Shanghai wrap up

The last three days in Shanghai were absolutely wonderful. They were filled with even more generous hospitality from the people at CIEE. On Wednesday a group of us went to visit the YuYuan gardens, as well as one of the highly acclaimed dumpling restaurants. My college roommate David, who's here with me, and I went up to the register to order. Well, we certainly lacked the Chinese to order much of anything, and the workers had no or little English. They luckily flagged down a tour guide who was eating there with his client, and he ordered us what turned out to be an absolutely delicious feast of dumplings, soup, and egg rolls. Both Wednesday and Thursday had more English teaching sessions as well as Chinese class. One meal at the cafeteria was shared with a man named Lu. Who is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, and was visiting for a lecture. He was incredibly well spoken and very interesting (he did go to Cal-Berkeley). He told us of how his early education was broken apart by the Japanese invasion during WWII, but apparently he recovered enough to get into Berkeley. On Thursday we went for a river cruise on the HuangPu, which cuts through Shanghai. It was stunning, all of the skyscrapers are lit up and the city absolutely shines. On Thursday during an afternoon break a group of us went with Kerry, the other student volunteer to a local gym and played basketball. He is super cool and we had a great time. The farewell dinner on Friday night was a blast. The food was great, the waitress kept filling the wine glasses, and Kelvin, the CIEE advisor and Kerry and Jerry entertained us with karaoke. A few of us tried our hand with the English songs as well. It was a fitting end to a wonderful time with the CIEE crew.