all, it was a pretty drunken evening, and pretty sure that a double date at the top of the Jinmao tower will be hard to beat for a while. Especially for Charlee who got taken for a 7 course meal at the Waldorf Astoria first, despite that though, our vietnamese restaurant was still pretty good as well!
Also been on two more pub crawls, which ended as brutally as ever and went to see Zedd perform live last week for Shannon's boyfriends birthday. Table service with the best seats and soo much champagne is great until the hangover kicks in the next morning. Along with that we went Winetasting at the Roosevelt Sky restaurant rooftop bar with Sara and Vik, also a pretty swanky place and an incredible view. It's quite funny how the nights go from so classy to so drunk within a matter of days.
Next weekend we are heading to Beijing! And I am so excited. Going to the Great Wall music festival with 10,000 other people to go and see David Guetta perform in front of the wall. Pretty cool I must say, I will blog after my trip there!
Anyway, yet another essay of a post. Should probably blog more regularly to keep it short and sweet, but I'm just having tooo much fun to do so, sorry!
x
If you excuse the exams that we had last week, we have still been having a great time. Managed to actually dedicate some of my time to revision too last week, was challenged to 600 characters and battle through it! We got our results back in 3 days, which is pretty crazy if you consider how long it normally takes at home. Good news is that I passed all of my exams. For once I did best in my oral exam, getting 80%, then got 74% in writing and 68% in reading, so although its not great for Chinese people I am pretty chuffed with myself, considering I should have been revising a lot more than I did...
I kind of feel that studying and learning characters here now is coming so much faster, the speed of writing characters, the ability to use sense and guess a characters meaning, and to be able to read a lot more it is ALL improving. We moved up a class level this week as we passed our exams, and it already seems like such a big step, and extra class a week and 5 textbooks instead of one. Joy. Can't wait for this semester!
So, around revision time and bumming in the sun I have been trying to figure out what we have actually been up to? We had 3 days off this week as classes were moved to the weekend because of the public holiday, so as you would assume we drunk a lot of alcohol and went out every night!
Last week, it is worthy of a mention that for the first time we headed up to the top of the JinMao tower, you have to pay for the privelege of drinking on the top floor but the view is pretty cool. It's the second tallest building in Shanghai and planning on going up to the top of the tallest one when the Mother is visiting at the end of the month. We followed the Jinmao tower with a ladies night where all drinks are free for girls, yet still managed to get some international perverts to send a bottle of Champagne to the table, and then drinks from the boys too who didn't like having their toes trodden on. So all in all, it was a pretty drunken evening, and pretty sure that a double date at the top of the Jinmao tower will be hard to beat for a while. Especially for Charlee who got taken for a 7 course meal at the Waldorf Astoria first, despite that though, our vietnamese restaurant was still pretty good as well!
Also been on two more pub crawls, which ended as brutally as ever and went to see Zedd perform live last week for Shannon's boyfriends birthday. Table service with the best seats and soo much champagne is great until the hangover kicks in the next morning. Along with that we went Winetasting at the Roosevelt Sky restaurant rooftop bar with Sara and Vik, also a pretty swanky place and an incredible view. It's quite funny how the nights go from so classy to so drunk within a matter of days.
Next weekend we are heading to Beijing! And I am so excited. Going to the Great Wall music festival with 10,000 other people to go and see David Guetta perform in front of the wall. Pretty cool I must say, I will blog after my trip there!
Anyway, yet another essay of a post. Should probably blog more regularly to keep it short and sweet, but I'm just having tooo much fun to do so, sorry!
x
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