How not to end the night...

After a long hard week of prepping for my classes and I would say successfully avoiding too many gross food items, what could one do to celebrate? That's right, kids! Go to two of this summer's most legend making places in Shanghai: Ajisen Noodles and Maoming Lu. I will say that there are more Ajisen Noodles that I thought, so when I told the taxi driver to go to (what I thought was the usual) the one on Huaihai, I was surprised when he turned the opposite way down the street. No problem though, we still had a great meal.

The plan was to meet up with two friends of my friend Erik, who I went on ECHT with in 2001. Hagel and I had some time before we said we would meet them, so we wandered around the old Huaihai haunts and strolled through Xintiandi ("new heaven on earth") I love that part of the city and if it wasn't so far from campus, I would try to live there.

We met up with Beth and Meghan at Windows (their suggestion) and learned about their teaching in Shanghai. It was fun to get out with some different people. A few of their neighbors and other teachers at the school were there and Windows was getting a little crowded. Where do you go when the bar you are at is letting you down? Plan B! Yes I finally made it. The bunch of us (6 girls and Hagel) went over to Plan B and they ended up all being from or going to school in Michigan, where the manager is from and his friend who was playing pool. All too small of a world if you ask me. We stayed there for some time and one of the girls had had too much fun, so they decided to take her home. Beth, Meghan, Hagel and I walked back down Maoming and didn't find anything that interested us or a place to grab some grub. With no more options,we decided to part ways for the night.

Hagel and I grabbed a cab back up to campus and I looked forward to a bottle of water and some sleep. We entered the gate with no problem and walked back to our building. As we reached the door, we were chagrined to find that it was locked! No problem, I know how to handle this. Just knock on the door till someone comes. We did this, no one came. So we looked around the building for another way in to no avail. After about 10 minutes of trying and no success, we resigned ourselves to spending the night outside. This brought me to a few realizations:
1. I cannot be homeless. Concrete is not comfortable.
2. If I have to sleep outside, do not wear a skirt. It's not only uncomfortable but impractical.
3. By hour 1.5 I was a mess and did crack under the pressure.

So we arrived at 2:30am and the front desk woman woke up a bit before 6am. Needless to say I wasn't in the best state by then and just really really wanted to use the bathroom, take a shower, and sleep for a week. She was very surprised to see us and let us know that we should have just knocked on the window to the front desk room.....the only thing that we did not do. We had tried the sliding doors beside it but that one slipped our minds. I told her it was ok because talking was wasting time that I could have been sleeping.

All in all it was a humbling experience and probably the most face I've lost in a while. I'll remember this for next time along with some munchies and a pillow in my purse.

I'm hanging out, watching some ping pong and the match is getting pretty intense. Will red defeat yellow? Let me go find out...