A Good Weekend

On Saturday, I slept in, went on an outing to buy deodorant, which is annoyingly difficult to find in China, and played basketball at Shanghai Maritime University, 上海海事大学, with a coworker and his friend. The courts were just regular gray concrete, and they were packed; nonetheless, it was a lot of fun to be on a college campus again. My coworker, who was an undergrad at Shanghai Maritime University, said that the 4 floor teaching building was once the tallest building in Pudong. The small campus area is now dwarfed by 50+ floor skyscrapers. I read somewhere that in 2015, 50% of the world's buildings constructed since 2000 will be in China. Looking around the neighborhood where I live, this is not hard to believe.

While we played basketball, my friends' girlfriends made dinner (somehow, I think we got the better end of that deal). Among other dishes, dinner included chicken feet, a first for me. They mostly 'tasted like chicken', except with a definite tendon and ligament texture to them (which I guess makes sense). I learned by watching the others at the table that the way to eat chicken feet is just to bite off the fingers and spit out what you can't chew, which is surprisingly little if you're good. My main complaint was that the feet were a lot of work for very little meat.

On Sunday after another basketball game with some other people from my office, I met with the Fall FSP kids for dinner. It was fun to talk to them and reminisce a little about what it was like to have been in China for only about 4 or 5 weeks, taking classes and exploring Beijing. I think I might try to visit them in Beijing sometime this fall, but we'll have to see - I'm also planning trips to Hangzhou and Suzhou with my neighbors and coworkers.

I'm getting ready to start some intense exploration of Shanghai. It's very easy to just want to go home and read or nap after work, but I think I will regret doing that too often once I'm back in the States.