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!

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