Yesterday (Tuesday) after training, Lisa and I headed out to her apartment to meet up with some MAIS people who had just arrived today/finally made it out to visit. We got a cab and rode through rush hour traffic. When we got there, we could hear their voices from outside!
Walked in to see Brian (he lives there), Jess, Daniella, Nicolle, Michelle (not Lisa’s rommie) and Bennett. A whole room of MAIS people! We did some mini-catching up and tried to figure out a place to grab some dinner. Brian suggested this one place in Shanghai that is filled with Western style restaurants. The name escapes me at the moment.
To get to the area, we had to take the metro. Since many of us still have to learn how to navigate the metro, we let Brian take the lead. We were a giant group of foreigners trekking through the station. Since Nicolle and Michelle (and Bennett, but he stayed) had just flown in that day, they were understandably jet-lagged and decided to go back first to rest. The rest of us continued on our journey.
Brian led us in an unnecessary circle around the block before realizing that all we had to do was cross the street. It was a nice stroll through some city life I guess, lol. Except many of us were tired and hungry. When we arrived, I was amazed at how many foreigners there were! Everywhere I turned there was a non-Chinese face! And in China, if the number of foreigners increase, the prices increase as well. Our bill for 6 people came out to over 1100RMB ($160USD) which is a bit pricey even in the States (we are grad students after all) and practically a fortune for the majority of the Chinese (especially just to eat a meal). I didn’t realize it until later, but my can of coca-cola was 40RMB ($5.85USD). In the States, I can get that for 0.75cents from some vending machines!
We told ourselves not to calculate the price. We were treating ourselves to something nice after finally meeting up and arriving at our destination. We walked around the plaza for a bit and since Bennett needed to buy some bedsheets, we stopped at a mall to buy some. Even the bedsheets were expensive. Luckily, I was able to ask them to find some cheaper ones (they were also on sale) otherwise his bedsheets would have cost more than our meal.
After everyone kinda dispersed to go back to their respective districts, Lisa, Brian, Bennett and I headed back to Xujiahui (where Lisa and Brian live) and then Lisa and I took a taxi back to Minhang (the district that Lisa and I’s hotel for training was). Got back around 10:30pm, took showers and promptly fell asleep.
Oh! Today (Wednesday) I had finally worked my way down to my first street food. During the lunch break at training, Joey took us to a noodle place that he was familiar with. He said the bowls of noodle were about 5RMB each and we all thought that was just dandy. We really needed to start eating like real Chinese people in order to make our RMB stretch. We walked a couple blocks and it was this little family run place that was so happy to see a bunch of foreigners wanting to come in to eat their food. They even went out of their way to buy us some cold bottles of water (we paid the price of course). In total, the 8 bowls of (huge) noodles + 4 bottles of iced water bottles cost us 40RMB ($5.85USD). Total. That was how much my can of coca-cola alone cost the night before. So divide that price by 8 and you can figure out how much each individual meal was.
Visit me in China!
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