// Greetings from Shanghai, China//

I am finally in Shanghai after a 13.5 hour flight. It was the longest… flight.. of.. my.. life. I was so uncomfortable and maybe slept for an hour. When we landed we took the subway all the way to our hotel, which took an hour because Shanghai is so big. I don’t think I have ever seen so many people crammed into one city in my life. We didn’t do much last night because all of us were so tired and bitchy with one another. We came back to the hotel and got ready for our dinner outing. All of us girls stay in the same room and all of the guys stay in the same room. I don’t know how I feel about sharing the same room with my professor. It’s………… odd. Maybe it was odd because I was just so pissed off with the world last night because I was up for more than 25 hours yesterday.

Dinner was awesome. We all sat around at a round table and had a round wheel in front of us with all the food on it. We drank Chinese tea, watermelon juice, and beer. There was rice and funky meat and weird soups. It was pretty spicy and some of it was pretty gnarly. But, I did eat ducks blood. It was the weirdest thing I think I have ever eaten. They take the blood and form it into little jello like squares and put it in a soup. I swallowed it so fast because I didn’t want to think about what it was. 

I almost forgot! My favorite thing about Shanghai is the balcony connected to our hotel room. It over looks a side street and you can see the Shanghai City Scape from it and the water. It makes me feel like I am back in Winona on my stoop.